The Midnight Cry ~ Ivan Parker

Five Things About Trump's 'Refugee Ban' ~ George Thomas

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Thousands of people demonstrated over the weekend in New York and several
other cities against President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily 
barring refugees from several Middle East and North African countries from 
entering the United States.

Titled "Protection of the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United 
States," the executive order makes good on Trump's promise to tighten America's 
borders.

"I am establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of 
the United States of America," Trump said Friday shortly after signing the 
executive order. "We don't want them."

In the flood of internet and social media reaction, some important points are 
being overlooked. Here are five things you need to know about Trump's refugee 
policy that you might have missed:

1.  It's not a permanent 'ban' but a temporary halt on admitting 
refugees: The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) is suspended for 120 days.

2.  It does not exclude all Muslims from entering the country: The 
executive order bans all people coming from Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia 
and Yemen for 90 days.

3.  There are exceptions: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says 
those refugees who hail from the seven countries of concern but are in possession 
of a U.S. Green Card will be allowed entry. "Lawful Permanent Residents of the 
United States traveling on a valid I-551 will be allowed to board U.S. bound 
aircraft and will be assessed for exceptions at arrival ports of entry, as 
appropriate," said a DHS statement. In addition, the executive order has this 
important exception: "Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may, on a case-
by-case basis, and when in the national interest, issue visas or other immigration 
benefits to nationals of countries for which visas and benefits are otherwise 
blocked."

4.  It does target Syrians: Citizens of Syria are banned from entering the 
United States indefinitely.

5.  It caps the number of refugees for 2017: Once the U.S. Refugee 
Admissions Program is reinstated, authorities say the number of refugees
allowed in the country for fiscal year 2017 will not exceed 50,000.

Watch this interview with a radical ex-Muslim for her perspective on 

The president's decision.

President Trump on CBN (Christian Broadcast News)

President Trump Sat Down with CBN News for an Exclusive Interview (Link)

When Abortion Suddenly Stopped Making Sense ~ by FREDERICA MATHEWES-GREEN

Roe v. Wade -- Abortion Won the Day, but Sooner or Later That Day Will End At the time of the Roe v. Wade decision, I was a college student — an anti-war, mother-earth, feminist, hippie college student. That particular January I was taking a semester off, living in the D.C. area and volunteering at the feminist “underground newspaper” Off Our Backs. As you’d guess, I was strongly in favor of legalizing abortion. The bumper sticker on my car read, “Don’t labor under a misconception; legalize abortion.” 

The first issue of Off Our Backs after the Roe decision included one of my movie reviews, and also an essay by another member of the collective criticizing the decision. It didn’t go far enough, she said, because it allowed states to restrict abortion in the third trimester. The Supreme Court should not meddle in what should be decided between the woman and her doctor. She should be able to choose abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. But, at the time, we didn’t have much understanding of what abortion was. We knew nothing of fetal development. We consistently termed the fetus “a blob of tissue,” and that’s just how we pictured it — an undifferentiated mucous-like blob, not recognizable as human or even as alive. It would be another 15 years of so before pregnant couples could show off sonograms of their unborn babies, shocking us with the obvious humanity of the unborn. We also thought, back then, that few abortions would ever be done. It’s a grim experience, going through an abortion, and we assumed a woman would choose one only as a last resort. We were fighting for that “last resort.” We had no idea how common the procedure would become; today, one in every five pregnancies ends in abortion. Nor could we have imagined how high abortion numbers would climb. In the 43 years since Roe v. Wade, there have been 59 million abortions. It’s hard even to grasp a number that big. Twenty years ago, someone told me that, if the names of all those lost babies were inscribed on a wall, like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the wall would have to stretch for 50 miles. It’s 20 years later now, and that wall would have to stretch twice as far. But no names could be written on it; those babies had no names. We expected that abortion would be rare. What we didn’t realize was that, once abortion becomes available, it becomes the most attractive option for everyone around the pregnant woman. If she has an abortion, it’s like the pregnancy never existed. No one is inconvenienced. It doesn’t cause trouble for the father of the baby, or her boss, or the person in charge of her college scholarship. It won’t embarrass her mom and dad. Abortion is like a funnel; it promises to solve all the problems at once. So there is significant pressure on a woman to choose abortion, rather than adoption or parenting. A woman who had had an abortion told me, “Everyone around me was saying they would ‘be there for me’ if I had the abortion, but no one said they’d ‘be there for me’ if I had the baby.” For everyone around the pregnant woman, abortion looks like the sensible choice. A woman who determines instead to continue an unplanned pregnancy looks like she’s being foolishly stubborn. It’s like she’s taken up some unreasonable hobby. People think, If she would only go off and do this one thing, everything would be fine. But that’s an illusion. Abortion can’t really “turn back the clock.” It can’t push the rewind button on life and make it so she was never pregnant. It can make it easy for everyone around the woman to forget the pregnancy, but the woman herself may struggle. When she first sees the positive pregnancy test she may feel, in a panicky way, that she has to get rid of it as fast as possible. But life stretches on after abortion, for months and years — for many long nights — and all her life long she may ponder the irreversible choice she made. Abortion can’t push the rewind button on life and make it so she was never pregnant. It can make it easy for everyone around the woman to forget the pregnancy, but the woman herself may struggle. This issue gets presented as if it’s a tug of war between the woman and the baby. We see them as mortal enemies, locked in a fight to the death. But that’s a strange idea, isn’t it? It must be the first time in history when mothers and their own children have been assumed to be at war. We’re supposed to picture the child attacking her, trying to destroy her hopes and plans, and picture the woman grateful for the abortion, since it rescued her from the clutches of her child. If you were in charge of a nature preserve and you noticed that the pregnant female mammals were trying to miscarry their pregnancies, eating poisonous plants or injuring themselves, what would you do? Would you think of it as a battle between the pregnant female and her unborn and find ways to help those pregnant animals miscarry? No, of course not. You would immediately think, “Something must be really wrong in this environment.” Something is creating intolerable stress, so much so that animals would rather destroy their own offspring than bring them into the world. You would strive to identify and correct whatever factors were causing this stress in the animals. The same thing goes for the human animal. Abortion gets presented to us as if it’s something women want; both pro-choice and pro-life rhetoric can reinforce that idea. But women do this only if all their other options look worse. It’s supposed to be “her choice,” yet so many women say, “I really didn’t have a choice.” I changed my opinion on abortion after I read an article in Esquire magazine, way back in 1976. I was home from grad school, flipping through my dad’s copy, and came across an article titled “What I Saw at the Abortion.” The author, Richard Selzer, was a surgeon, and he was in favor of abortion, but he’d never seen one. So he asked a colleague whether, next time, he could go along. Selzer described seeing the patient, 19 weeks pregnant, lying on her back on the table. (That is unusually late; most abortions are done by the tenth or twelfth week.) The doctor performing the procedure inserted a syringe into the woman’s abdomen and injected her womb with a prostaglandin solution, which would bring on contractions and cause a miscarriage. (This method isn’t used anymore, because too often the baby survived the procedure — chemically burned and disfigured, but clinging to life. Newer methods, including those called “partial birth abortion” and “dismemberment abortion,” more reliably ensure death.) After injecting the hormone into the patient’s womb, the doctor left the syringe standing upright on her belly. Then, Selzer wrote, “I see something other than what I expected here. . . . It is the hub of the needle that is in the woman’s belly that has jerked. First to one side. Then to the other side. Once more it wobbles, is tugged, like a fishing line nibbled by a sunfish.” He realized he was seeing the fetus’s desperate fight for life. And as he watched, he saw the movement of the syringe slow down and then stop. The child was dead. Whatever else an unborn child does not have, he has one thing: a will to live. He will fight to defend his life. The last words in Selzer’s essay are, “Whatever else is said in abortion’s defense, the vision of that other defense [i.e., of the child defending its life] will not vanish from my eyes. And it has happened that you cannot reason with me now. For what can language do against the truth of what I saw?” The truth of what he saw disturbed me deeply. There I was, anti-war, anti–capital punishment, even vegetarian, and a firm believer that social justice cannot be won at the cost of violence. Well, this sure looked like violence. How had I agreed to make this hideous act the centerpiece of my feminism? How could I think it was wrong to execute homicidal criminals, wrong to shoot enemies in wartime, but all right to kill our own sons and daughters? The truth of what he saw disturbed me deeply. There I was, anti-war, anti–capital punishment, even vegetarian, and a firm believer that social justice cannot be won at the cost of violence. For that was another disturbing thought: Abortion means killing not strangers but our own children, our own flesh and blood. No matter who the father, every child aborted is that woman’s own son or daughter, just as much as any child she will ever bear. We had somehow bought the idea that abortion was necessary if women were going to rise in their professions and compete in the marketplace with men. But how had we come to agree that we will sacrifice our children, as the price of getting ahead? When does a man ever have to choose between his career and the life of his child? Once I recognized the inherent violence of abortion, none of the feminist arguments made sense. Like the claim that a fetus is not really a person because it is so small. Well, I’m only 5 foot 1. Women, in general, are smaller than men. Do we really want to advance a principle that big people have more value than small people? That if you catch them before they’ve reached a certain size, it’s all right to kill them? What about the child who is “unwanted”? It was a basic premise of early feminism that women should not base their sense of worth on whether or not a man “wants” them. We are valuable simply because we are members of the human race, regardless of any other person’s approval. Do we really want to say that “unwanted” people might as well be dead? What about a woman who is “wanted” when she’s young and sexy but less so as she gets older? At what point is it all right to terminate her? The usual justification for abortion is that the unborn is not a “person.” It’s said that “Nobody knows when life begins.” But that’s not true; everybody knows when life — a new individual human life — gets started. It’s when the sperm dissolves in the egg. That new single cell has a brand-new DNA, never before seen in the world. If you examined through a microscope three cells lined up — the newly fertilized ovum, a cell from the father, and a cell from the mother — you would say that, judging from the DNA, the cells came from three different people. When people say the unborn is “not a person” or “not a life” they mean that it has not yet grown or gained abilities that arrive later in life. But there’s no agreement about which abilities should be determinative. Pro-choice people don’t even agree with each other. Obviously, law cannot be based on such subjective criteria. If it’s a case where the question is “Can I kill this?” the answer must be based on objective medical and scientific data. And the fact is, an unborn child, from the very first moment, is a new human individual. It has the three essential characteristics that make it “a human life”: It’s alive and growing, it is composed entirely of human cells, and it has unique DNA. It’s a person, just like the rest of us. Abortion indisputably ends a human life. But this loss is usually set against the woman’s need to have an abortion in order to freely direct her own life. It is a particular cruelty to present abortion as something women want, something they demand, they find liberating. Because nobody wants this. The procedure itself is painful, humiliating, expensive — no woman “wants” to go through it. But once it’s available, it appears to be the logical, reasonable choice. All the complexities can be shoved down that funnel. Yes, abortion solves all the problems; but it solves them inside the woman’s body. And she is expected to keep that pain inside for a lifetime, and be grateful for the gift of abortion. Many years ago I wrote something in an essay about abortion, and I was surprised that the line got picked up and frequently quoted. I’ve seen it in both pro-life and pro-choice contexts, so it appears to be something both sides agree on. I wrote, “No one wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg.” Strange, isn’t it, that both pro-choice and pro-life people agree that is true? Abortion is a horrible and harrowing experience. That women choose it so frequently shows how much worse continuing a pregnancy can be. Essentially, we’ve agreed to surgically alter women so that they can get along in a man’s world. And then expect them to be grateful for it. Nobody wants to have an abortion. And if nobody wants to have an abortion, why are women doing it, 2800 times a day? If women doing something 2,800 times daily that they don’t want to do, this is not liberation we’ve won. We are colluding in a strange new form of oppression. *** And so we come around to one more March for Life, like the one last year, like the one next year. Protesters understandably focus on the unborn child, because the danger it faces is the most galvanizing aspect of this struggle. If there are different degrees of injustice, surely violence is the worst manifestation, and killing worst of all. If there are different categories of innocent victim, surely the small and helpless have a higher claim to protection, and tiny babies the highest of all. The minimum purpose of government is to shield the weak from abuse by the strong, and there is no one weaker or more voiceless than unborn children. And so we keep saying that they should be protected, for all the same reasons that newborn babies are protected. Pro-lifers have been doing this for 43 years now, and will continue holding a candle in the darkness for as many more years as it takes. I understand all the reasons why the movement’s prime attention is focused on the unborn. But we can also say that abortion is no bargain for women, either. It’s destructive and tragic. We shouldn’t listen unthinkingly to the other side of the time-worn script, the one that tells us that women want abortions, that abortion liberates them. Many a post-abortion woman could tell you a different story. The pro-life cause is perennially unpopular, and pro-lifers get used to being misrepresented and wrongly accused. There are only a limited number of people who are going to be brave enough to stand up on the side of an unpopular cause. But sometimes a cause is so urgent, is so dramatically clear, that it’s worth it. What cause could be more outrageous than violence — fatal violence — against the most helpless members of our human community? If that doesn’t move us, how hard are our hearts? If that doesn’t move us, what will ever move us? In time, it’s going to be impossible to deny that abortion is violence against children. Future generations, as they look back, are not necessarily going to go easy on ours. Our bland acceptance of abortion is not going to look like an understandable goof. In fact, the kind of hatred that people now level at Nazis and slave-owners may well fall upon our era. Future generations can accurately say, “It’s not like they didn’t know.” They can say, “After all, they had sonograms.” They may consider this bloodshed to be a form of genocide. They might judge our generation to be monsters. One day, the tide is going to turn. With that Supreme Court decision 43 years ago, one of the sides in the abortion debate won the day. But sooner or later, that day will end. No generation can rule from the grave. The time is coming when a younger generation will sit in judgment of ours. And they are not obligated to be kind. — Frederica Mathewes-Green

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430152/abortion-roe-v-wade-unborn-children-women-feminism-march-life

Are You A Missionary?

Hugh Fitzgerald: Prince Charles and Islam’s “Sacred Spirituality”

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DECEMBER 30, 2016 11:48 AM BY HUGH FITZGERALD119 COMMENTS

On December 13th, at Wilton Park, the Prince of Wales explained how the Muslim critique of materialism helped him to rediscover the sacred spirituality of Islam and explain the decline of the West.

I start from the belief that Islamic civilization at its best… has an important message for the West in the way it has retained an integrated and integral view of the sanctity of the world around us. I feel that we in the West could be helped to rediscover the roots of our own understanding by an appreciation of the Islamic tradition’s deep respect for the timeless traditions of the natural order.

What Prince Charles calls an “integrated and integral view of the sanctity of the world” in Islam is not exactly clear, and one wonders if perhaps Charles has confused Muhammad with the Dalai Lama, or possibly with the Natural Resources Defense Council. What is clear is that many Muslims have a most peculiar way of demonstrating their belief in the “sanctity of the world,” by engaging in endless warfare, of every conceivable type (not limited to qitaal, or combat), in order to subjugate all those who are not Muslims. Perhaps Charles has been impressed with the way that Islam offers both a Total Explanation of the Universe, as formulated by 7th century Arabs, and a Complete Regulation of all aspects of life. Islam is a “totalitarian” ideology in the original sense of that term, but in the Newspeak favored by Prince Charles, the ideology of Islam would no doubt be described as “holistic.”

And while Charles claims to find a deep respect in Islam for “the timeless traditions of the natural order,” he does not think to include among those “timeless traditions of the natural order” of Islam the “natural” (right, proper) submission of non-Muslims to Muslims, and of Muslim women to Muslim men. Nor, I suspect, is he aware of the “timeless tradition” of Muslim men marrying girls as young as 9 (this “timeless tradition” begins with Muhammad, the Perfect Man and Model of Conduct, and is thus as old as Islam itself), or the “timeless tradition” of slavery (that particular “timeless tradition” in Islam had largely to be abandoned, but only because of Western pressure, and still continues in Mali and Mauritania), and of course there is the “timeless tradition,” central to Islam, of engaging in Jihad, the “struggle” of Muslims to expand Dar al-Islam at the expense of Dar al-Harb, until ultimately, Islam everywhere dominates, and Muslims rule, everywhere.

I believe that process could help in the task of bringing our two faiths closer together.

What is keeping “our two faiths” from coming “closer together” is that Islam views Christianity as a distorted and therefore unacceptable version of the true faith of Islam, with Muhammad’s message misunderstood, and there is no question, for Muslims, of Islam and Christianity “coming together” through any kind of compromise. Christian belief would have to change completely in order to attain to the condition of Islam, while Islam, according to its adherents, must always remain relentlessly itself. And how does one bring these “two faiths together” when Muslims are told in their Qur’an that they are the “best of peoples” and non-Muslims “the vilest of creatures”?

It could also help us in the West to rethink, and for the better

…in case you might have thought we should do it “for the worse”…

our practical stewardship of man and his environment in fields such as health-care, the natural environment and agriculture, as well as in architecture and urban planning.

Here Prince Charles is alluding to several of his pet peeves, including modern architecture, which he finds predictably “soulless,” and environmental degradation, which he attributes to Western man not being a good “steward” of the natural environment. He thus overlooks the fact that the greatest polluter has for years now been China, not the West, and that North America and Western Europe, precisely through technological innovations such as more efficient solar collectors and electric cars, have been steadily reducing their energy use, and become better environmental “stewards.” By “agriculture” he is obliquely referring to the use of GMOs (genetically modified organisms), which he dislikes because they are “not natural,” even if they improve crop yields. He thinks that we can learn from the Islamic world’s supposed hewing to the traditional, in everything from architecture to agriculture. But plenty of “soulless” skyscrapers have been built all over the Arab oil states – see the skylines of Riyadh, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Kuwait — while two of the major GMO producers are the Muslim states of Egypt and Pakistan. Apparently many Muslims prefer “soulless” Western architecture and “unnatural” GMOs to what Prince Charles assumes that Muslims favor.

Modern materialism is unbalanced and increasingly damaging in its long-term consequences. Yet nearly all the great religions of the world have held an integral view of the sanctity of the world.

Charles liked “an integral view of the sanctity of the world” so much that he repeated this vague verbiage verbatim, two paragraphs after its first appearance.

To have Western man’s “unbalanced” and “damaging” “materialism” denounced by one of the materially most cossetted people on earth, who is surrounded by every possible luxury, who denies himself nothing, is hard to take. How many millions does this royal deplorer of “materialism” spend in a year – money the British taxpayers provide him so that he can show the Union Jack here, cut a ceremonial ribbon there, and make pronouncements on everything under the sun, all Luddite-and-Green-Partyish, as is his wont, and as he does here, delivering a quite unnecessary paean of praise to supposedly un-materialist, “spiritual” Islam, from which, he claims, the West has so much to learn. This “spiritual” Islam, he needs to know, is the only major faith that in its holiest books — Qur’an and Hadith — contains rules on how to divvy up the loot from raids on the enemy. Not quite dalai-lama material.

Prince Charles seems to think that in the Islamic world, people are somehow less “materialistic” than in the West, failing to realize that that was a function of poverty, and not a guarantee of spirituality. The question to be asked is this: when Muslims became rich, did they keep the “spirituality” that Charles thinks is part of Islam, and that we, the Westerners who have been in thrall to “materialism,” ought to emulate, or did they, when given a chance, become as “materialist” as anyone in the Western world?

Let’s look at the behavior of those Muslims and Arabs who, through an accident of geology, found themselves sitting on top of huge oil and gas deposits which Infidels had discovered, and for which Infidels had found a use. Did these suddenly rich Muslim Arabs remain true to their supposed “spirituality”? Look at Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Kuwait, Qatar. The rich Arabs in those places have engaged in fantastic spending, satisfying their lust for every luxury, including the building of private Xanadus, some of them containing a half-dozen restaurants to satisfy the owner’s every culinary whim, that rival anything built for the most self-indulgent of Western billionaires.

But even those palaces were not enough. The richest of these devout Muslims also have enormous yachts, awaiting them in the Mediterranean, and customized 747s on the tarmacs of Arabia, ready to fly them everywhere, around the world, or to their fabulously appointed houses, villas, and estates in Paris and the Riviera, in London, and New York. In the Arab states of the Gulf, shopping is the main, and for many the only pastime, and along with the endless souks dedicated to gold and jewelry are local branches of every famous purveyor of luxury items in the Western world. The “spiritual” Muslims Prince Charles wants us to emulate live in a world of shop-till-you-drop that outdoes anything on Fifth Avenue or Rodeo Drive. Perhaps he is confusing Islam, a most worldly religion, with Buddhism or Hinduism, where asceticism is esteemed, given his habit of lumping Islam with those two as “Eastern religions.”

But during the past three centuries, in the Western world at least, a dangerous division has occurred in the way we perceive the world around us. Science has tried to assume a monopoly even a tyranny over our understanding. Religion and science have become separated, so that now, as Wordsworth said, “Little we see in nature that is ours”. Science has attempted to take over the natural world from God; it has fragmented the cosmos and relegated the sacred to a separate and secondary compartment of our understanding, divorced from practical, day to day existence.

We are only now beginning to gauge the disastrous results. We in the Western world seem to have lost a sense of the wholeness of our environment, and of our immense and inalienable responsibility to the whole of creation. This has led to an increasing failure to appreciate or understand tradition and the wisdom of our forebears, accumulated over the centuries. Indeed, tradition is positively discriminated against as if it were some socially unacceptable disease.

Again, Prince Charles is all for “tradition,” but without bothering to distinguish, as one must, between good and bad traditions. Islam itself is the most immutable of faiths; what was set down in the Qur’an, what was the practice of Muhammad and his Companions as recorded in the Hadith (or “Traditions”) – these, Qur’an and Sunnah, are not to be changed. How many of us find admirable the “traditional” Muslim attitude, fixed in amber, toward non-Muslims, toward women, toward homosexuals, toward the institution of slavery?

Prince Charles seems to think we in the West have failed to “appreciate or understand…the wisdom of our forebears, accumulated over the centuries,” a “wisdom” that we’ve managed to lose in the last few decades. That’s true, but not in the way he thinks. One very important bit of wisdom from our forebears that we have lost is about Islam itself, a forgetfulness that is causing us much unnecessary confusion and grief today. Over more than a millennium, Western man was on the receiving end of attacks by Muslims, and clearly recognized Islam as a mortal threat. The West, conscious that the Muslim duty to wage Jihad was permanent, strove to keep Islam contained. There was Charles Martel in 732, who stopped the invading Muslim army at the outskirts of Poitiers. There were the Christian warriors who, over 770 years of the Reconquista, managed to retake Spain from its Muslim rulers. There were the two successful Christian efforts to repel sieges of Vienna by Ottoman Muslims in 1529 and again in 1683. By the 19th century, and into the 20th, the superior military technology of the West allowed it to conquer large parts of the Muslim world. But even when the military tables were turned, at no time did the Western world regard the ideology of Islam as anything but a threat.

Yet today, adherents of the same Islam that threatened Europe for centuries are now on the march, not with conventional armies, but through Muslim migrants entering Europe by the millions, and bringing Islam with them in their mental baggage. These Muslim migrants are coming not to assimilate, but rather to impose, wherever they can, their views on the indigenous non-Muslims, in whose lands they have been allowed to settle, deep behind what they, as Muslims, have been taught to regard as enemy lines.

A century ago, permitting such a movement into Europe could never have been imagined. The threat of Islam was then well understood in the Western world. Think only of what Winston Churchill, Tocqueville, John Quincy Adams, and many others less celebrated wrote, accurately and without any need for political correctness, about Islam. How the West forgot the “wisdom of its forebears” about Islam, and what that forgetfulness has led to, makes for painful reading, and the willful ignorance of Islam now being displayed by those whose responsibility it is to instruct and protect us – including Prince Charles — is difficult to explain and impossible to forgive.

In my view, a more holistic

This modish word, a sure sign of mental muddle, dropped into a sentence to give it a greater semblance of sense, means nothing much (“emphasizing the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts” according to the on-line dictionary’s definition), but not surprisingly, it’s a favorite of Prince Charles.

approach is needed now. Science has done the inestimable service of showing us a world much more complex than we ever imagined. But in its modern, materialist, one-dimensional form, it cannot explain everything. God is not merely the ultimate Newtonian mathematician or the mechanistic clockmaker. As science and technology have become increasingly separated from ethical, moral and sacred considerations so the implications of such a separation have become more sombre and horrifying as we see in genetic manipulation or in the consequences of the kind of scientific arrogance so blatant in the scandal of BSE.

Unclear what this refers to.

I have always felt that tradition is not a man-made element in our lives, but a God-given intuition of natural rhythms, of the fundamental harmony that emerges from the union of the paradoxical opposites that exist in every aspect of nature…. That is why I believe Man is so much more than just a biological phenomenon resting on what we now seem to define as “the bottom line” of the great balance sheet of life, according to which art and culture are seen increasingly as optional extras in life.

This view is quite contrary, for example, to the outlook of the Muslim craftsman or artist, who is never concerned with display for its own sake, nor with progressing ever forward in his own ingenuity, but is content to submit a man’s craft to God. That outlook reflects, I believe, the memorable passage in the Koran, “whithersoever you turn there is the face of God and God is all-Embracing, all-Knowing”. While appreciating that this essential innocence has been destroyed, and destroyed everywhere, I nevertheless believe that the survival of civilized values, as we have inherited them from our ancestors, depends on the corresponding survival in our hearts of that profound sense of the sacred and the spiritual.

What “civilized values” have Muslims inherited from their ancestors?

The main difference between the Muslim craftsman or artist, and the non-Muslim artist or craftsman, is not that the former is more “spiritual” and “never concerned with display for its own sake,” as Charles seems to think. The most important art form of Islam, mosque architecture and decoration, is all about display, making an impression on Believers with the magnificence, imposing size, elaborate ornamentation, and play of color, of the mosque walls and interior. The main difference between the Muslim and the non-Muslim artist is not that the Muslim has some superior sense of the “sacred,” but that Islam limits the creativity of the Muslim artist, by forbidding him from depicting living creatures. That is why there is no portrait painting in Islam, nor any statuary. Perhaps this severe limit on creative expression in Islam has escaped Prince Charles’s notice, or perhaps he thinks it adds, in some inexplicable way, to that superior “spirituality” he claims to detect in Islamic art.

Traditional religions, with their integral view of the universe, can help us to rediscover the importance of the integration of the secular and the sacred. The danger of ignoring this essential aspect of our existence is not just spiritual or intellectual. It also lies at the heart of that great divide between the Islamic and Western worlds over the place of materialism in our lives. In those instances where Islam chooses to reject Western materialism, this is not, in my view, a political affectation or the result of envy or a sense of inferiority. Quite the opposite. And the danger that the gulf between the worlds of Islam and the other Eastern religions on the one hand and the West on the other will grow ever wider and more unbridgeable is real, unless we can explore together practical ways of integrating the sacred and the secular in both our cultures in order to provide a true inspiration for the next century.

Where in the Islamic world, whenever some have become rich enough even to have a choice, has anyone or any group chosen to “reject” what Prince Charles calls “Western” materialism? Where is that supposed “great divide between the Islamic and Western worlds over the place of materialism in our lives”? If anything, Islam is more of this world than Christianity. Islam does not advocate ascetic denial, as is done in Hinduism and, even more, in Buddhism. Many Islamic websites insistently repeat that “Islam in no way encourages deliberate excessive asceticism, poverty and passivism.” As for the accumulation of wealth, as long as it is used for good aims – to help fellow Muslims, to help spread Islam – it is never to be discouraged. When Prince Charles deplores a widening of “the gulf between the worlds of Islam and the other Eastern religions on the one hand” and “the West on the other,” it is clear that he thinks of Islam as being akin to Buddhism and Hinduism in their emphasis on the “spiritual,” because he thinks of all three as similar “Eastern religions.” He’s failed to grasp that Islam is the most material-minded of all major faiths. Rules about Muslims helping themselves to the property of subjugated Infidels, which includes not just goods and gold but also humans – with the women taken as sex slaves – and rules about how to divide up the spoils of Jihad (with one-fifth to be reserved for “Allah and His Apostle,” which is to say for Muhammad), are all set out in the Qur’an and Hadith.

Prince Charles expresses an intense interest in the “spiritual” in Islam, but it is clear that what he thinks he finds in Islam is to be found, rather, in those “other Eastern religions” –Buddhism, Hinduism – whose “spirituality” does indeed allow for the rejection of materialism. Indeed, if he wishes to descant upon the virtues of “sacred spirituality,” he would do better to visit a Buddhist or Hindu temple than a mosque, where, as the British police long ago discovered, he might stumble upon caches of forged passports, credit cards, and a “mini-arsenal” of weapons. Yes, this Islam that so impresses Prince Charles has another side than the “spiritual,” one that is certainly open to his investigation, if only he has eyes to see, and a mind to comprehend.

On the death of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles will become both King of England and head of the Church of England. Will he seek to transform that Church, to have it emulate aspects of Islam, from which, he claims, Christianity has so much to learn? Or will he be true to Christianity, and the “wisdom of his forebears” about Islam, and seek to meet, while there’s still time, the Muslim demographic challenge which is the latest instrument of Jihad? It’s a choice between “get ready to roll” and “get ready to roll out those prayer rugs.”

The Comforter Has Come ~ The Olivetians, (from Olivet Nazarene University)

First Church of God, Kendallville, Indiana

1. 
   
2. 
   
3. Oh, spread the tidings ’round, wherever man is found,
   Wherever human hearts and human woes abound;
   Let every Christian tongue proclaim the joyful sound:
   The Comforter has come!
   • Refrain:
     The Comforter has come, the Comforter has come!
     The Holy Ghost from Heav’n, the Father’s promise giv’n;
     Oh, spread the tidings ’round, wherever man is found—
     The Comforter has come!
4. The long, long night is past, the morning breaks at last,
   And hushed the dreadful wail and fury of the blast,
   As o’er the golden hills the day advances fast!
   The Comforter has come!
5. Lo, the great King of kings, with healing in His wings,
   To every captive soul a full deliv’rance brings;
   And through the vacant cells the song of triumph rings;
   The Comforter has come!
6. O boundless love divine! How shall this tongue of mine
   To wond’ring mortals tell the matchless grace divine—
   That I, a child of hell, should in His image shine!
   The Comforter has come!
7. Sing till the echoes fly above the vaulted sky,
   And all the saints above to all below reply,
   In strains of endless love, the song that ne’er will die:
   The Comforter has come!

Christians Cannot Let Israel Stand Alone Against the Nations ~ by Rev. Cheryl L. Hauer

Thursday, 12 January 2017 | Israel is facing very real and imminent danger to her very existence; if ever the intercession of her Christian friends was critical it is at this very moment in history. This Sunday, January 15, 2017, has the frightening potential to join the ranks of those historic days that are known as “dates that will live in infamy,” specific anniversaries of events that altered the course of history with often disastrous results. Representatives from 70 nations will convene in France to “breathe new life into the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.”

However, Israel, her Christian friends and her allies in the US Congress view the event as a sham forum whose purpose is to force Israel to accept a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority. Coming on the heels of UN Resolution 2334 which condemned Israeli “settlement” activity as illegal, and demanded that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the ‘occupied’ Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem,” there is little likelihood of any outcome other than the vilification of Israel and global support for the formation of two states based on pre-1967 “borders.” The US Congress has passed its own resolution, by an overwhelming majority of both parties, demanding the revocation of 2334.

There has been much speculation that lame duck US President Barack Obama and his administration were the force behind Resolution 2334, and in a staggering change in policy, the US abstained rather than voting against it at the UN Security Council. Out-going US Secretary of State John Kerry will not only be present at Sunday’s conference, but is making the diplomatic rounds, meeting with leaders of the UK, Germany and Switzerland. In a speech a few days after the passage of the anti-settlement resolution, Kerry outlined again his plan for Mideast peace which Israeli leaders have called “an absolute disaster for Israel.” The speech served only to further inflame the already seething distrust between the soon-to-be-gone US administration and Israel.

There is further concern that the outcome of the Paris initiative will become another resolution to be brought to the UN Security Council next week, potentially securing international support for the implementation of Kerry’s plan just a few short days before President-elect Donald Trump, and his very pro-Israel team, takes office. The results of such an outcome would be devastating, not just for Israel but for the entire world.

Many Christians and Jews worldwide think it no coincidence that there are 70 nations on the guest list for Sunday’s event. Seventy has long been the number that represents all the nations of the earth, based on the lineage of Noah in the Torah (Gen.–Deut.). Thus, they say, we may well be seeing the fulfillment of yet another prophecy as “all nations” are coming out against Israel.

As those who call upon the name of the Lord, we have been set apart as watchmen on the wall for Jerusalem, as those who would fight for Israel in the heavenly realms. As Israel faces the wrath of the nations, it is critical that Christians unite in prayer, calling upon the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to deliver His people from this evil attempt to destroy them. For decades, many Christians have been reaching out to Israel and the Jewish people, working to build relationships of sincerity and respect. We have acknowledged that the Church failed in its mandate to support God’s chosen people during the Holocaust, turning a blind eye to the horror that was befalling them and there are 6 million reminders of that failure. Let us not make that same mistake again! We have promised our Jewish friends that they can count us. Let’s make good on that promise. Pray as often as possible and with great diligence between now and Sunday evening. Join with us and a powerful global army of believers as we storm the gates of heaven, trusting our God to deliver His people once again.

Source: (Bridges for Peace, 12 January 2017)

Prayer Focus
Pray as the Lord leads.

Scripture

Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand. Behold, all those who were incensed against you shall be ashamed and disgraced; they shall be as nothing, and those who strive with you shall perish.

- Isaiah 41:10-11

Abbas Tells Trump: US Embassy Move to Jerusalem will be “Disastrous” ~ by Ilse Posselt

US Consulate building in Jerusalem

Tuesday, 10 January 2017 | If President-elect Donald Trump decides to move the United States (US) embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel to Jerusalem, the Middle East will experience a “crisis no one will be able to overcome,” Palestinian Authority (PA) President, Mahmoud Abbas, threatened.

According to the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, Abbas sent Trump an official letter yesterday to urge the incoming American Commander-in-Chief against such a move.

Trump vowed during his election campaign that he would move the US embassy in Israel from its current location in Tel Aviv to the City of Gold should he be chosen as the next American president. Since his election two months ago, speculations have been rife that Trump might make good on the promise with a top aide even revealing that the move is a “top priority.”

Abbas certainly appears to view Trump’s intentions as serious and not simply a fleeting campaign promise. In yesterday’s letter, the PA President urged the President-elect to reconsider his stance and listed what he believes to be the implications of such a decision. The move, Abbas argued, would “likely have a disastrous impact on the peace process, on the two-state solution and on the stability and security of the entire region.”

The PA President does, however, not pin all his hopes on Trump. According to Wafa, Abbas also sent letters to the heads of Russia, China, France, Germany, Britain, the European Union, the African Union, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the President of the Non-aligned Movement and the Secretary General of the Arab League. In the missives, Abbas requests assistance and asks the leaders “to spare no effort in preventing the US embassy from moving to Jerusalem.”

On Friday, Abbas also invited Trump to visit so-called Palestine, especially Bethlehem, but added that “any statement or position that will disrupt or alter the status of Jerusalem is a red line that we will not accept.”

Abbas’s statement comes days after senior Fatah officials threatened that moving the US embassy to Jerusalem would unleash a “new violent uprising” amongst Palestinians. For his part, the PA’s supreme Sharia judge, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, also said that such a move would be seen as “a declaration of war” on all Muslims.

Up until 1967, Judea and Samaria, including east Jerusalem and the Old City, were under Jordanian control. During The Six Day War, Israel recaptured the area, reunifying the City of Gold and proclaiming Jerusalem as the undivided, eternal capital of the Jewish people. Various UN nations, including the US, refuse to acknowledge Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and thus maintain their embassies in Tel Aviv. In fact, the city’s status has been one of the key issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Palestinians claim Judea and Samaria as lands designated for their prospective state and hails east Jerusalem as its intended capital. Should Trump decide to move the embassy to Jerusalem, it would signify that the US accepts the City of Gold as Israel’s capital.

Last month, a resolution by the United Nations Security Council labeled Judea and Samaria, including east Jerusalem, occupied Palestinian land. The US failed to veto the vote and thus allowed the resolution to pass, a move which Trump criticized.

Source: (Bridges for Peace, 10 January 2017)

Prayer Focus
Glorify the Lord for His faithfulness and promises of protection to the house of Israel. Pray that President-elect Trump will not be intimidated by Abbas’s threats to plunge the Middle East into a crisis that cannot be overcome if the US embassy is moved.

Scripture

For I am the Lord, I do not change; therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob.

- Malachi 3:6

Trump Sets Record Inviting 6 to Pray at Inauguration By Megan Briggs - January 20, 2017

Today America swore in its 45th president: Donald Trump. After a whirlwind and highly controversial campaign, Trump set a record during the inauguration ceremony for the number of prayers included in the ceremony.

Trump used two Bibles as he took the oath of office: One given to him by his mother and another that was used by Abraham Lincoln.

It was a diverse lineup of clergy that participated in the ceremony—from a televangelist to a Jewish rabbi to the leader of a major evangelical organization. Each leader offered an invocation or a benediction for Trump’s presidency. Here are some of the highlights:

Cardinal Timothy Dolan

Cardinal Dolan took a cue from Solomon, who asked for wisdom when he was preparing to lead God’s people. Dolan asked, “Give us wisdom, for we are your servants…lacking of comprehension of judgment and laws.” He implored God, who “alone knows what wisdom is,” to send wisdom forth “from your holy heavens… That she may be with us and work with us.”

Rev. Samuel Rodriguez

Rodriguez’s prayer was an adaption of the beatitudes, running through all the people Jesus said are blessed: the poor, humble, those who hunger and thirst for justice, the merciful, the pure in heart, those who work for peace, and those who are persecuted for doing right. He also mentioned Jesus’ words about the lamp on a stand—not to be hidden under a basket—but shining forth for all to see.

Paula White

White started by thanking God for the United States. She reminded everyone we have a “rich history of faith and fortitude.” Every good gift is from God, and the U.S. is God’s gift. She asked God to bestow the wisdom necessary to lead this great nation. She mentioned Proverbs 21:1 and asked God to “reveal unto our President the ability to know your will.” She also asked God to bind and heal our wounds and divisions and to let the U.S. be a beacon of hope to all people.

Rabbi Marvin Hier

Hier started by quoting from Psalm 15, which starts out, “Who shall dwell on your holy hill?” He asked God to “dispense justice for the needy and the orphan” and said a “nation’s wealth is measured by our values and not our vaults.” He also asked God to bless the nations and concluded by referencing Psalm 137, which says, “By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion… If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill!” (Psalm 137:1, 5).

Franklin Graham

Graham started his prayer by pointing out that it had started to rain, and in the Bible rain is the sign of God’s blessing. He prayed that God would bless Trump and guide him as he leads the nation. Graham then read from 1 Timothy 2, which specifically mentions praying for those in leadership: “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions…”

Bishop Wayne T. Jackson

Jackson started by saying, “Let us not take for granted the air we breathe or the land you’ve given us.” We’re not enemies, but allies. Let us be healed by the power of your love. He then mentioned three important figures of the Bible: Solomon who was able to bring about peace among different people; Joseph who dreamed for better; and Christ, who accepted us all. He concluded his prayer with a benediction adapted from Numbers 6:24-26: “May the Lord bless America, may the Lord be gracious unto us, and give us peace.”

Trump himself made mention of God a couple times in his speech. He quoted Psalm 133:1: “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity.” He also mentioned that America will be protected by our military, but most of all, “We will be protected by God.”

Greg Laurie & James Dobson on Inauguration Day

With the inauguration of Donald Trump, most recognize it won't be business-as-usual in Washington, D.C. What does this change mean for believers? Pastor Greg Laurie discusses those issues with America's family expert, Dr. James Dobson.

Greg Laurie & James Dobson on Inauguration Day (Click to open Link)

God's Foreign Policy on Israel ~ Pastor J. Hagee

Editor's Note: Pastor Hagee summarizes 

God's FOREIGN POLICY on ISRAEL; 

• Israel owns the land given them by God (according to the Bible):  7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.” ~ Genesis 17

• "... I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." ~ Genesis 12:3

This is also known as the Abrahamic Covenant; God always keeps his covenants!

• In Exodus 4:22; God (on Israel's behalf) makes Pharoah a deal he really can't refuse !!!  

The LORD spoke to Moses saying:  22Then say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son, 23and I told you, “Let my son (Israel) go, so he may worship me.” But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.’ ”

• Let's review the history of nations who abused the Jewish people (Israel):

- The great Egyptian Army spoken of in Genesis under Pharoah  - GONE!
- The Babylonian Empire - GONE!

- The Roman Empire - GONE!

- The Grecian Empire - GONE!

- The Ottoman Empire - GONE!

However ISRAEL still lives; and always will !!!

Psalm 102:v13 & v16,17,18 says

3You will arise and have compassion on Zion,

for it is time to show favor to her;

the appointed time has come.

16For the Lord will rebuild Zion

and appear in his glory.

17He will respond to the prayer of the destitute;

he will not despise their plea.

18Let this be written for a future generation,

that a people not yet created may praise the Lord:

• Keep in mind this is NOT a political issue; this is a bible issue, by God the Creator of Israel !

Obama's Betrayal of ISRAEL ~ John Hagee

Editor's Note:

If you've been paying attention to International News and Israel, we have just witnessed a major betrayal of Israel by the USA under Obama. Obama recently chose to NOT VOTE on behalf of Israel and NOT use the Veto Power that the USA has!  Unbelievable!

Few can say it like Pastor Hagee!  Obama leaves behind him a trail of Corruption, Chaos in the Middle East and betrayal of Israel!  MEANWHILE what is the USA doing vis-a-vis Iran?  The USA has just given Iran $150Billion USD....which will be used to attack Israel !!!

However, the Jewish people are STILL the "apple of God's eye".  God will intervene on Israel's behalf!