Saturday 30 November 2013

"HANDWRITING ON THE WALL - THE NATIONS ARE GATHERING AGAINST ISRAEL" BY JACK SMITH.


Handwriting on the wall – the nations are gathering against Israel

  BY 
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DOM_6303Perhaps the headlines below will help lay the ground-work to understand end-times prophecy for God’s covenant people, the Jews (Genesis 12:2-3 NASB):
Isolated Israel Denounces Iran Deal (Sydney Morning Herald, 11/26/13)
Israel’s Isolation (The Peninsular Qatar, November 26, 2013):
…. For the first time, this stunningly proves that Israel is the odd man out. Netanyahu has been pushing the world for years to limit Iran’s nuclear programme and now finds himself with limited options. He had even threatened unilateral military action against Tehran, but that option is now completely off the table. The pact has the support of leading Western powers, and that means Netanyahu will find his voice lonely. (Read more)
Don’t think for a moment that Israel’s current problems are solely the result of its recent hostile response to the Iran nuclear agreement. U. S. Secretary of State John Kerry was quoted by the Jerusalem Post (November 7, 2013):
“I believe that if we do not resolve the issues between Palestinians and Israelis, if we do not find a way to find peace, there will be an increasing isolation of Israel, three will be an increasing campaign of the de-legitimization of Israel that has been taking place on an international basis,” he said in the interview. (Read more)
Note some very important words in Kerry’s statement: “isolation of Israel… an increasing campaign of the delegitimization of Israel.”  The “delegitimization of Israel” is a technical phrase referring to the fact that thirty-two member-states of the United Nations do not recognize the State of Israel as a legitimate political authority in the land of Israel, including its right to exist. All thirty-two of these member-states are Muslim nations with the exception of Cuba and North Korea. These thirty-two member-states refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a legitimate state in spite of actions by the United Nations to establish the state of Israel on Mary 15, 1948. Psalm 83:3-4 NASB. In addition, in the 1967 Six-Days War, Israel annexed East Jerusalem (which includes the Temple Mount) and declared Jerusalem its capital, an action the United Nations nor any nation in the world, including the United States, has ever recognized as legitimate (Tel Aviv is home to many embassies and is recognized by most nations as the capital of Israel). In Kerry’s statement above quoted, a veiled threat is present: Israel’s illegitimacy is becoming more real than in recent history (in spite of improvements since its low point of 1979). It’s actions in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, including the building of Jewish settlements on occupied lands that Palestinians want for a future state (having the ultimate result of blocking the peace process between Israel and Palestinians) has the potential for bringing about economic sanctions against Israel. The first hint of such sanctions occurred recently (November 28, 2013) when Catherine Ashton, head of the EU, threatened to withhold funding earmarked for technology if the funding was  used in the building of settlements on the West Bank:

Israel has bowed to European Union demands to deny funding eligibility to Israeli scientific enterprises operating in Jewish settlements, … Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said she had struck a compromise with EU head Catherine Ashton to try to rescue the funding and avert the risk of wider Israeli diplomatic and academic isolation if the deal had not passed. … Israel had worried the sanctions could hurt universities and research centres with facilities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. (Read more)
six.day.warIn Israel’s lone public stance against the Geneva agreement with Iran, it has placed itself in a precarious position. The agreement with Iran is a six-month agreement with Western powers. It provides limited economic relief to Iran in return for curbing of Iran’s nuclear programs. Should Iran prove itself to be faithful to its terms (even if through deception), a permanent agreement will likely follow. Of course, as we all know, Western and Iranian leaders will use the entire process for political purposes. This will bring more attention to Israel’s hostile actions against Iran and the agreement. It will also bring attention to the fact that Israel is the only nation in the Middle East that actually possesses nuclear weaponsand has the capability to launch them.1  Israel will  likely find itself in an even more isolated position when the more permanent agreement is executed. To world leaders, particularly the Obama administration, sanctions worked against Iran so why not use them against Israel!
In addition, a United Nations Human Rights Council report was recently issued that was highly critical of Israel’s human rights violations in the West Bank (January 31, 2013):
FULL ARTICLE AT http://www.jacksmithprophecy.org/2013/11/29/handwriting-on-the-wall-the-nations-are-gathering-against-israel/

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Friday 29 November 2013

HAMAS CRACKS DOWN ON CHRISTIANS AS THE SITUATION WORSENS IN GAZA!!

‘The Situation In Gaza Is Very Bad’: Hamas Cracking Down On Christians, Forcing Them To Convert To Islam

11/28/2013Leave a commentGo to comments
 
 
 
 
 
 
4 Votes

This is only a taste of what is coming. As of right now, Christians in the Middle East are still largely tolerated as “dhimmis” and therefore able to offer up the sacrifice of praise to YHWH today. But this could all come to an abrupt end if a figure of great significance in the Islamic world were to stand against the Temple of God and demands that all stop worshiping YHWH and convert to Islam, or else. We’ve already seen some Muslim leaders issuing fatwas (religious decrees) in places like Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Pakistan demanding that Christians either convert to Islam, or die. A fatwa like this issued against Jews and Christians by someone like the Mahdi, for instance, would send immediate shockwaves all throughout the Islamic world. If such a decree were to happen “then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matt 24:21) …
1 Corinthians 3:16, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”
Hebrews 13:15, “Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.”
1 Corinthians 3:17, “If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are.”
MidEast Christian News – “Dr. Hazem Abu Shanab, a member of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council, told MCN that Hamas, in association with the Muslim Brotherhood, is controlling the Gaza Strip by force of arms, and is cracking down on Christians and restricting their freedom of worship. It is also trying to force them to abandon Christianity and convert to Islam, he said.
Hamas has reacted violently against Christians in issues related to this, said Shanab. He explained that there are ongoing attacks on churches and Christians in the Gaza Strip because Hamas considers Christians ‘infidels.’
Abu Shanab said Hamas modified academic textbooks for this academic year to serve its own plans and ‘radical ideas.’ Muslims and Christians in Gaza are experiencing restrictions on freedoms, and do not have the basic needs for life, such as food, drink and medicine, he said.
Speaking to MCN, Abu Shanab said the situation in Gaza is very bad, because an armed group affiliated to Hamas is controlling the situation. This group claims to rule by law and has legitimacy, he said. Hamas, on the other hand, is cracking down on Christians’ freedom to worship and trying to force them to embrace Islam.
‘There are encroachments on Christian and Islamic houses of worship because the military administration of Hamas has the upper hand, and such attacks particularly target churches and Christians, who are considered ‘infidels,’ which leads to more violence against them,’ he said.” Read more.
Flashback: Gaza Christians Protest Forced Conversion To Islam – “Christians in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip are taking a public stand against forced conversion to Islam. In an unusual public demonstration, men and women gathered in front of the Church of Saint Porphyrius Monday to protest the abduction and forced conversion of members of their congregation… Forced conversion to Islam is not a new phenomenon in Gaza, but public protests by Christians are, Labib Nabanat, coordinator of the Israeli and Palestinian Bible Societies, told CBN News.” Read more.
Flashback: Modern Day Exodus: Palestinian Christians Leaving In Droves – “Home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, the city of Beit Jala — located on a hill adjacent to Bethlehem — still boasts a large number of worshippers. This fact makes the town unique among Palestinian towns, which have generally seen their Christian populations decline. ‘People are leaving Palestine [sic] in droves. Jenin, Aboud, Nablus — these cities have lost much of their Christian population, some villages and towns have no more than two to three families,’ said Peter, a 25-year-old resident of Bethlehem who agreed to be interviewed for this article on condition that his real name not be used.” Read more.
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Thursday 28 November 2013

TURKISH-EGYPTIAN RELATIONS CONTINUE TO DETERIORATE AS EGYPT TAKES AIM AT BROTHERHOOD ALLIES!!

Turkish-Egyptian Relations Continue To Deteriorate As Egypt Takes Aim At Brotherhood Allies

11/26/2013Leave a commentGo to comments
 
 
 
 
 
 
6 Votes

Daniel 11:40-43, “At the time of the end the king of the South will engage him in battle, and the king of the North will storm out against him with chariots and cavalry and a great fleet of ships. He will invade many countries and sweep through them like a flood. He will also invade the Beautiful Land. Many countries will fall … He will extend his power over many countries; Egypt will not escape. He will gain control of the treasures of gold and silver and all the riches of Egypt, with the Libyans and Cushites in submission.”
By Sarah Benhaida, AFP – “Locked in a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood since president Mohamed Morsi’s ouster, Egypt has launched a diplomatic offensive against the movement’s foreign backers armed with funds from its old foes.
In their first salvo soon after Morsi was toppled, the military-installed rulers took aim at Qatar — the only Gulf monarchy that openly supported the Brotherhood — by closing the Egyptian channel of Al-Jazeera television.
The authorities also detained some journalists working in Cairo for the Doha-based network.
In addition, officials said Cairo was willing to return to Qatar funds given to Egypt during the Morsi presidency.
But the main confrontation for the new authorities is a diplomatic one that has developed with Turkey.
On Sunday, Cairo expelled Ankara’s ambassador after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the repression of Morsi’s supporters.
The tussle began soon after Egyptian security forces broke up two camps of Morsi supporters on August 14 in Cairo, in what was the bloodiest episode in Egypt’s modern history.
A day later both Cairo and Ankara recalled their respective ambassadors, but while Ankara later sent its envoy back to Egypt, Cairo’s ambassador to Turkey stayed at home.
On Sunday, the two countries went a step further by reducing their diplomatic ties to the level of charges d’affaires.
Karim Bitar, a Paris-based analyst, said the row stems from ‘increasing Egyptian nationalism and bitter regional setbacks for Turkey, including in Syria, which has seen it lose influence’ in the region.
For Shadi Hamid, research director at the Brookings Doha Center, ‘Egypt’s ruling military leaders are clearly not tolerating any backing to the Muslim Brotherhood, either inside the country or outside’.
‘Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE have provided billions in aid to Egypt which is giving it the degree of latitude’ in its diplomatic tactics …” Read more.
Flashback: Newsweek: Turkey Trumping Islam Over Democracy, Seeks To Become Major World Power – “In seeking to become a major world power, Turkey’s rapid shift towards an Islamist theocracy means we may soon see this ‘King of the North’ make a stand on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood, the former Islamist rulers in Egypt and Turkish ally. And having one of the largest militaries in the Muslim world isn’t good news for the Egyptian military’s ‘King of the South’ General Al-Sisi, nor for Israel …” Read more.
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"NOW THE TWELFTH IMAM (THE MAHDI) CAN COME" BY ROBERT SPENCER FROM "FRONTPAGE MAG"!

Now The Twelfth Imam Can Come

11/26/2013Leave a commentGo to comments
 
 
 
 
 
 
9 Votes

“There is no requirement that non-Muslims must be responsible for that violence; Shi’ites filled with religious fervor, like the Ayatollah Khamenei and the mullahs behind him, could hasten the Twelfth Imam’s return and the consummation of all things by, say, launching a nuclear strike against Tel Aviv or some other Infidel outpost…”
By Robert Spencer, Frontpage Mag – “Among the many who decried the Obama Administration’s catastrophic capitulation to the nuclear ambitions of the Islamic Republic of Iran, none spelled out its potential consequences as trenchantly as Israel’s Economy Minister Naftali Bennett: ‘We awoke this morning to a new reality,’ he said Sunday. ‘A reality in which a bad deal was signed with Iran. A very bad deal. If a nuclear suitcase blows up five years from now in New York or Madrid, it will be because of the deal that was signed this morning.’
If that happens, it will also be because of the Shi’ite belief in the return of the Twelfth Imam. According to Islamic tradition, the dispute between the majority Sunnis and the Shiat Ali (Party of Ali) began upon the death of Muhammad in 632. The Sunnis contended that the prophet of Islam had made no provision for a successor as political, military, and spiritual leader of the Muslim community, and that therefore the Muslims should choose the best man among them as their leader. The nascent Party of Ali, on the contrary, claimed that Muhammad had designated his son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib as his successor, and that the successor of Muhammad had to be a member of the prophet’s household.
What’s more, far from being a mere functionary, this successor would bear some of Muhammad’s prophetic spirit, as well as infallibility in deciding disputed questions. Ali was finally chosen as the fourth caliph in 656, but in 661 was assassinated. Hassan, his eldest son (and successor, as far as the Shi’ites are concerned), was murdered in 670 on the orders of the Sunni caliph Muawiya. Then the Sunni/Shi’ite split became definitive and permanent when Ali’s younger son, Husayn, was killed in the Battle of Karbala in 680.
The Shi’ites were, thus, founded in loss and defeat, and these became the ongoing distinguishing features of Shi’ite history and piety. After the beheading of Husayn, the Shi’ites continued a succession of Imams, members of Muhammad’s household and his prophetic heirs. Each one in turn, over two centuries, was poisoned on orders of the Sunni caliph. According to the traditions of Twelver Shi’ism, the official religion of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the twelfth of these Imams, a boy of five years old, disappeared under mysterious and disputed circumstances in the year 874 – but remained alive. After his disappearance, he communicated to the world through four agents, the last of whom died in 941. At that point the Twelfth Imam went silent, entering the period of ‘Great Occultation.’
In his last communiqué to the world, via one of these messengers in 941, this mysterious figure consoled his followers with prophecies regarding his eventual reappearance. The circumstances of that reappearance could, in the hands of Iran’s mad mullahs, visit upon the world calamities of a scale never before seen. And Israel and America will bear the brunt.
‘Hearts,’ warned Mohammad al-Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam, in his last message, ‘will become inaccessible to compassion. The earth will be filled with tyranny and violence.’ He was speaking of the time of his reappearance, explaining that he would only come back to the world when the evil that Muslims were suffering was at its absolute apex. In this he echoed a Shi’ite tradition of the words of the prophet of Islam himself, Muhammad, who prophesied that the Twelfth Imam would be ‘the Resurrector’ and explained: ‘He will fill the world with peace and justice as today it is filled with violence and tyranny.’
That violence and tyranny is not incidental to the theology of the Twelfth Imam, which has revenge as its core and essence. The Shi’ites began to teach that the Twelfth Imam would return at a time when the Muslims were oppressed as never before, and suffering worse than ever. The Imam, in the company of Jesus (re-imagined, as in Sunni Islam, as a Muslim prophet), would finally end the horrific persecution of the true believers, taking up arms against their enemies and conquering and Islamizing the world.
This eschatological revenge fantasy would be of no concern to anyone but pious Shi’ites and religious anthropologists were it not for the element of Shi’ite tradition that requires that the earth be ‘filled with tyranny and violence’ before the Twelfth Imam can return.
There is no requirement that non-Muslims must be responsible for that violence; Shi’ites filled with religious fervor, like the Ayatollah Khamenei and the mullahs behind him, could hasten the Twelfth Imam’s return and the consummation of all things by, say, launching a nuclear strike against Tel Aviv or some other Infidel outpost, knowing that by doing so they would almost certainly be provoking a retaliatory strike that would subject the Muslims in Iran to more defeat and repression than even the Shi’ites had previously suffered. That would be enough to bring the Twelfth Imam out of the well where he is said to be hiding.
But that is a matter of religious hope and speculation; the devastation that would supposedly lead to his reappearance, however, would be all too real. The two powers that the Iranian mullahs have long designated as the ‘Great Satan’ and the ‘Little Satan’ – America and Israel – would be the only targets of an Iranian attempt to hasten the Twelfth Imam’s coming.
A nuclear strike from Tehran into Israel could kill, estimates say, upwards of twenty million people, completely destroying the Jewish State.
Barack Obama, by acceding to the Iranians’ nuclear ambitions, has given a tremendous impetus to these revenge fantasies, probably not realizing or caring that Iran’s mullahs take the prophesies of the Twelfth Imam very seriously indeed – seriously enough for them to bet the entire world upon them. Obama has just made the odds appear to them to be considerably more favorable than they were just a week ago.” Source – Frontpage Mag.
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Wednesday 27 November 2013

AMERICA'S FALSE PROSPERITY WILL SOON DISAPPEAR IF CHINA CARRY OUT THEIR THREAT TO STOP STOCK-PILING US DOLLARS!!

China Announces That It Is Going To Stop Stockpiling U.S. Dollars
     
China just dropped an absolute bombshell, but it was almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media in the United States. The central bank of China has decided that it is "no longer in China’s favor to accumulate foreign-exchange reserves". During the third quarter of 2013, China's foreign-exchange reserves were valued at approximately $3.66 trillion.

And of course the biggest chunk of that was made up of U.S. dollars. For years, China has been accumulating dollars and working hard to keep the value of the dollar up and the value of the yuan down.

One of the goals has been to make Chinese products less expensive in the international marketplace. But now China has announced that the time has come for it to stop stockpiling U.S. dollars.

And if that does indeed turn out to be the case, than many U.S. analysts are suggesting that China could also soon stop buying any more U.S. debt. Needless to say, all of this would be very bad for the United States.

For years, China has been systematically propping up the value of the U.S. dollar and keeping the value of the yuan artificially low. This has resulted in a massive flood of super cheap products from across the Pacific that U.S. consumers have been eagerly gobbling up.

For example, have you ever gone into a dollar store and wondered how anyone could possibly make a profit by making those products and selling them for just one dollar?

Well, the truth is that when you flip those products over you will find that almost all of them have been made outside of the United States. In fact, the words "made in China" are probably the most common words in your entire household if you are anything like the typical American.

Thanks to the massively unbalanced trade that we have had with China, tens of thousands of our businesses, millions of our jobs and trillions of our dollars have left this country and gone over to China.

And now China has apparently decided that there is not much gutting of our economy left to do and that it is time to let the dollar collapse. As I mentioned above, China has announced that it is going to stop stockpiling foreign-exchange reserves...

The People’s Bank of China said the country does not benefit any more from increases in its foreign-currency holdings, adding to signs policy makers will rein in dollar purchases that limit the yuan’s appreciation.

“It’s no longer in China’s favor to accumulate foreign-exchange reserves,” Yi Gang, a deputy governor at the central bank, said in a speech organized by China Economists 50 Forum at Tsinghua University yesterday.

The monetary authority will “basically” end normal intervention in the currency market and broaden the yuan’s daily trading range, Governor Zhou Xiaochuan wrote in an article in a guidebook explaining reforms outlined last week following a Communist Party meeting. Neither Yi nor Zhou gave a timeframe for any changes.

It isn't going to happen overnight, but the value of the U.S. dollar is going to start to go down, and all of that cheap stuff that you are used to buying at Wal-Mart and the dollar store is going to become a lot more expensive.

But of even more importance is what this latest move by China could mean for U.S. government debt. As most Americans have heard, we are heavily dependent on foreign nations such as China lending us money. Right now, China owns nearly 1.3 trillion dollars of our debt. Unfortunately, as CNBC is noting, if China is going to quit stockpiling our dollars than it is likely that they will stop stockpiling our debt as well...

Analysts see this as the PBoC hinting that it will let its currency fluctuate, without intervention, thus negating the need for holding large reserves of the dollar. And if the dollar is no longer needed, then it could look to curb its purchases of dollar-denominated assets like U.S. Treasurys.

"If they are looking to reduce these purchases going forward then, yes, you'd have to look at who the marginal buyer would be," Richard McGuire, a senior rate strategist at Rabobank told CNBC in an interview.

"Together, with the Federal Reserve tapering its bond purchases, it has the potential to add to the bearish long-term outlook on U.S. Treasurys."

So who is going to buy all of our debt?

That is a very good question.

If the Federal Reserve starts tapering bond purchases and China quits buying our debt, who is going to fill the void?

If there is significantly less demand for government bonds, that will cause interest rates to rise dramatically. And if interest rates rise dramatically from where they are now, that will set off the kind of nightmare scenario that I keep talking about.

In a previous article entitled "How China Can Cause The Death Of The Dollar And The Entire U.S. Financial System", I described how China could single-handedly cause immense devastation to the U.S. economy.

China accounts for more global trade that anyone else does, and they also own more of our debt than any other nation does. If China starts dumping our dollars and our debt, much of the rest of the planet would likely follow suit and we would be in for a world of hurt.

And just this week there was another major announcement which indicates that China is getting ready to make a major move against the U.S. dollar. According to Reuters, crude oil futures may soon be priced in yuan on the Shanghai Futures Exchange...

The Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) may price its crude oil futures contract in yuan and use medium sour crude as its benchmark, its chairman said on Thursday, adding that the bourse is speeding up preparatory work to secure regulatory approvals.

China, which overtook the United States as the world's top oil importer in September, hopes the contract will become a benchmark in Asia and has said it would allow foreign investors to trade in the contract without setting up a local subsidiary.

If that actually happens, that will be absolutely huge.

China is the number one importer of oil in the world, and it was only a matter of time before they started to openly challenge the petrodollar.

But even I didn't think that we would see anything like this so quickly.

The world is changing, and most Americans have absolutely no idea what this is going to mean for them. As demand for the U.S. dollar and U.S. debt goes down, the things that we buy at the store will cost a lot more, our standard of living will go down and it will become a lot more expensive for everyone (including the U.S. government) to borrow money.

Unfortunately, there isn't much that can be done about any of this at this point. When it comes to economics, China has been playing chess while the United States has been playing checkers. And now decades of very, very foolish decisions are starting to catch up with us.

The false prosperity that most Americans are enjoying today will soon start disappearing, and most of them will have no idea why it is happening.

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2013/November26/265.html#oXuCyOvO8ux8qY0K.99
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A SWEDISH ARCHBISHOP PLACES MUHAMMED ON AN EQUAL STATUES WITH JESUS!! WHAT EVER NEXT??

Swedish Archbishop: Why Pick Jesus over Muhammed?

November 25, 2013 By Bruce Bawer 266 Comments
 
AntjeJackelen_990114cSweden is the gift that keeps on giving – to Islam. In recent weeks, for those of you who are keeping score at home, Swedish feminists mounted a nationwide “hijab campaign” in “solidarity” with a Muslim woman whose veil may or may not have been yanked off her head in a parking garage, and the government announced its intention to grant automatic permanent residency to refugees from Syria. Now comes the news that the Church of Sweden has chosen as its new leader a woman who, judging from recent statements, does not care to recognize much of a difference between Jesus Christ and Muhammed.
But first a little background. Unlike the Church of Norway and the Church of Denmark, the Church of Sweden is no longer an official state church, having been cut loose in the year 2000 (a fate which will probably befall its sister Scandinavian churches before too long). But although its pews, like those in Norway and Denmark, are pretty empty most of the time (while most Swedes are church members, only 2% attend services regularly), the church in Sweden continues, like its Norwegian and Danish counterparts, to receive generous cash subsidies from the government, and still enjoys a high public profile. Scandinavians may not go to church, and most of them may not be devout believers in much of anything, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t identify, perhaps even strongly, as Christians – or, more specifically, Lutherans.
How does this work? As follows. To live under a highly statist system is to assume, as if it were the way of nature itself, that the state will take care of all kinds of things that people in other, not-so-statist countries would never think of expecting the government to do for them. In Scandinavia, at least, this habit of thought can extend even to the realm of religion. Meaning what? That under such regimes, the idea of a personal faith, to say nothing of a personal commitment to go to church, can easily fall away. One doesn’thave to go to church, or give much thought to what one does or doesn’t believe; what matters is knowing that the church is there, and that one’s tax money is helping to keep it up and running and staffed with clergy who have given thought to questions of belief, and who are continuing to hold the right services and say the right prayers – even though there’s barely enough parishioners in some churches on a Sunday morning to get a bridge game going.
It’s not, after all, as if most Scandinavians never set foot in a church. They may or may not believe in God, but they believe in church baptisms, church weddings, and church funerals. Confirmation, especially, remains a major rite of passage – so much so that kids from families that are actively hostile to religion have the option of taking part in a mass “civil confirmation,” a thoroughly secular ceremony that is held once a year in city halls and other non-ecclesiastical settings. In all three Scandinavian countries, moreover, certain Christian feasts are still observed in a traditional manner – notablySaint Lucy’s Day on December 13, when many children and teenagers participate in processions wearing white robes, carrying candles, and singing “Santa Lucia.” The Norwegian cabinet includes a Minister of Culture and Church Affairs; the Danish cabinet includes a Minister for Equality, Church, and Nordic Cooperation. In all three countries, most of the official holidays are Christian holy days; Norway’s list includes no fewer than eight of them: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension Day, Pentecost, Whit Monday, Christmas, and St. Stephen’s Day. (The only secular days off are New Year’s Day, May Day, and Constitution Day.)
So it was of more than minor significance when the Church of Swedish announced a couple of weeks ago that its new boss, who will assume the title of Archbishop of Uppsala next June upon the retirement of the current primate, Anders Wejryd, is a woman named Antje Jackelén, the present Bishop of Lund. Born in Germany in 1955, she moved to Sweden in 1978, married a Swede in 1979 (he’s a priest, too), and became a member of the clergy in 1980. She will be the first female archbishop in the Church of Sweden, which has been ordaining women for more than half a century. But no, that’s not the big news. Nor is it news, big or otherwise, that the bishop who ordained her back in 1980, Lars Carlzon, was at the time head of a Communist front group, the Swedish-East German “Friendship Association.” (Let’s face it: given the Swedish establishment’s weakness for totalitarianism, that’s scarcely a footnote.)
No, the big news – or one part of it, anyway – is that Jackelén, who after her ordination worked in parishes in Stockholm and Lund and then spent several years teaching systematic theology at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, has as her episcopal motto (yes, bishops have mottoes) the simple statement “God is greater.” As Ingeborg Olsson wrote in Dispatch International: “If that sounds familiar, it may be due to the fact that an Arabic translation renders it as ‘Allahu akbar.’”
Coincidence? Not bloody likely. On October 1, when Jackelén and the other three candidates for the church’s top job were interviewed by church officials in front of the media, they were asked – and here comes the rest of the big news – “Does Jesus provide a truer picture of God than Muhammed?” Only one of the candidates, Ragnar Persenius, the Bishop of Uppsala, answered with a flat-out yes. (He ended up coming in second.) The other candidates “seemed uncertain,” according to Fria Tider. Jackelén’s answer was as follows: “One cannot reduce the whole of religious theology, that is to say the question of how different religions relate to one another, to a yes-and-no question. It amounts to doing violence to a wealth of knowledge and experience that can be found there.”
This wishy-washiness was too much for Eva Hamberg, a prominent theologian who has been a priest in the Church of Sweden for thirty years. Back when she was ordained, said Hamberg, such a question would never even have been asked – and if it had been, the idea that any candidate for the priesthood would have so much as hesitated to say “yes” would have been absolutely unthinkable. Even before Jackelén was selected as archbishop, Hamberg publicly announced that she was quitting the Church of Sweden, saying she could no longer associate herself with a body that had become, in her view, altogether too secularized, politicized, and intolerant of dissident (i.e. traditional) voices.
Since Jackelén’s election, her supporters and her critics have been doing battle in the op-ed columns – not only about the Jesus/Muhammed dodge, but about Jackelén’s views of the Virgin Birth and the existence of Hell, among other things. As it happens, I agree with much of what she and her supporters have to say – about, for example, the fact that some parts of the Bible are plainly intended to be read metaphorically or symbolically, not literally, and that there’s room for honest disagreement among Christians about various aspects of scripture and theology. But to refuse to provide a straightforward answer to the simple question of whether Jesus provides a truer picture of God than Muhammed is a whole different ball of wax. It’s not about being a liberal Christian as opposed to a conservative Christian; it’s about being any kind of Christian at all. For that one question sums up what everything else comes down to – it brings you face to face with the utter contrast between, on the one hand, the story of Jesus’ life and ministry, which is to say the message of the gospel, and, on the other, the story of Muhammed’s life, which is to say the message of the Koran. Between these two things – Jesus’ message of love, and Muhammed’s message of brutal conquest and control – there could hardly be a greater, starker divergence. For a Christian body to install as its superintendent someone who refuses to pronounce clearly upon that divergence is sheer absurdity.
But you ain’t heard nothing yet. On October 27, Anna Ekström, who writes regularly inExpressen, reminded readers of her criticism last December of Jackelén’s videotapedChristmas greeting to her diocese, which can still be viewed on You Tube. (Watch it: even if you don’t understand Swedish, the visual, and the tone of voice, speak volumes.) In the video, Jackelén launched right into an oh-so-gently-voiced lament about Israel’s security barrier, and by way of illustration held up a small nativity that she purchased some years ago at a shop in Bethlehem. It was a very special kind of nativity – Jesus and two of the Wise Men were separated by a wall. Get it? Get it? She purred on about this separation wall, observing that the two Wise Men who were separated from Jesus looked as if they were praying to the wall. (The implicit reference to Jews at the Wailing Wall was obvious.) And she showed her audience that, while the separation wall obstructed one’s view of Jesus, there was an opening in the stable wall behind the crib, symbolizing the fact that (and here she claimed to be quoting the shopkeeper who sold her the nativity) “God always creates an opening” that lets us see Christ. “Fear builds walls,” she said in English, reading aloud the words written on the nativity wall. “Hope builds bridges.” Christmas, she stressed, is all about the elimination of walls between God and man. And with that, she removed the wall separating the stable from those two Wise Men.
Jackelén’s “Christmas message” was a remarkable piece of work – a hand grenade, as it were, wrapped in several thick, soft layers of purple cotton. How smoothly and neatly she managed to suggest, without quite saying so, that Israeli Jews have separated themselves from God by denying the message of Christ, that when they pray at the Wailing Wall they are praying to a false god, and that the Israeli wall is nothing less than an offense to Christian belief. Very slick stuff.
To be sure, Jackelén did not come up with this nasty line of argument herself: every ugly, silken word of her little homily is standard-issue “Palestinian liberation theology,” as developed over the last few decades by Palestinian Christians like Naim Ateek (an Anglican priest who runs a Jerusalem-based outfit called the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center) and as obediently taken up, in recent years, by more and more fatuous leftist clergy in Europe and North America. Ateek’s “theology,” which teaches that Zionists are motivated by (in his words) “a narrow and exclusive concept of a tribal God,” and which drips with smarmily sanctimonious language and overwrought symbolism of the sort Jackelen employed in her “Christmas message” (“In this season of Lent,” wrote Ateek during the run-up to Easter 2001, “it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him….Palestine has become one huge golgotha”), is in fact a cleverly calculated means of manipulating naïve Christians in the Western world into thinking that their faith requires them not only to condemn Israel’s security barrier, and its supposed mistreatment of Palestinians, but to reject the very legitimacy of the Jewish state itself.
Watching Jackelén’s “Christmas message,” and recognizing at once the slippery rhetoric of “Palestinian liberation theology,”  I wondered if she had any direct connection to Ateek and his organization – which is, after all, the Ground Zero of that “theology.” Sure enough, a quick Google search turned up an article on her diocesan website singing Ateek’s praises and recounting a conversation that she and Ateek had at his office. (As a bonus, the article features a lovely picture of Jackelén celebrating mass with one Munib Younan, who, in addition to being head of the Lutheran World Federation, has been identified by Sabeel itself, with which he is associated, as a Fatah leader.)
Ekström, in her comments about Jackelén’s “Christmas message,”  noted that while Jackelén made good use of the opportunity to malign Israel’s security defenses, she had nothing whatsoever to say about the ongoing slaughter and persecution of Christians throughout the Muslim world – a kind of violence that, as Ekström pointed out, “requires more robust protection of the kind Antje Jackelén wants to tear down.” As Ekström put it: during a holiday season “when Jews through the ages have been subjected to pogroms,” and in a time “when Christians in our time are being murdered, [Jackelén] chose to meditate about an Arabized Jesus and stir resentment toward Israeli Jews.” In short, she “used the timeless Christmas story to throw a dark shadow over the Jews in all times, in all places.” That was last Christmas – ten months ago. Has Jackelén, Ekström asked the other day, changed since then? Well, if her crafty reply to the question about Jesus and Muhammed is any indication – and nothing could be more of an indication – she hasn’t changed at all.
It will be interesting to see what she has to say to her flock on You Tube this Christmas.
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Monday 25 November 2013

THE UNLIKELY ALLIANCE BETWEEN ISRAEL AND SAUDI ARABIA MOVES CLOSER AS BOTH HATE IRAN, AND ARE NOT HAPPY WITH OBAMA AND THE NEW PEACE PROPOSAL!!

Obama driving Saudi Arabia into the Arms of Israel

by  on November 24, 2013 in Blog, General
To watch on T-SPAN, click here.
Did you ever think you’d see it happen? In the dead of night, just hours before the Sunday shows, a deal was struck over Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu sees this deal for what it is – an ‘historical mistake’. Not only that but the words of Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal just days before this deal was reached, indicate an extremely unlikely alliance between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Why would Obama, who once bowed to a Saudi King and benefited from Alwaleed’s money and influence during Obama’s time at Harvard (if you believe the words of Percy Sutton in 2008), do something so dangerous for the Saudis? Listen to the Barrack show above and see if you can argue with his take.
Once again, a scandal that comes dangerously close to doing significant harm to the Obama administration (Obamacare) flies off the radar in much the same way that Benghazi went in a similar direction immediately after the mainstream media began taking real interest. The IRS scandal stole the headlines two days after the testimony of State Department whistleblower Gregory Hicks testified in front of the House Oversight Committee. Similar community organizing-like distractions have occurred throughout the entire tenure of the Obama administration.
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