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The following articles are compiled by:

Leo Wong

Leo@WatchmenWatching.com

 

 

 

Solana: EU supports Syrian initiative to regain Golan Heights

Source: HAARETZ.com

 

March 15, 2007 -- The European Union supports Syria's goal of regaining the Golan Heights from Israel, the EU foreign policy chief said after meeting President Bashar Assad on Wednesday.

 

"We would like to work as much as possible to see your country Syria recuperate the territory taken in 1967," Javier Solana told a joint news conference with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem.

 

Syria has made it clear that its cooperation to help end violence in Iraq would be tied to Western - especially U.S. - support for its peaceful campaign to regain the Golan Heights, which Israel conquered during the Six Day War four decades ago.

 

Solana also discussed the Lebanese crisis with Syrian leaders Wednesday on what was the first high-level visit by an EU official to Syria in more than two years.

 

Syria, through its state-run press, welcomed Solana's visit as a good move after a long absence.

 

Comments:  Why did Senor Javier Solana stick his nose where it didn’t belong?  Did Israel ask for him to intervene?  Did the Syrians plead with him to wield his political weight?  Let the Syrians beg Israel to return the Golan Heights.

 

40 years is a long time to lose the use of a valuable tract of real estate.  40 is the number of testing and Syria sure has eaten a lot of humble pie with Israel’s stationing of her troops there.  The Golan Heights is a strategic piece of land. From on high, you can see troops approach well in the distance.  In 1967, an early warning was crucial to a country’s defenses, but in 2007, Israel has hi-tech gadgetry that can spot a pimple on a Syrian soldier’s nose hundreds of miles away.  If he even moves a centimeter, Israel can react accordingly.  The Golan Heights is now merely a political football for both Syria and Israel.  It will be punted back and forth until the 2-minute warning when peace talks reach a crucial stage.  Syria wants to get the Golan Heights back and Israel readily agrees to accommodate provided Syria agrees to drop its preconditions.  Solana’s involvement at this juncture in time may be the face saving outlet for Syria.  If Solana can work his magic with Israel, who are the Syrians to argue?  For a man whose political life was supposed to be winding down, this hombre is sure racking up the Air Miles for the purpose of Middle East peace.

 

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Buddhism spreads in U.S. Bible Belt

Source: Knoxville.com 

 

March 15, 2007 -- For Win Myint, faith means constant meditation, a Buddhist practice that has helped control the tremors of Parkinson's disease and bring him in harmony with the world around him.

 

Myint - a longtime Nashville resident who emigrated from the former Southeast Asian nation of Burma (renamed Myanmar) - is hoping to bring that practice of mindful meditation to others with the opening of the Buddhist Meditation Center in south Nashville.

 

Comments:  The spread of paganism’s cancer is everywhere inside the patient and the only solution is to allow the malignancy to runs its course.  When people in droves have spurned the Good News, what is God going to do except allow them to have things their way.  That’s called the free will of man.  God didn’t create robots.  He wanted mankind to willingly obey Him and follow His precepts.  He sent His only begotten Son to save sinners.  Many rejected His Son outright and this has continued to this day.

 

Buddhism’s lure is hard to understand.  Why would supposedly intelligent people worship and follow a dead mortal who cannot save sinners when Jesus Christ the proven Savior of sinners has been raised from the dead and is seated at God’s right hand?  The Dalai Lama may be a humble man with a genial smile and a man of peace who’s a Buddhist, but those are not valid reasons for emulating his example in adopting Buddhism as your religion of choice.  He’s going to Hell and you are also unless you turn to Jesus.  Americans are faddists; whatever is in vogue, they’ll run after.

 

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Putin seeks fresh start with Pope Benedict

Source: BBC NEWS

 

March 15, 2007 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin is about to pay his first visit to the Vatican of Pope Benedict XVI. He wants the Pope on his side as he restores Russia as a global force.

 

It will be Mr. Putin's third visit to the Vatican and his second pope. He went to see Pope John Paul II in 2000 and 2003, coming face-to-face with a man who had contributed to the dissolution of the Soviet bloc.

 

But he was one of the few heads of state who did not attend John Paul II's funeral. That absence is perhaps partly explained by the long deep-freeze in relations between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church, and the remarkable church-state alliance that has sprung up in Russia.

 

Comments:  For the Vatican’s food tasters, the proof is in the “Putin”.  Comrade Putin bowed to a Polish Pope John Paul II and now, he’s going one better by paying homage to a German pope, Benedict XVI.  What’s next, kowtowing to a Ukrainian pope?  Never! Nationality aside, Putin desires Pope Benedict’s benediction in order for the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics to think good thoughts about Mother Russia.  Since the fall of the evil Soviet Empire, Russians have become the world’s laughing stock.  Once a mighty empire, it’s now fractured into Baltic and Islamic republics which have their own mind and won’t pay allegiance to Moscow any longer.

 

Putin’s Russia will become strong (militarily at least) once again as Ezekiel 38 tells us, but only for a short time.  Like a long-in-the-tooth prizefighter who has seen better days and is now shadow boxing in his twilight years, Putin will exert one final effort to resurrect Russia to challenge the West before he retires.  We know godless Russia’s eventual fate; it will be almost total annihilation at the hands of a vengeful God.  Russia is non‑Christian no matter what the Russian Orthodox Church asserts.  Putin is as Christian as Ted Turner or Howard Stern.

 

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Christians for Israel

Source: Jerusalem Post

 

March 15, 2007 -- 'The sleeping giant of Christian Zionism has awakened. There are 50 million Christians standing up and applauding the State of Israel." So began a speech by Pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United For Israel, before an AIPAC Policy Conference plenary earlier this week.

 

The speech certainly did not lack clarity. "It is 1938," Hagee said, "Iran is Germany, and Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler. We must stop Iran's nuclear threat and stand boldly with Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East."

 

Neither, however, did he mince words regarding what any Jewish audience cannot help thinking when hearing such unabashed support from a Christian leader.

 

Hagee noted that those who committed the Holocaust were "baptized Christians ... in good standing with their Church." He continued: "Today I humbly ask forgiveness of the Jewish people for every act of anti-Semitism, and the deafening silence of Christians in your greatest hour of need, during the Holocaust. We were not there. We cannot change the past, but together we can shape the future. Think of our potential future together: 50 million evangelicals joining in common cause with 5 million Jewish people in America on behalf of Israel is a match made in heaven."

 

The AIPAC audience granted Hagee multiple standing ovations. The Jewish people, some surely thought, have been waiting two millennia to hear such unalloyed words of contrition and support, and they could not have come at a more propitious time.

 

Understandably, offers of Christian assistance will continue to be met with a considerable degree of wariness. History aside, Jews and evangelical Christians are perhaps the ultimate "Odd Couple" -- culturally, religiously, politically and even geographically.

 

If all these obstacles are not enough, there is also Jewish concern regarding Christian motives, concern that necessitates careful consideration in building relationships. First, there is the suspicion that evangelicals, as their name implies, are out to convert Jews. Second, that their support is colored by doctrines of "rapture" and the apocalypse, in which a catastrophic global war plays an important part.

 

In a Jerusalem Post interview last year, Hagee responded that a growing majority of evangelicals no longer preach replacement theology - the doctrine that Christianity has replaced the Jewish people in the plans of God. As for himself, Hagee said further, "I do not target Jews for conversion." Nonetheless, he stressed, "If you come into my church, you are asking to hear my witness of Jesus Christ and you're going to get it, wide open."

 

"What is going to happen when Jesus comes back?" Hagee said, touching on the second sensitive point. "I say to my rabbi friends: 'You don't believe it; I do believe it. When we're standing in Jerusalem, and the Messiah is coming down the street, one of us is going to have a major theological adjustment to make. But until that time, let's walk together in support of Israel and in defense of the Jewish people."

 

Comments:  Jews are justifiably wary of all Gentiles, but they’re suspicious about Christians also.  Whereas the former had persecuted and put to death millions of Jews under the guise of “religion”, the latter has nothing but love for God’s chosen people.  Evangelical Christians who hold to the pre‑millennial Tribulation Period view are especially fond of Jews.  They pray for God’s protection over Israel against her many enemies.  There’s only one thing missing though.  I see Evangelical Christians asking God for physical protection over the Jewish State, but there’s a lack of intense prayers for the personal salvation of every Jew on Earth.  Except for the organization “Jews for Jesus”, where are the Gospel missions to the Jews?

 

John Hagee and Jerry Falwell have been accused in the past of prescribing to the Dual Covenant Theology which some evangelicals have unwittingly adopted.  Although on the surface it appears to be not as bad as Replacement Theology which Catholics and liberal mainline Protestant denominations adhere to, upon closer examination, Dual Covenant Theology says Jews don’t have to come to Jesus to be saved because they’re saved through God’s Old Testament covenant.  Of course, that’s a false doctrine because John 14:6 is quite crystal clear that nobody (Gentile or Jew) can come to the Father except through God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.  Billy Graham thought it was useless to preach Jesus to the Jews.  He was dead wrong.  May God help us not to spread false doctrines.  Too many souls are at stake.

 

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Guides ordered to say 'religious' instead of 'Christian'

Source: WorldNetDaily.com 

 

March 15, 2007 -- Tour guides at the American birthplace of Jamestown, Va., are being prevented from explaining Christian history, and are under orders to refer to items such as the Ten Commandments and Lord's Prayer only as "religious" in nature.

 

That according to California pastor and researcher Todd DuBord who says he was stunned on a recent tour of the historic town when "our guide responded to our inquiry by saying that she was 'unable to speak about the plaques. We are only allowed to say they are religious plaques.'"

 

When the issue arose, DuBord's group was in the heart of the community which had been established in 1607 – 13 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, Mass. – to make money for the Virginia Company and spread the gospel of Jesus Christ on orders from the newly crowned King James I.

 

Comments:   It’s OK to say “religious” because all mankind is religious.  We can’t help ourselves because God created a void in each of us, a void that is filled with either Jesus Christ or the Devil’s counterfeit (in that it appears to be Christian) soul damming religion.  So, it’s religiously correct to refer to Christian symbols and subjects as simply religious things.  Then, Muslims, students of Judaism, Buddhists, Hindus, etc., won’t be offended.  This is part and parcel of the Devil’s on going attempt to eliminate all vestiges of God and His Bible from the daily lives of Americans.

 

Of course, the USA is no longer a “Christian” country.  Sure, its founding fathers may have revered God and His concepts and some even accepted Jesus as Savior and there’s that saying “In God We Trust”, but more and more, America has embraced the Devil’s wickedness and cast aside God’s holiness.  America is a decadent nation and it’s another stake driven into its heart and soul when its birthplace’s Christian heritage is painted over with the “religious” paint brush.  The unsaved will see nothing special about Christianity, not that it’s a valid excuse to reject Christ’s offer of salvation.  Christian watchers will see this as another step closer to the Tribulation Period when Christianity will be attacked with the full force of Satan’s demons.  Nothing will restrain their fury against Jesus and His followers.

 

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Keep watching (Matt 24:42)!

 

Until next time,

Shalom!

 

 

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