ARTICLES - HOT OFF THE FAGGOT

“New World Order” Promoted by American Leaders to End in Destruction of US

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“New World Order” Promoted by American Leaders to End in Destruction of US

George H. W. Bush, Cardinal Egan, and Hugh Carey; Al Smith Dinner, Waldorf Astoria, 2004

Your Editor has come to believe that the mantra “New World Order” constantly on the lips of the Jesuit Order’s foremost Jesuit Temporal Coadjutors within “Conspiracy Theory” circuit needs to be reconsidered.  Just yesterday, an email was received from a brilliant German receiving updates.  Therein he wrote:

This brings me to the following issue I consider of utmost importance:
On your radio show on  November 5th, the Count strongly emphasized that the so called emerging “New World Order” everybody is talking about presently is NOT to be confounded with the final Jesuit global empire, but rather with the expiring US-American Empire which, when, ceasing to be the traditional “New World”, is now to be swept away as the old and just another “ancient regime”.
As the Count said, the Jesuits will call their final global order something else, not “New World Order.”
The New World Order in everybody’s mouth now supposedly will be a state of affairs where China, the USA, Russia and the rest of the global oligarchs sit at their big round globalist table, collaborating to enslave and keep down mankind. Within this model there won’t be wars anymore between major power blocks, but merely counterinsurgencies on a local or – at most – regional level.
By contrast, your model underpins exactly the opposite: they will be major wars, and only later that final global Jesuit empire will be established.
The Count’s point of view is further corroborated if we remember that the whole topic of a “New World Order” has been brought up by its very proponents, the Jesuits’ agents who have been purposely launching this topic into the public debate for almost a century now, with a powerful crescendo to be witnessed in recent years.
Just listen to those head of states and “dignitaries” – Brown, Chirac, Ban-ki-mon of the execrable UN, European Central Bank’s Trichet etc. etc. – all shouting the “New World Order” term loud and clear from all roof tops.
And then we even hear Brzezinski – via supposed “leaks” – saying that “there is a global awakening going on among the people like never witnessed before,” which does nothing else than actually encourage and fan the fire of the anti-New World Order movement.
The Jesuits are the ones who want this movement to grow.
THIS IS why they launched the movement against the New World Order in the first place, with Alex Jones presently being the most important of their henchmen on this battlefront.
It makes perfect sense when the Count states that this movement was designed to foster popular rage against the “Anglo-American” oligarchy, both within and outside the USA.
Webster Griffin Tarpley pulls exactly the same stop by blaming the “British” and then, of course, “Wall Street” which means: The JEWS. They talk about a global world order but never make any effort to present a unified global theory which would account for the role that China and Russia are meant to play. This alone is most suspicious for people who – judging from their other contributions – should know better.
Some time ago the Count also made reference to an aspect easily forgotten: internet websites like the Alex Jones show and alike are directly adressing anti-American sentiments abroad and overseas, in the Middle East and elsewhere, providing those people’s justified rage with what appear to be sound arguments.
But those listeners are not the only ones who have been duped. We have also been duped. We have to acknowledge the Jesuits managed once again to deceive us with what should be called the “New World Order hoax” or the “The New World Order deception”.
I think we can say without exaggeration that this insight into the matter is totally new. Until now nobody has understood the true nature of this hoax and that is why I consider it extremely important to be made public and widely known.
Provided you endorse my deliberations (and, in all modesty, the Count’s), my suggestion would be to largely divulge this on your website, to blow the whistle once more.
Please don’t be offended if I may say this: I think that even you have been mistaken on this issue (as I was until now) of the true function of the “New World Order” topic. But I am sure and confident that – provided you agree with the above mentioned arguments – this won’t keep you from discarding an old opinion you find to have been erroneous and to move on and keep following the path of the truth.
[Snip]
Yours respectfully,
Andreas
Your Editor must agree with Andreas.  The New World Order movement led by the Black Pope’s Holy Roman Fourteenth Amendment, Corporate Fascist, Socialist Communist American Government is designed to incite rage against the American peoples, that rage being foreign and domestic.  The pursuit of “the New World Order” had involved every war after the cession of the Pope’s Cold War Hoax.  The Gulf War, the War upon little Orthodox Serbia, the War on Terror, etc., are all wars waged by Rome’s Pentagon-led, American Military Industrial Complex successfully killing “heretics and liberals” as marked by the Order’s Counter Reformation Council of Trent.  People are killed, but the peace is never won.
Thus, it appears that the New World Order rage is in fact a hoax.  This present American slide into further foreign wars and domestic Marxist Socialist Communism is not going to produce a American-led, World Empire.  It is insane for foreign nations to believe that America is now the only superpower in the world, or is it insane?  Rather, this is the foreign rhetoric necessary to incite foreign rage against the American peoples, a rage that is most necessary to launch a future invasion into the North American continent.
Therefore, the New World Order mantra chanted by the mouth of Alex Jones and other foremost Jesuit Coadjutors is intended for two reasons: to make manifest American patriots who would truly resist a “New World Order” martial law state, and, secondly, to incite foreign ire against both the government and people of America, these foreign nations falsely perceiving an American quest for world empire!  The Project for the New American Century provides the theory upon which a supposed American Empire is to be built.  But the real scenario is far, far different.
Your Editor maintains the following:
1.  The New World Order mantra promoted by the Jesuits of the Short Robe is necessary for the marking and logging of true resisters to the impending martial law to be imposed.
2.  The New World Order mantra promoted by the Jesuits of the Short Robe is grounded in the documents produced via the Order’s Council on Foreign Relations, The Project for the New American Century.
3.  What will give impetus to the cry for a New World Order will be a National Terrorist Event, brought about by the Empire’s united, 16-agency Intelligence Community, similar to the 911 event save on a much larger scale.
4.  This event will unite and thereby cause the American people to embrace their New World Order, CFR-controlled government and carry out the invasions as commanded by the Pope’s Pentagon.  This is the same scenario that was put upon the Germans after the loss of World War I, deliberately betrayed by the Kaiser when he refused to move one million German soldiers from within the USSR (no longer in the war as of mid 1917) to the Western Front in France.  That single command would have won the war for Germany!  But Hitler blamed that treason on the Jews, stating the Jews stabbed the German people in the back thus inciting anti-Jewish fury!
5.  This New World Order Jesuit Crowd at the Pentagon and White House will then move the capital to Denver from which the “international crusade” i.e., “War on Terror” can be waged.  Meanwhile, Martial Law will be imposed, a “Total War” footing will be imposed, all manufacturing will be for the “War Effort.”
6.  The New World Order Jesuit Fascist Crowd ruling the Fascist American Dictator will then impose a domestic policy to exterminate the American Jews—one of the most highly prized plots of the Order since the Third Reich.
7.  The two-front or three-front International war will accomplish the intended killing as designed by the Order.  Once that is accomplished, foreign nations will be frothing at the mouth to invade and kill every American they can find.  This is the real end game for the present mantra of “New World Order.”
The New World Order hype, in the end, is to justify the foreign invasion and murder of Americans.  With that accomplished, North America can then be partitioned and occupied by the Asian nations of China, Korea and Japan—all haters of the Black man.  The Muslims will be here to kill off all the infidel Christians in the Old Protestant South, and the Russians will take their vengeance for the wrongs done to their citizens as in the recent case of Viktor Boot.
When all this transpires, the New World Order chant will be over.  New alliances will be forged, indeed have already been forged as was the case prior to the end of WWII.  And the nation whose leaders called for the New World Order will be in shambles as was post-war Germany, another 5 million Germans perishing due to Allied occupation for the first five years!
Brzezinski is right!  We are Between Two Ages, the age of the Protestant Reformation near its end, and the Age of the Pope’s most powerful Roman Catholic European Union soon to be “Judenrein.”  The bridge to that perfected European Union is to be this present quest for an American New World Order.  As Hitler’s quest for a New Order ended in disaster for the German people, so will Bush and Obama and the coming Jesuit Fascist Dictator’s quest for a New World Order end in disaster for the American people.
Thus the endgame for America is not the papal-backed New World Order.  It is the destruction of once White Anglo-Saxon Protestant and Baptist America after which The Society of Jesus will impose its secret new array of Empires openly at odds with one another (while secretly working together) as was the case during the Pope’s Post WWII Cold War Hoax.

I trust this is clarifying dear Andreas.  Thanks for the Exhortation!

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Secular Humanism as Religious as Christianity, Argues Scholar

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Secular Humanism as Religious as Christianity, Argues Scholar

By Katherine T. Phan|Christian Post Reporter
david noebel
David Noebel, president of Summit Ministries, speaks with Marvin Olasky, provost of The King's College, during a Distinguished Visitor Series session at The King's College in New York City on Nov. 18, 2010.

NEW YORK – Despite its anti-religious stance and lack of a theistic belief, Secular Humanism is a religion just as Christianity is one, argued a Christian scholar.

David Noebel, president of Summit Ministries, drew from his book, Clergy in the Classroom: The Religion of Secular Humanism, to discuss some of the parallels between the two religions while addressing students at The King's College in New York City on Thursday.

After all, one doesn't have to look far to see resemblances, according to the Christian scholar, who was invited to speak as part of the school's Distinguished Visitor Series. The interview was conducted by Dr. Marvin Olasky, Provost of The King’s College and editor-in-chief of World magazine.

For starters, Christianity has the Christian Ichthys as one of its religious symbols while Secular Humanism has a developing religious symbol: the Darwin Fish. And like Christianity, Secular Humanism has clergy members that perform social ceremonies and preach a faith that is just as dogmatic: theological atheism, naturalism, spontaneous generation, and moral relativism, among other beliefs, Noebel points out in his book.

The author also references in his book the 1943 decision by the Second Circuit to grant conscientious objector status to Mathias Kauten, not on the basis of his belief in God, but on the basis of his "religious conscience."

"Secular Humanism is a religion. It's just as religious as all the other religions in the world," Noebel asserted to students.

"Now, they deny it to the last drop only because they were caught. They caught themselves on conscientious objectors so they had to declare themselves somewhat of a religion."

Secular Humanism is among the worldviews taught at one of Summit’s Student Worldview Conferences, a two-week program that teaches young evangelical Christians how to defend their faith and Christian worldview against major competing worldviews.

Noebel founded the ministry 48 years ago to equip Christian students entering secular colleges and universities. He said at least 30,000 people have been through Summit's programs even though for years many people told him young Christians would never be interested in studying the Christian worldview.

Though earlier programs taught on fewer worldviews, the current curriculum at Summit teaches six worldviews. The latest edition of "Understanding the Times," the textbook used in Summit's young adult program, compares biblical Christianity against Islam, Secular Humanism, Marxist-Leninism (or Communism), Cosmic Humanism (or New Age), and Post-Modernism.

In the textbook, Noebel reviews the six worldviews by examining their positions in ten different categories, including theology, philosophy, ethics, biology, political, psychology, sociology, law, politics, economics and history.

"The heart of the Christian worldview is that Christ is the key," he said. "Christ is the foundation stone of all these areas and we tie him into how he influences all these areas."

Noebel noted that while the worldviews associated with Christianity and Islam have the largest number of adherents, it is Secular Humanism that has caused more Christians to walk away from their faith.

He attributed the trend to the dominance of secular humanist ideas and teachings in public schools, saying secular humanists "run" the public school system from elementary school to graduate schools.

"Out of Secular Humanism, the one big appeal has always been Darwinism," he said. "More Christians have probably stumbled in their faith over Charles Darwin than just about anyone else, more than Carl Marx."

Concluding his talk, Noebel urged students to study the worldviews in order to be effective witnesses for Christ to a generation that is undergoing severe secularization.

"They should know them inside and out because they are going to live it – this generation for sure."

"We have a responsibility to our generation," he added. "We fulfill that responsibility the best we know how and the rest is up to God."

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Interview: 'Word of Promise' Producer on CP Partnership, Free Version

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Interview: 'Word of Promise' Producer on CP Partnership, Free Version

By Michelle A. Vu|Christian Post Reporter
carl amari

Carl Amari, CEO of Falcon Picture Group and the producer of “The Word of Promise,” recently partnered with The Christian Post to make the award-winning audio Bible available online for free for the first time. “The Word of Promise” features Hollywood stars such as Marisa Tomei, Richard Dreyfuss, and Luke Perry, and was the 2008 Evangelical Christian Publishers Association’s “Christian Book of the Year.”

Amari spoke to The Christian Post this week on what his vision is in making the sought-after resource free. The following are excerpts from the interview.

CP: What is the story behind the creation of “The Word of Promise? What inspired the making of it?

Amari: Really two things. First, growing up I listened to a lot of the single-reader Bibles and although I enjoyed them I was never over-impressed with the quality of them. With single readers, it is tough to bring a lot of enthusiasm to it. As I got older and was in college I started doing a lot of producing of radio dramas and ended up being a film maker.

Radio drama is where it is many actors working together and performing the words instead of just reading it. When you put sound effects to that it becomes very powerful because your imagination is a boundless stage.

So I always wanted to dramatize the Bible but I knew that it would be a huge undertaking. But then I happened to be on the set of “The Passion of the Christ” because my friend Jim Caviezel, who starred in the movie I produced called “Madison,” called me and said “why don’t you come visit me. I think you would enjoy it.” He thought it would be interesting for me to see this production. So I did. I went to Rome and I was on the set awhile watching him.

And I thought it was very interesting because he was speaking in different languages, in Aramaic and Latin, and it was his voice but it wasn’t his language. I thought, “Wow. People are going to see him in this movie. And maybe it’s divine intervention. I’m here, I’m friends with Jim Caviezel, and I’m an audio producer for a reason.” I thought that if I could get Jim to play Jesus in a dramatized audio Bible that I would be able to attract other actors because they would say, “Oh, here’s Jim Caviezel playing Jesus in the Passion and he’s reprising his role in an audio version but in his native tongue of English now.”

CP: Are all the voice actors on the audio Bible Christians?

Amari: Well, I would venture to guess that the majority of them are. But I will be forthright in telling you that I didn’t delve into that part when I hired an actor. I just assumed that if an actor were to want to be in this that they have to be a believer because these are actors that make a lot of money and I was not able to pay them a lot. I was able to pay them minimums that the union would allow. So these are not actors that ever do things like this unless it’s something they believe in.

So I didn’t go to every one of them and say, “Alright, are you a Catholic? Are you a Baptist?” I just felt that if they were going to use their God-given talent to be in this – because a lot of actors said no – they are a believer.

CP: I heard there is no comparable resource to The Word of Promise-The Christian Post website out there for free. What sets this audio Bible website apart from others?

Amari: Here is a chance for people now to go to this website and for the first time ever not only read the entire Bible but hear it dramatized by some of the best actors in the world with movie-quality sound effects and an original music score by 125 musicians scored in Rome by the great Stefano Mainetti. And this is all free. This is a resource like no other because I don’t believe there is anywhere you can get the meaning of the word better than at this website because you are not only reading it but it is being performed for you in this powerful medium. I think that people are really going to understand the word.

If you can read the entire Bible and understand everything you are in the one percentile because there is so much meaning. Everything in the world that you need to know, I believe, is in the Bible. But it is written in a way that is sometimes very difficult to get the meaning of and I believe you will get a better understanding with this resource.

CP: What is your vision with this The Word of Promise-The Christian Post website?

Amari: I hope people use it in their small groups. I hope they use it with their families. One of the core reasons why I did venture to do this as opposed to making a movie – I really shut my professional life down for four years to produced this – is because I wanted families to gather together to bond again. Back in the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s, families would have supper and they would listen to the radio or watch “Red Skeleton” on the television as a family unit. This doesn’t happen anymore, or it does but not as much as I believe it should.

I’m hoping that people will take time to say that on Sunday evening, “Let’s spend an hour or two hours together with the whole family and go to this resource and play and read an hour-worth of it.” Even once a week if there could be that family bonding time. I’m hoping that that will happen.

But the bigger vision is that people can understand the Bible better. I think people read the Bible or they go to church and hear the priest preaching but it becomes rout after awhile. To hear it in a fresh, new way and understand it. So many people have emailed me and said, “I have heard this a hundred times and I feel like I am just now getting what this is about. And that is really to me the greatest feeling because I feel like I’ve done something in my life that can help masses of people. It’s a nice feeling. And maybe forever because the Bible is the Bible and it will hopefully go on way past my lifetime.

CP: Are you thinking of making “The Word of Promise” available on apps for smartphones and the iPad?

Amari: Yes. If people do want it on their listening devices they can just click from The Christian Post-Word of Promise website and it will take them to a page where you can download it to their devices. This is if they want to own it.

CP: How do you see “The Word of Promise” contributing to Bible literacy?

Amari: I think it can become a very helpful tool to combat Bible literacy because it makes the Bible fun. I’m not saying that reading it isn’t fun, but I can tell you that listening to “The Word of Promise” in this engaging, exciting way where your imagination is enriched draws you into the scripture unlike just reading it. And here, you don’t just hear it you can read it as well on this site for the first time.

Word of Promise by itself you can’t read it. Christian Post by itself you can just read it. But together you can read it and experience it audibly.

CP: Do you have anything else you want to add?

Amari: I hope people will tell other people about it. I hope people will help spread the word that there is this resource and that in their small groups they will use it. I really hope that small groups will use it as almost a part of their lessons because it is now available to them 24 hours a day, seven days a week to just log on and find out whatever they wanted to know and hear it performed by some of the greatest actors in the world. So I hope people will tell their friends and family members about it.

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Texas Pastor Leads Evangelicals to Shake Off Isolationism

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Texas Pastor Leads Evangelicals to Shake Off Isolationism

By Lillian Kwon|Christian Post Reporter
Bob Roberts
Pastor Bob Roberts, Jr., speaks at the Global Faith Forum, which was held at Northwood Church in Texas, Nov. 11-13, 2010.

Texas pastor Bob Roberts, Jr., is shattering the isolationist view that has kept many evangelicals in a bubble and out of touch with a globalized world.

Now more than ever, Christians in the United States are "more ignorant and ... more isolated than probably any group in all of Christianity," said Roberts, pastor of Northwood Church.

Yet, the time has come when fulfilling the Great Commission can no longer mean solely sending missionaries to the other side of the world, and paying them at that; when Christians should no longer gather among themselves to talk about what they believe and what's wrong with everybody else; and when Christians can no longer ignore relating to people of other faiths, especially with many residing next door, the Baptist pastor indicated.

But he understands why many Christians – whom he feels are "cocooned" – are hesitant to take as bold an approach as he has to talk with imams, rabbis and other religious leaders, let alone befriend them and learn from them.

"There's a lot of fear that the world is globalizing and if I get exposed to that, then what happens if my kids don't stay Christian or somebody starts questioning things," he told The Christian Post. "I think insecurity is a huge thing."

But he's trying to eradicate that fear among evangelicals. And so far, he's been successful for the most part.

Just this past weekend, Roberts held his first Global Faith Forum in Texas which drew more people than he expected, considering he didn't have the budget to advertise the event. At least 900 people showed up for the three-day forum that featured speakers from Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and other religious and nonreligious backgrounds. The diversity was also reflected among attendees, though most were Christians.

The three-day forum was more about conversations and understanding one another than about theological debates.

Since then, Roberts has been swamped with emails and calls from participants who say the event has made them rethink how they see the world and how they reach out to others.

"Pastors who were here were just blown away," Roberts said. "They were just going on and on about even how they write their blogs, how they write their books, how they realize that they’ve just been speaking about Christianity in the little silo of American evangelicalism, even in how they view unchurched people."

Church planters who attended also said the forum would have a profound impact on how they start new churches.

But not all participants were enthusiastic.

Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today magazine, recorded that one prominent evangelical refused to worship with Muslims and Jews when they were singing the playful children's song "Father Abraham."

"I just couldn't decide if singing that song with Muslims and Jews constituted joint worship, and I'm not convinced we can worship together," the evangelical told Galli.

To that, Roberts responded, "What if Billy Graham had that idea? 'I can't worship at my crusades. There are non-Christians here.’ Where would we be? That’s absurd.

"What about all the immoral people that show up at my church Sunday morning. I don’t know who’s sleeping around, or doing God knows what. But I still find God. Is the focus of my worship who’s standing beside me?"

Addressing some of the more traditional or "isolationist evangelicals," the Texas pastor made it clear that nobody at the event compromised what they believed in. It was a multifaith forum and not an interfaith one, he has stressed. Roberts unapologetically declared the Bible as the word of God, Jesus as God in the flesh, and Jesus as the only way to heaven during the event.

Os Guinness, a well-known evangelical author and speaker, expressed appreciation for Roberts' rare vision and said it even coincides with what he's trying to accomplish.

"So many people think of the other religions either in terms of conflict or evangelism solely or interfaith dialogue," he told Patheos. "I think we have a vision here which is different."

"The idea of interfaith dialogue – that there's a lowest common denominator unity and if we talk long enough we'll all agree – is wrong," he added. "Our differences are deep and irreducible.

"My own vision is of a civil public square which is a political framework of rights, responsibilities and respect within which we're free to be faithful to our own faith and yet know how to engage with others peacefully, civilly, persuasively and so on."

"I know that's [the] vision here at Northwood, which is why I'm so delighted to cooperate because it's a relatively rare vision."

Apologetics without self-righteousness

Roberts believes that while engaging with people of other faiths, the Christian can simultaneously strengthen his or her own faith.

This past year alone, after making friends with Muslims and Jews in his city and inviting them to worship services, the pastor said he has preached more theology than he ever has in the history of his church (Northwood was founded by Roberts in 1985).

With Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, communists and atheists visiting the church at various times, Roberts said "it demands that I make sure that I'm dealing with the Scripture, that I'm hitting the core theological issues and not just stating what we believe but why do we believe it."

"I think in the world of the future, theology's going to be far more important," he commented. "I think it can make you far stronger."

And by theology he means core issues that most people outside the Christian faith are curious about – including the Trinity and the divine and human nature of Christ – not just small Bible studies that teach a couple of morals.

"We ignore huge doctrines in the church like the trinity, the divinity of Christ, or salvation, how a person accepts Christ, or evangelism, how do you share your faith," he lamented. "I think we are living in an age where we need apologists for the Gospel like never before in the history of Christianity. But we are not producing them."

"And the apologists that we do have frankly are approaching it from a winner take all and not giving gracious answers," he observed. "It’s from a position of arrogance, not humility, it’s from a position of self-righteousness, not from a position of we’re learning together."

Roberts says the kind of apologist Christians need to raise is one who is gracious while intellectually and academically honest, and who doesn't necessarily "fight for the faith."

He pointed to author Millard Erickson, who wrote Making Sense of the Trinity, as an example.

Rather than "trashing Muslims" and coming from a position of arrogance, Erickson went straight to the Quran and laid out what the Prophet Muhammad said and what was said about Jesus.

"Erickson’s position was, Muhammad was not necessarily saying there wasn’t a Trinity, he was saying there were not three gods," Roberts summarized.

"That's the kind of apologetics we have to have," he stressed. "I think to contend is to stand up for it, but I don’t have to slug anybody. I’ve got the Holy Spirit."

The Three Amigos

Roberts hasn't decided yet about whether to continue the Global Faith Forum as an annual event. But he is expanding his efforts to get Christians in other cities to step out and engage "the other."

Pastors across the country are starting what he calls "The Three Amigos" where a pastor, an imam, and a rabbi (or any other leader from another faith) come together to get to know one another, do joint community service projects, and basically do life together.

He assured, "If you begin to reach out to others unlike you, and you take it a step further and begin to engage the world, you will become a tremendously well-rounded follower of Jesus."

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Burmese Officials Order Closure of Church

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Burmese Officials Order Closure of Church

DUBLIN (Compass Direct News) – Officials in Mergui Region in Burma, ordered a Baptist church to cease holding worship services after the pastor refused to wear an election campaign T-shirt supporting the military government’s Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).

The election commission summoned 47-year-old Pastor Mang Tling of Dawdin village, Gangaw township, Mergui division on Nov. 9, two days after the election and ordered him to stop holding services and discontinue the church nursery program, the Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO) reported Wednesday. The church is located close to the Chin state border.

The CHRO works against human rights abuses, including religious discrimination, for the Chin people, a minority group in Burma’s northwest estimated to be 90 percent Christian.

Village headman U Than Chaung had given the pastor a campaign T-shirt to wear in support of the USDP, and when he refused to wear it, the headman filed a report with local authorities accusing him of persuading Christian voters to vote in favor of an opposing party, the National Unity Party (NUP).

Under Burmese law, religious leaders can be penalized for “engaging in politics,” giving the pastor a solid legal reason to decline the T-shirt. The law also bans leaders of religious groups from voting in national elections, according to the CHRO, although lay members of those groups are able to vote.

“The election law is quite vague,” a CHRO spokesman told Compass today. “One of the things we were watching out for during the election was to see if church elders or council members might be excluded from voting. But these people were able to vote. The law seems to apply only to pastors, monks and imams.”

Officials interrogated Mang Tling in Gangaw until Sunday (Nov. 14), when he was allowed to return home.

Meantime, the USDP won the election amid widespread evidence of “advance” voting and other forms of voter manipulation throughout Burma.

Previously known as the Union Solidarity and Development Association, and before that the State Peace and Development Council, the USDP was formed by a ruling junta composed largely of army generals. The junta has ruled Burma without a constitution or parliament since 1998, although in 2008 they pushed through support for a new constitution that will take effect following this month’s elections, according to the 2010 International Religious Freedom report released yesterday by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.

The new constitution forbids “abuse of religion for political purposes,” the report stated. Election laws published in March also banned members of religious orders from voting for or joining political parties and reserved 25 percent of seats in the new parliament for members of the military.

The 2008 constitution “technically guarantees a degree of religious freedom. But then, it’s Burma,” a CHRO spokesman told Compass.

Voter Intimidation
The Chin National Party defeated the USDP in three electorates in Chin state despite reports of widespread voting anomalies, some of which were outlined in a CHRO press release on Nov. 7.

In Tedim township northern Chin state, for example, USDP agent Go Lun Mang went to the home of a local resident at 5 p.m. the day before the election and told the family that he had already voted on their behalf in favor of the USDP. He added that soldiers in a nearby camp were ready to arrest them if they complained.

On Nov. 5, the local government had already ordered village officials to instruct residents to vote for the USDP. On Nov. 7, the day of the election, USDP agents in campaign uniforms stood at the gate of the polling station in Tedim and asked voters if they intended to vote for the USDP. Those who said yes were allowed into the station, while those who said no were refused entrance.

USDP agents also warned Chin voters in Thantlang town that they should vote for the USDP “while the door was open” or they would regret it, Burma News International reported on Nov. 5.

David Mathieson, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch (HRW), said the intimidation indicated that the junta and the USDP knew how unpopular they were.

Reports by the CHRO show a long history of discrimination against the majority Christian Chin, including the destruction of crosses and other Christian monuments, state-sponsored efforts to expand Buddhism, forced contributions of finance and labor to Buddhist construction projects, arrest and detention, torture and particularly harsh treatment of pastors. In addition, officials have refused construction for all new church building projects since 2003.

A report issued by HRW in January confirmed serious and ongoing abuses against Chin Christians.

One Chin pastor interviewed by HRW described how soldiers held him at gunpoint, forced him to pray in a Buddhist pagoda and told him that Burma was a Buddhist country where Christianity should not be practiced.

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A Sign for the Times

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A Sign for the Times

By Chuck Colson|Christian Post Guest Columnist
colson

No doubt you’ve seen cartoons of bearded guys in white robes standing on street corners carrying around a sign that says “Repent!”

Well today, I’m going to be that guy. Except I don’t want to be standing on a street corner. I want to be walking up and down the aisles of every American church, carrying a simple message: Repent!

And here’s why. So many Christians these days I talk to are positively wringing their hands over the state of our nation. And they have every reason to. The economy is in serious trouble, Washington is oblivious (and don’t think the recent election will change that much), our children are subjected to sleaze every time they turn on a radio or a TV, and on and on.

Whose fault is that? As I say in my Two-Minute Warning, which I want you to go watch at ColsonCenter.org, don’t blame the liberals. Don’t blame the gay lobby or the media.

Look in the mirror. The Church, the bride of Christ, has been unfaithful. WE are at fault. We-collectively and individually-have chased after every idol the world has to offer. We have tried so hard to be relevant that we’ve become almost completely irrelevant. We offer no other way, there is nothing distinctive about us.

We have not been what Jesus called us to be: Salt and light. We have blended in with the world so well that we are practically invisible. That’s why so few nonbelievers can see what Paul wrote about in Colossians: “the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

Has the church in America become the church in Laodicea? Will the Lord say to us, “I know your deeds, you are neither cold nor hot . . . You say, ‘I am rich: I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched…poor, blind, and naked.”

Hard words. Terryifying words.

What are we to do? Exactly what Jesus told the church of Laodicea: Be earnest and REPENT! Change our minds-which is what the Greek word for repent means, metanoia! Change our way of thinking, our way of living. Make a u-turn. Abandon our love of self and embrace the love of Christ. Abandon our ways, the ways of the world, for His ways.

Enough of self-absorption.

Enough of going to church for self-validation-because it makes us feel good; enough of buying into the “Jesus and me” brand of Christianity that we evangelicals are especially susceptible to.

Enough of living exactly like our non-believing neighbors, glued to electronics, engaging in promiscuity and infidelity, spending beyond our means.

Enough of ignoring the suffering of the poor. Enough of being ashamed of the truth claims of the Gospel. It’s time to repent.

Get on your knees. Get your Bible study and your church on its knees. Ask God for mercy and ask Him to help us become exactly what he wants us to become, the bride of Christ. Pure. The Church. Folks, politics can’t save us. Only God can. He’s our only hope.

Read more at www.christianpost.com
 

Such a Petty God

A segment of our denomination still defines God by trivialities of appearance and diet

Amplify’d from www.spectrummagazine.org

Such a Petty God


A segment of our denomination still defines God by trivialities of appearance and diet

By Loren Seibold

Over a year ago I wrote in these pages about Ernie Knoll, a California Adventist who’d had a short run as a prophet to the remnant before he was unmasked. The surprise to me was how many intelligent, successful people believed in Ernie and gave him money. These weren’t just folks who signed their name with an “x”; among Ernie’s advocates were physicians and seminary-trained pastors. Why?

One of the attractions — the one I am sympathetic to — was that Ernie represented the voice of God speaking again to the Adventist church, nearly 100 years after Ellen White’s death.

Another, which I find more puzzling, was the content of Ernie’s messages. Ernie’s God was obsessed with what we wear, what we eat, and the music we listen to; and that many of Ernie’s messages were on those topics appeared to be a big selling point. (When Ernie told one woman that she could ask God through him any question she wanted an answer to, she imagined asking “how God felt about women wearing pants, and coloring their hair, and even plucking their eyebrows.”)

But this isn’t about Ernie. It is about the appeal these kinds of things still have to some Seventh-day Adventists. Ernie or no, there’s a segment of the church that places its emphasis here, and apparently believes these are God’s hang-ups, too. The book Creeping Compromise speaks for them. In it Joe Crews condemned pantsuits (sorry, Hillary), lipstick, short hair on women, all varieties of jewelry, meat-eating and more. (By the way, is it accidental that so many of these “sins” apply primarily to women?)

Let’s attempt to establish some perspective.

Estimates are that about 800 million people have insufficient food on any given day. 31 million adults and 2 million children have HIV/AIDS — the vast majority of them not homosexuals. AIDS has left 15 million orphans. The number of dead from wars and military actions is hard to pin down, but one study from the British Medical Journal estimates 378,000 each year since 1955.

OK, you say, but Christ is the answer. Agreed. So what’s the situation there?

Of the 7 billion on earth right now, only about 2 billion are Christians of any variety. Christianity is growing, but not at a pace that will overtake that other 5 billion any time soon.

Ah, but those aren’t Seventh-day Adventists. It all depends on the world receiving our message…

Well, OK: at a very generous estimate of 20 million Seventh-day Adventists, we’re less than 0.3% of the earth’s population.

All of these otherwise smart people who listen to Ernie Knoll and read Creeping Compromise: has it never occurred to them how odd it is that the Almighty God of the Universe is fretting about lipstick to less than 1/3 of one percent of the population (and in reality, not all of them) while millions are dying of HIV/AIDS? That he’s upset about pantsuits while wars are blowing babies to bits? That he is frowning down at meat-eaters, while hundreds of millions don’t have enough of anything to eat? That he’s about to come again to rescue this world, and rather than sending us out to tell people, he’s irked because Adventist women cover their gray?

Really? What kind of God is that? Surely not the God who was the father of Jesus — who, incidentally, said nothing about pantsuits, lipstick, jewelry, hair dye, or meat (this last which he himself not only ate, but prepared and served to others) but said a good deal about pouring out your life in love and mercy for the world.

An organization can set whatever standards on its members that it wants to, of course. It is of consequence here because this is a church, and what a church chooses to emphasize tells us what kind of God they serve. The God this segment of the church displays is a rather petty and myopic being, someone who gets more exercised about beefsteak and wedding rings than violence, death, war and disease.

It’s fine if you don’t want to wear a wedding ring. But that that and the other Creeping Compromise flummery should use up even 1/100th of your spiritual energy (and in those circles, it’s always a lot more than that) and the great needs of the world are hardly mentioned — there’s something very wrong.

I know the argument that this is the end time, and we are no ordinary church but a special people. Granted. But do you really believe that the proportion of time given to issues like “colorful cosmetics and jewelry” is in proportion to God’s eschatological concern about it? Assuming the Biblical proofs against jewelry are defensible, is this issue represented in Scripture to the same degree that it is scolded about by the traditionalists of this denomination?

Hardly. And the narrower our focus, the less special we become. Already our evangelism is mostly talking to ourselves. Meanwhile the world is going to hell.

Of course, the others of us aren’t necessarily a lot better. While the shallowest are filled with passionate intensity, the best lack all conviction [1]. When progressive Adventists lost our fear of colorful cosmetics and jewelry, most of us didn’t replace it with anything of larger spiritual significance. And so the average congregation, if it is not so torn between the traditionalists and the progressives that it can hardly function is doing business as usual: playing church.

Someone will undoubtedly say, “Ah ha, see? Adventists are no longer appreciating our distinctive message. This is a sign of the end.” Yes, it is. A sign of the end of this message if we don’t set priorities again. God will not preserve for his own a people who are obsessed with personal trifles while the world perishes.

  1. William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”
Read more at www.spectrummagazine.org