Those who obstinately refuse Islam will have the sword of 12th Imam on their neck

Source: iranpressnews.com

December 29, 2006 -- Those who obstinately refuse to accept religion will have the sword of the 12th imam will decisively come down on their neck”

Iran Press News: One of the many regime-run news agencies Ayandeh’yeh Roshan reported:

Moussa Salemi, the Friday prayer leader of Asadabad, in an interview with the news agency said: “By the grace of God, the administration of Mr. Ahmadinejad, has been inspired by and received revelations from the command of 12th Imam. The closer we get to “the end of days”, the closer we get to hope. Just as God almighty has promised, soon poverty, discrimination and oppression of people and the real justice will spread on earth. The administration of Mr. Ahmadinejad has also brought these good tiding to people and we are trying to solve those problems; that way we can secure the axis of justice. This is what the 12th Imam wants. Of course we do not expect that this event would happen all that soon. Discussing justice is also good news for the masses. The Revolution happened so that people can attain their desires and as such, today one can smell Imam Mahdi’s justice.

The Qur’an has commanded that Muslims do not oppress anyone and that they do not put up with oppression either. This is compatible with logic too. The real Muslim is a person who does not lash out at people. Devotion is also an element of faith and this means that people are safe in his hand. A real Muslim should also stand up to oppression because one of the principles of our religion is jihad.  If our foreign policy is to be successful, it should be on this basis. The rule of the 12th Imam – the Mahdi – is also on this basis; it will confront tyrants forcefully and his justice will be very real. Of course we should be aware of the fact that the Imam’s sword will not fall on everyone’s neck. The sword is neither for Muslims or Jews or even infidels, but for tyrants as it is tyrants who stop people’s growth and progress. When the Imam emerges he will enlighten people by discussing religion and when people become totally aware of the nature of religion, their conscience would not permit them to reject what is right. Those who obstinately refuse to accept religion will have the sword of the Imam will decisively come down on their neck.

Comments:   Revelation 20:[4] And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.  As you surf the Internet and come across numerous articles by authors (one being Joel Richardson) who assert that the end days prophecies of Islam closely parallel those found in our Holy Bible, one begins to agree with these authors that it is quite possible that the future Antichrist (AC) may very well turn out to be a Muslim, i.e. Islam’s awaited 12^th iman, the Mahdi who mysteriously disappeared as a 5 year old boy centuries ago.  Many today believe the Antichrist will be a Caucasian European who arises from the Western portion of the Revived Roman Empire.  Well, the Old Roman Empire also had an Eastern/Mediterranean portion which is predominately Muslim.  Islam also envisions a 7‑year rule by Madhi.  This is an astounding parallel that one simply cannot dismiss as pure coincidence.  Islam’s preferred method of execution is by beheading just as Revelation 20:4 stated.  This is food for thought for sure.

Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion; it will surpass Christianity as No. 1 within the next 5 years or so.  The Muslims’ birth rate is much higher than non‑Muslim Europeans, Americans, Indians (of India) and Chinese.  Muslims have many more young people than the average.  Islam will eventually engulf the entire globe, a world that is bending over backwards to accommodate Islam’s followers.  Most of Europe has been ‘Islamatized’.

Real Christians (Gentiles and Jews) during the Tribulation Period will be rounded up and beheaded if they won’t bow down before the AC.  The refusal to receive the mark of the Beast will be their death knell.  The vast majority of believers in that day will be executed.  Jesus’s return to Earth won’t be a day too soon, otherwise, there won’t be any Christians still alive when He comes back.  These believers will enter the Millennial Kingdom to populate it.  All those who were too afraid to say “No” to the Beast’s  666 mark will be eternally dammed in the Lake of Fire.

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Nazi records reveal genocide network much larger than previously thought

Source: israelinsider.com

December 29, 2006 -- Within weeks of Hitler's 1933 rise to power, the iron gates slammed shut on inmates of the first Nazi concentration camps. It was the start of an unparalleled experiment in persecution and genocide that expanded over the next 12 years into a pyramid of ghettos, Gestapo prisons, slave labor camps and, ultimately, extermination factories.

Holocaust historians are only now piecing together the scattered research in many languages to understand the vast scope of the camps, prisons and punishment centers that scarred German-ruled Europe, like a pox on the landscape stretching from Greece to Norway and eastward into Russia.

Collecting and analyzing fragmented reports, researchers at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum say they have pinpointed some 20,000 places of detention and persecution -- three times more than they estimated just six years ago.

And soon they will know much more.

They are about to have their first access to millions of documents locked away for a half century in the sprawling archive of the International Tracing Service, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross, in the central German resort town of Bad Arolsen.

In 1941 the Germans devised the Final Solution to exterminate Europe's Jews. In September, even before the plan was formally approved, the SS began experimenting with gas chambers at Auschwitz, about 40 miles (60 kilometers) from the Polish city of Krakow.

Auschwitz was the largest of six camps whose primary purpose was to kill Jews at maximum speed. In 1941-42, more death camps were built in Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Majdanek.

By the time Germany capitulated in May 1945 and disbelieving Allied forces marched into the camps, 2.7 million people had been incinerated in the ovens or open pits of these six compounds. Of every three Jews in Europe at the start of the war, two were dead.

Comments:  And in a future day...Zechariah 13:[8] And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the LORD, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. [9] And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God.  They say that history tends to repeat itself.  Some have pointed to past antichrist types such as Roman Emperors Caligula, Titus, Nero and Claudius, the Arab Antiochus Epiphanes, and Austrian Adolph Hitler who exterminated Jews with impunity.  Of course, these aforementioned ruthless men weren’t the final Antichrist referred to in the books of Daniel and Revelation.  The Jews weren’t back in their God given land during those times.  Since 1948, they have been returning to a rebirth Israel with a population of 6 million and growing.

WW2 (1939 to 1945) produced 7 years of horrendous persecution and tribulation for Jews all over the world.  The mere fact that two out of every three were killed is a real eye opener for it foretells the Great Tribulation Period that awaits every living Jew presently alive.

Saddam’s Last Words: ‘Palestine is Arab’

Source: israelnationalnews.com

December 30, 2006 -- Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging early Saturday morning. His last words, said Sami al-Askari, a political adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, related to the Israeli-Arab struggle in the Middle East.

"Before putting the rope around his neck, Saddam shouted 'Allahu Akbar. The nation will be victorious and Palestine is Arab,"' al-Askari was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. 

Comments:  Saddam, the butcher of Baghdad, was never a fervent Muslim.  Those in Iran have longed accused him and the Saudi and Kuwaiti sheiks of living opulent lives which run contrary to which Islam teaches.  Saddam was a close associate of the late Yasser Arafat (another murderer extraordinaire).  Saddam had vowed to come to the Palestinians’ aid time in and time out, but that never materialized.  Now just before Saddam would feel the gallows trap door give way beneath his bound feet, he let out the ludicrous ‘Palestine is Arab’ cry.  Instead of pleading with the true God of Heaven (and not Allah) for forgiving him of his many sins, Saddam got political.  His soul became secondary to his cause of proclaiming statehood for his Arab brothers in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. 

He has always been a self-centered dictator, but when eternity was staring him straight in the face, he became, all of sudden, more caring of the Palestinians than his own precious never dying soul.  How the Devil must be laughing that a buffoon such as Saddam went to his grave unsaved and consigned to an eternity in the Lake of Fire.  Saddam even clutched a dark green copy of the Qur’an, little comfort for a desperate man about to face a Holy God.  The following two verses will haunt Saddam forever and ever: 1 John 5:[12] He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.  Revelation 21:[8] But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

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Fuller Theological Seminary goes high tech to reach Internet-savvy students

Source: Associated Press

December 30, 2006 -- Hoping to connect with tech and Internet-savvy students, Fuller Theological Seminary plans to add its first chapels along with video and audio gear.

"Many people who come to church browse YouTube for two hours in the morning," said Fuller President Richard Mouw. "How can we preach the Gospel to people who are getting their news, getting their entertainment, in totally new ways from the 20th century?"

The Pasadena-based evangelical seminary, one of America's largest, has this answer: a 35,000-square-foot worship center that will house two chapels, classrooms, offices and performance facilities.

The complex centerpiece will be a 500-seat main chapel with 63 ranks of organ pipes, a grand piano and the latest in digital electronics to control house and stage lights.

Fuller officials say the attention given to sound and lights reflects larger trends in American worship that includes an emphasis on performance and a willingness to express faith in various ways.

In the chapel, panels on the walls and ceiling could be moved to enhance the sound of a string orchestra, while a sophisticated sound system could accommodate hip-hop performers dishing up a bass-heavy take on the Gospel.

Comments:  What has happened to the simple Gospel of God that the Apostles preached shortly after Jesus’s ascension to Heaven?  It has degenerated into pure entertainment, that’s what it has become.  I thought that a person who enters seminary college/university is already saved.  That’s why he/she is being taught various Bible centered courses to become pastors and missionaries to go out into all the world and preach the Good News and make disciples of those who have gladly received the remission of their sins through the shed blood of Jesus.  Sure, today’s young people are engrossed with entertainment and other things that appeal to the insatiable flesh.  Well, the young people of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s were also into worldly pop cultures such as discos, the Macarena, line dancing and the like.  A supposed ‘Christian’ institution of higher learning ought to avoid the same trappings as the secular liberal colleges and universities that dot this world.  Let’s be different, for that’s what the world expects of the followers of Christ.

Worshipping God and Jesus is not about performance, but about prostrating ourselves before the Lord in humility and praising and thanking Him for who He is and what he has graciously done for us.  It’s not about us and it’s not about putting together a grand performance with ear splitting electronic gadgetry worthy of an award.  The audience’s attention should be directed at Jesus and not at the singers and dancers on stage reaping the glory that only should be accorded to Jesus.  The present day church is more about the ‘American Idol’ ideology than about truly worshipping Jesus in spirit and in truth (John 4:24).  Romans 12:[2] And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

A look at the Tibetan Book of the Dead

Source: Winnipeg Free Press Online

December 31, 2006 -- In the famous ‘to be or not to be, that’s the question’ soliloquy, William Shakespeare's Hamlet pondered the mysteries of the afterlife:

"The dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country from whose bourn

No traveler returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of."

Ardent followers of an esoteric form of Buddhist meditation feel differently. Shakespeare's shadowy "undiscovered country" is thoroughly explored in the ancient Tibetan text called the Bardo Thodol -- literally, Liberation Through Hearing in the In-Between -- also known as the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Tibetan Buddhism describes birth and dying as markers or signposts that delineate the bardos, or in-between states, that comprises a continuous cycle of material existence and non-existence. In this view, life is a bardo between birth and dying while death is a bardo between dying and birth. In the same way, the bardo of dreaming and the bardo of ordinary consciousness are separated by waking up and falling asleep.

According to the Tibetan sages, most minds experience death as confusing and overwhelming, like a terrifically intensified dream. The book describes in detail the exact sequence of experiences encountered while negotiating its complexities.

The language creates a powerful mental picture of Tibetan Buddhist iconography and cosmology as the text explains that all travelers to this realm encounter a series of benign and wrathful deities that challenge their innermost motives and aspirations: The Traveler's response to these challenges determine the potential for further realization or suffering in the next life. Whether one relates to them as real or as metaphorical, the descriptions of these experiences are so visceral, that any reader's natural compassion for the dying and the dead is inevitably deepened.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes death as a temporary condition and declares that the dead are susceptible to benign influences from those who care about them. The Bardo Thodol is an esoteric handbook containing a series of precisely scheduled recommendations on exactly what the living can do to assist those who are not.

Comments:  What utter rubbish Buddhism is!  Only the Devil could have concocted such foolish teaching as reincarnation.  Buddhists believe in reincarnation and that one must go through cycles of birth, life, and death. After many such cycles, if a person releases their attachment to desire and the self, they can attain Nirvana. In general, Buddhists do not believe in any type of God, the need for a savior, prayer, or eternal life after death.  What does God’s Word says about death?  Hebrews 9:[27] And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.  A man, woman or child dies physically once, not twice or a gazillion times, yet there are many seemingly intelligent people who believe the reincarnation nonsense of Buddhism and its sister religion, Hinduism.  These unsaved people have rejected the Truth that’s only found in Jesus and His infallible Word and have turned to the doctrines of demons.  Look at how the Devil dresses up the religious mannequin; he appeals to man’s pride of living forever albeit in another form, i.e. human, animal or an unfeeling object.  It appeals to man’s propensity to work out his fate and to become his own god.

God says we can all avail of His free gift of salvation through repentance of our sins and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  Since most of humanity doesn’t believe in sin, let alone admit that man is a hopeless sinner, and man doesn’t want God’s interference in man’s destiny, the Bible’s way of salvation is rejected forthright. ‘God, if you exist, leave us alone!’ is man’s plea.   Instead, the Devil’s philosophical treatises hit mankind’s psyche spot on.  Man will tread through the ‘undiscovered country’ his way.  What he will eventually encounter may not be what he had envisioned, but the journey is more important than the destination. Man will have done it “his way”.  The Devil has mankind’s ear alright and God’s voice is muffled.  1 John 5:[19] And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.

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Sign, sign, everywhere a church sign

Source: Winnipeg Free Press Online/Associated Press

December 31, 2006 -- On the way home after a tough day at his music publishing business, Donald Seitz drove by a church marquee proclaiming, "He who kneels before God, can stand before anyone."

The spiritual message was exactly what he needed to lift his cloudy outlook.

Seitz says he was so moved by the experience, he spent the next three years driving 32,000 kilometres across 40 U.S. states to photograph 100 church signs for a new book, which features other catchy lines like "Life is fragile. Handle with prayer" and "Don't Give Up. Moses Was Once A Basket Case."

Some drivers might roll their eyes or chuckle at the "drive-by sermons" on church signs, but the pun-heavy religious messages have become key to attracting the attention of worshippers and potential worshippers.

The signs are meant to enlighten, entertain and evangelize -- in usually 10 words or less -- and often give drivers a brief glimpse of what the church community believes and what to expect from the pulpit.

"Many of the people who read signs will not end up in their (churches') pews, but they may be able to affect their lives in a positive way," Seitz said. "It's like a sermon on the road."  

Most churches began in the 1990s to give up wooden signs with sermon schedules in favour of marquees with moveable letters.

Featured in the book are gems like "Feed your faith and your doubts will starve to death," from Church of Christ at Brookhill in Killen, Ala., "Love God with all your heart, then do whatever you want," from Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City, and "Tithe if you love Jesus. Anyone can honk," from Southern Heights Baptist Church in Russellville, Ky.

Not everyone is crazy about the marquees and believe they often belittle or misrepresent Christian beliefs.

Joel Bezaire, for one, started the blog crummychurchsigns.com, which offers "critical analysis of critically bad church signs," according to the website. He says he's received submissions from 40 states, and over 400 signs have been catalogued on the site since he began it two years ago.

He says a lot of the signs are meant to be funny but aren't -- and end up making Christianity look silly and irrelevant. From Smyrna, Tenn., there was this one: "If Christ offends you, imagine what hell will do."

"Only in America can we get a church sign to favourably compare Christ and hell," Bezaire says on his site. "And, yeah, I know what they were trying to say ... that doesn't count because most unchurched people wouldn't."

Joel Benbow, pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Evanston, Ill., whose sign "To Belittle is to Be Little" is included in Seitz's book, said his marquee is intended to make people curious about the church and its message needs to be catchy to grab the attention of drivers.

"We try to use ones (signs) that are fairly clever, a play on the words," Benbow said. "If they're not, they're not noticed as much. It's got to be in four or five words to get people's attention.

Seitz, who moved from Pasadena, Calif., six years ago with his wife to start a music and book publishing company in Nashville, said his book is not intended to evangelize or make fun of church signs.

Comments:  Christians are more and more into emulating what the world does.  ‘Monkey see is monkey do’.  Catchy church signs meant to be cute, instead, bring derision to the name of Jesus Christ.  It’s no wonder the unsaved reject the Bible and Jesus.  Making fun of those who are unbelievers or self-depreciating humor aimed at one’s church produces northing but scorn and contempt.  What’s wrong with the old fashioned method of a simple Bible verse along with its reference?  Signage should be about evangelizing the neighbors and uplifting the saved.  The message(s) should never be a pun or play on words that confuses the passerbys or encourage someone to throw a stone at the sign.  It should be done in good taste and not intended to infuriate people.