“Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but out of them all Lord will deliver them.”
(Pslam 34:19)

Out Of Them All

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WND

The atheist's awakening

Posted By David Kupelian

December 25, 2018

The No. 1 argument, not only today but throughout history, against the existence of God is this: “If there’s a loving and all-powerful God, how can He allow the human race – His children, made in His image – to suffer so terribly?” This question has often been called “the rock of atheism.”

In “Letter to a Christian Nation,” atheist scientist Sam Harris hammers this point relentlessly. “At this very moment,” he writes, “millions of sentient people are suffering unimaginable physical and mental afflictions, in circumstances where the compassion of God is nowhere to be seen, and the compassion of human beings is often hobbled by preposterous ideas about sin and salvation.”

Attempting to rub the reader’s nose in the age-old mystery of suffering, Harris continues:

“Somewhere in the world, a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture, and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl’s parents believe – as you believe – that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this. Is it good that they believe this?”

“No,” answers Harris, who adds cryptically: “The entirety of atheism is contained in this response.”

From the day’s news, Harris calls forth still more examples of great suffering as proof God doesn’t exist:

The city of New Orleans, for instance, was recently destroyed by a hurricane. More than a thousand people died; tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions; and nearly a million were displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Hurricane Katrina struck shared your belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God. But what was God doing while Katrina laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Do you have the courage to admit the obvious? These poor people died talking to an imaginary friend.

Mankind has grappled for millennia with the mystery of suffering, and how it can be compatible with an all-powerful and benevolent God. Let’s take a fresh look at this question for a few minutes and see if perhaps we can catch a glimpse of an elusive but far greater reality.

To do this, I’d like to introduce another famous author angrily condemning God as cruel and sadistic. See if you can guess who the speaker is:

What reason have we, except our own desperate wishes, to believe that God is, by any standard we can conceive, “good”? Doesn’t all the prima facie evidence suggest exactly the opposite? … If God’s goodness is inconsistent with hurting us, then either God is not good or there is no God: for in the only life we know He hurts us beyond our worst fears and beyond all we can imagine.

So, who do you think this is, ranting and raving about God’s cruelty?

The ever-fuming atheist journalist Christopher Hitchens? Or perhaps the haughty atheist Oxford professor Richard Dawkins?

No, actually it’s another Oxford professor, far more famous than Dawkins, and whose intellect and writings dwarf Hitchens’. It’s C.S. Lewis, one of the twentieth century’s most influential authors and defenders of the Christian faith.

As you may know, Lewis was an atheist for the first part of his life. But through a gradual awakening during his early thirties, he became convinced of the existence of God, and later – with the help of “The Lord of the Rings” author J.R.R. Tolkien and another colleague – embraced the Christian faith. Through his books, such as “Mere Christianity” (voted the best Christian book of the 20th century by Christianity Today), “The Screwtape Letters” and many others, including of course his beloved series “The Chronicles of Narnia” – he has helped countless people in their journey toward God.

So, you must be thinking, these angry anti-God words from the great C.S. Lewis must have come from his early, whacked-out atheist years – right?

Wrong.

They were written after “Narnia,” after “Mere Christianity,” after all the acclaim of an appreciative Christian world. They were written, to be precise, after the 1960 death of Lewis’s wife, Joy.

For most of his life, well into his fifties, Lewis had been a bachelor. Then he met Helen Joy Davidman, a gifted American writer and poet of Jewish background who had converted from atheistic communism to Christianity, in part due to Lewis’s writings. After they corresponded for several years, she moved to England and they married in 1956, when Lewis was 57.

Both of them knew Joy had bone cancer – in fact, they were married at her hospital bedside.

Amazingly, Joy experienced a dramatic remission, during which time the couple lived together happily, and traveled and enjoyed each other to the fullest. But this blissful period was short-lived, and Joy died when her cancer returned with a vengeance in 1960.

In his 1961 book, “A Grief Observed,” Lewis records for posterity his intense bereavement, including his very real angers and doubts about everything he had written and taught about a “loving God” for decades, and does it in such a raw and uncensored manner that he originally released the book under the pseudonym of N.W. Clerk, so readers wouldn’t associate it with him.

Let’s see how Lewis responded to this severe personal suffering, and what conclusions they brought him to regarding God.

After first expressing his anguish over Joy’s death, Lewis gets straightaway to the big question: Where is God when you need Him? When you’re happy, the author muses, so happy that you don’t even seem to need His help, God is there welcoming you “with open arms.” But when you’re desperate, when no one else can possibly help or console you and you turn to Him, what do you get? “A door slammed in your face” – and then, silence. Wait all you like, but all you get is more silence.

“Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God,” Lewis writes. “The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him.”

Indeed, sounding like Sam Harris and other atheist authors, Lewis asks, Who or what can possibly make us conclude that God is actually good, when most everything that happens in this life seems to “suggest exactly the opposite”?

What about Christ? Doesn’t his selfless life and sacrificial death demonstrate God’s goodness, as all Christians affirm? Maybe so, says the tortured Lewis, but then, what if Jesus’s words on the cross – “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) – were actually the evidence of God’s malevolence? What if the dying Jesus had “found that the Being He called Father was horribly and infinitely different from what He had supposed” and that the whole savior-of-mankind thing was just a “trap,” one “long and carefully prepared” and “subtly baited” by God, who at the last minute, with Jesus nailed to the cross, finally sprung it? “The vile practical joke,” he speculates darkly, “had succeeded.”

Wow. What happened to the wise, deep, and enlightened C.S. Lewis, the one who for a generation introduced millions to the Christian faith?

In his literary fit of despair, Lewis goes on to ruminate about another “vile practical joke” God appears to have played – this time on him and his beloved. Every attempt he now makes at prayer, he complains, is “choked” by memories of all the prayers he and Joy had offered and all the false hopes they had clung to, encouraged by “false diagnoses, by X ray photographs, by strange remissions,” including one “temporary recovery” that seemed almost miraculous. So, although he and Joy had once dared to believe that perhaps God’s grace was guiding her recovery, writes Lewis, it now seems evident that while thus leading them on, God “was really preparing the next torture.”

The next morning, Lewis thinks better of his agonized rant, asking if it is really rational to believe in a “bad God,” or as he puts it more pungently, “the Cosmic Sadist, the spiteful imbecile?”

Starting now to come back to his senses, he asks, “Why do I make room in my mind for such filth and nonsense?” Isn’t all this fuming just a miserable attempt to transform pain into something more bearable, “the senseless writhings of a man who won’t accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it?”

‘Knocked silly’

Eventually, his grief and doubts about God fully vented, his rage spent, Lewis begins to reconnect with his natural understanding and reverence for his Creator. A few weeks have passed, he’s recovered from his physical exhaustion, and he’s more lighthearted. His inner relationship with God now restored, Lewis affirms the truism that “these things are sent to try us,” quickly clarifying that he realizes God wasn’t “trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t.”

Finally, Lewis admits a shattering but liberating personal truth:

He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize that fact was to knock it down. …

And he offers a useful metaphor to explain the powerfully redemptive use God makes of human suffering: Bridge players, he says, insist there must be money on the game or else no one will take it seriously. Life is just like that, he explains. One’s “bid” for good or evil, for eternal life or oblivion, won’t be serious if there is nothing clearly at stake. It is only, he says, when we realize “the stakes are raised horribly high,” when we see unmistakably that everything we have, everything we are or ever will be, is staked on the “game,” that we’ll take it seriously.

“Nothing less will shake a man – or at any rate a man like me – out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs,” Lewis confesses. “He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses.”

Why do you suppose one person who suffers a tremendous personal loss also loses his belief in God, while another goes through the same experience and – despite all his transient doubts and angers – emerges with his faith intact and stronger than ever?

Why did some people survive the Nazi Holocaust only to conclude there is no God – or no God worth knowing if He would allow such suffering – while other Holocaust survivors emerged from that ordeal with a deeper faith in the Almighty?

What words can describe this mysterious quality? Humility, blessedness, grace? It’s actually beyond words, perhaps some unexplainable connection between our soul and God, some back channel that enables us to keep attuned to a proper perspective regardless of difficult circumstances.

That special quality – C.S. Lewis had it – is the secret ingredient that makes the good things that happen to us truly good, and the bad things also “good” in the sense that they have a redemptive value, because God uses them to perfect us. In the same way, for people who live from the energy and motivation of pride, which in turn is connected to the invisible realm of evil, the bad things that happen remain bad (non-redemptive), but even the “good” things (success, wealth, fame) aren’t ultimately good, either, because they just build pride, in ever-increasing conflict with God.

But if we find this special quality I’m talking about, our lives, including all the difficulties and suffering, can become part of what Lewis called God’s “grand enterprise,” full of adventure and discovery.

I’m not talking necessarily about our outer journey of life, which may or may not be particularly exciting. I’m referring to the inner adventure we’re meant to experience, whereby through progressive realization and repentance, we are inwardly transformed in our Creator’s image, and for his purpose. The beauty of such a life is subtle and private – no one else will know about it – but it’s surely more magical than anything in “The Chronicles of Narnia” or “The Lord of the Rings” or the Harry Potter books or any other fantasy from the mind of man. Because we are living characters, set in a story not from the mind of man, but from the mind of God. And that story is full of wonder.

After all, said Einstein, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

We’re surrounded by miracles of God. An acorn falls to the ground and effortlessly grows into a towering oak tree – a transformation that, if it occurred in a few seconds, we’d consider pure magic. The entire world would be transfixed by this dramatic, paranormal phenomenon, news organizations from all continents would converge on the locale of the “miracle tree,” and all would be wonder and awe. But, since that exact same miracle unfolds in slow motion over the course of 50 years, we think nothing of it. We constantly walk past such marvels, oblivious.

In the same way, we also bypass the potential miracles of character growth within each of us because we don’t understand God’s methods. They can take years. And sometimes our miraculous transformation is brought about by adversity and loss – but only if we endure it with patience, dignity and faith.

To put it plainly, God works miracles through the things we suffer. Even Jesus Christ “learned obedience” that way, according to the Bible: “Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him” (Hebrews 5:8–9).

So, even if we are hurting, even if we are “knocked silly” like C.S. Lewis, all is not lost. Like the acorn that dies to itself but is transformed into a giant oak tree, when we die to self and come alive as something better – a change often brought about by the things we suffer – there’s magic in the air, the magic of a genuine and eternal walk with God.

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WND

Family photo 'too religious' for U.S. custom Christmas stamp

December 25, 2018

A program authorized by the U.S. Postal Service for companies to create custom Christmas stamps for consumers is under fire for rejecting one design because it included, in the background, the roofline of St. Basil’s Cathedral, the Moscow icon that probably more than any other image identifies the Russian city.

The structure not only is an important historic location but it is part of a UNESCO world heritage site. It’s been run by the government in Moscow for more than 80 years.

But even that’s apparently too much religion for the USPS program, according to officials at First Liberty Institute.

They have written a letter to Postmaster General Megan Brennan insisting that there be a review of an order that was submitted by Tavia Hunt under the program – and rejected repeatedly.

First Liberty explained the woman just “wanted to send Christmas cards to her friends and family with customized postage stamps recalling her family’s visit to Russia for the World Cup.”

“To fully express herself through these greetings, Tavia ordered customized stamps featuring a portrait of her family in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, a site so well-known for its cultural and architectural significance that it is included as part of a UNESCO world heritage site. Tavia ordered these customized stamps through Zazzle, who, in conjunction with Stamps.com, is a United States Postal Service (‘USPS’) approved licensed vendor for customized postage stamps,” the institute explained.

However, after the order was accepted, it was abruptly canceled.

“No one should have to go to court to send a Christmas card,” said Hiram Sasser, general counsel for First Liberty Institute. “USPS policies are so ambiguous and unequally applied that even its approved vendors don’t know what is allowed and what isn’t. The USPS has made Zazzle and Stamps.com agents of discrimination.”

When Zazzle and Stamps.com objected to the “religious” background of the proposed stamp, Hunt was told the order would be processed if the image was cropped to make the image of the historic cathedral “less obvious.”

Hunt accommodated the demand, but then saw her order canceled again.

“Ultimately, Zazzle chose to indefinitely ‘pause’ its production of custom postage for the entire nation rather than run afoul of the Postal Service’s comprehensive ban on religious images,” First Liberty said.

“All I wanted was to add something personal to my family’s Christmas cards. I was shocked that a family photo that includes a historic cathedral in the background is considered too religious by the Post Office,” Hunt said.

The organization’s letter questions how the regulations are being applied, and if they are being applied as the Post Office intends, their constitutionality.

“We write to request that you immediately rescind an unconstitutional United States Postal Service regulation that bans any depiction of religious content on customized posted,” the letter explains.

“If the USPS determines Mrs. Hunt’s stamps were properly rejected under its regulations, the regulations raise serious First Amendment concerns,” the letter said. “The USPS Customized Stamp Program’s total censorship on even incidentally religious images is unreasonable given that the USPS directly markets stamps to the public containing religious acknowledgements, such as nativities and menorahs.”

The letter points out to the U.S. government that the cathedral in questions was “seized and secularized by the soviet government in 1929 and is now part of the State Historical Museum.”

“If the USPS determines that Mrs. Hunt’s picture violates the criteria against religious depictions, then the regulations as construed are hostile toward religious expression. The USPS’s own discussion of its regulations acknowledges that customized stamps are a forum for private speech. … The regulation promotes unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.”

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CHRISTIANHEADLINES.COM

China Tells Police: Arrest Christians or Get Fired

Michael Foust | ChristianHeadlines.com Contributor | Thursday, December 20, 2018

Chinese authorities are setting quotas on the number of Christians that must be arrested and are threatening police officers with dismissal if they don’t meet the minimum standards, according to a magazine that monitors religious freedom in the country.

The magazine, Bitter Winter, reported that the National Security Bureau in Liaoning’s Dalian city sets the standards, which are based on a “100-point evaluation system.” Bitter Winter interviewed a police officer from the city.

“If the assigned quarterly arrest quotas are not met, the station chief faces losing his job,” Bitter Winter reported. “To fulfill the quotas, police stations distributed a list of previously arrested believers to local communities and building managers to keep an eye on such persons and report to the police if they notice suspicious activities.”

All faiths are targeted. That includes Falun Gong, a meditation-based religion.

The arrest of a local Christian church leader is worth 10 points on the 100-point scale, according to Bitter Winter. Police stations often “buy” lists of previously arrested Christians from other police stations.

“Police officers have been ordered to arrest any believer who has in possession three or more religious books and transfer such persons to the National Security Brigade for interrogation,” Bitter Winter reported.

The police officer told Bitter Winter he doesn’t want to arrest innocent Christians but fears the consequences if he doesn’t.

The news comes as China intensifies its new crackdown on Christianity. More than 100 Christians, including one of China’s most well-known pastors, were arrested Dec. 10 for not registering and for not obeying a new Chinese law that restricts proselytizing and posting Christian content online.

Early Rain Covenant Church is an unregistered congregation in Sichuan province, according to Open Doors, which reported the arrests.

Although many illegal house churches operate underground, Early Rain has worshiped openly. The pastor, Wang Yi, had defied authorities by posting sermons online and evangelizing on the streets.

Wang is known worldwide as a supporter of religious freedom. He met at the White House with President George W. Bush more than a decade ago.

The church released a letter from the pastor, who said he would use “non-violent” methods to oppose unbiblical laws, according to Open Doors.

“My Savior Christ also requires me to joyfully bear all costs for disobeying wicked laws,” Wang wrote.

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ACTIVIST POST

China Tracks Workers’ Brains; Now Tracking Children With “Smart” Tech Uniforms

By Nicholas West

December 22, 2018

If there is any country on Earth that is most emblematic of the rising governance model that is Technocracy, it is China. The many pieces to this structure have included much of what we see emerging in the U.S. with pervasive surveillance, biometrics and a notion of protecting the public by instituting pre-crime algorithms in police departments and travel. So, in many ways, China is the very large canary in the coal mine for anyone who wishes to attempt to slow the rapidity of our slide down the slippery slope toward scientific totalitarianism.

As I covered previously, China put the world on notice back in April that it was declaring full ownership over the brains of its workers and military with the imposition of brain-reading sensors in their respective hats, caps and helmets in order to determine efficiency and safety patterns, as well as general mental state.

Concealed in regular safety helmets or uniform hats, these lightweight, wireless sensors constantly monitor the wearer’s brainwaves and stream the data to computers that use artificial intelligence algorithms to detect emotional spikes such as depression, anxiety or rage.

The technology is in widespread use around the world but China has applied it on an unprecedented scale in factories, public transport, state-owned companies and the military to increase the competitiveness of its manufacturing industry and to maintain social stability.

[…]

The research team confirmed the device and technology had been used in China’s military operations but declined to provide more information.

(Source: Activist Post via South China Morning Post)

The Chinese government acknowledges that workers expressed initial concern over the perception that they were having their minds read, but after some acclimation “they got used to the device. It looked and felt just like a safety helmet. They wore it all day at work.” Future plans include use for flight operators in airline cockpits, but it “means the pilots may need to sacrifice some of their privacy for the sake of public safety.”

In the meantime, a new initiative is paving the way for training the next generation that this type of surveillance is completely normal: school uniforms equipped with tracking chips to supposedly fight truancy. Here we can see an integration of the range of surveillance tech that is at the disposal of technocrats everywhere, including the United States. My emphasis added.

The uniforms use chips to monitor the location of students and can record their exit and entryinto school, according to the tech firm behind the tracking devices.

“When students enter the school, the smart uniforms help take a photo or video of them,” explained principal Ran Ruxiang, whose elementary school in Guizhou province started rolling out smart uniforms last November.

[…]If students walk out of the school without permission, an automatic voice alarm will activate, the report said.

Paired with facial recognition devices installed on school doors, the smart uniforms can also sense if students swap uniforms.

The uniforms use chips to monitor the location of students and can record their exit and entryinto school, according to the tech firm behind the tracking devices.

“When students enter the school, the smart uniforms help take a photo or video of them,” explained principal Ran Ruxiang, whose elementary school in Guizhou province started rolling out smart uniforms last November.

[…]If students walk out of the school without permission, an automatic voice alarm will activate, the report said.

Paired with facial recognition devices installed on school doors, the smart uniforms can also sense if students swap uniforms.

“We choose not to check the accurate location of students after school, but when the student is missing and skipping classes, the uniforms help locate them,” Guizhou province school principal Lin Zongwu told the Global Times.

(Source: AFP/France24
Facial recognition on doors in schools already has been implemented in the U.S., like this one in Seattle. And people are beginning to embrace this technology on their own homes with Amazon’s facial recognition doorbell and a host of other similar gadgets.

The most insidious part of what is taking shape in China and across the world with the rise of smart tech surveillance and tracking is that children, having grown up without a reference point for any semblance of self-ownership, will now form a much easier population to oppress in the future.

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THE HINDU

All computers can now be monitored by govt. agencies

December 21, 2018

The Ministry of Home Affairs on Thursday issued an order authorising 10 Central agencies to intercept, monitor, and decrypt “any information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer.”

The agencies are the Intelligence Bureau, Narcotics Control Bureau, Enforcement Directorate, Central Board of Direct Taxes, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, Central Bureau of Investigation; National Investigation Agency, Cabinet Secretariat (R&AW), Directorate of Signal Intelligence (For service areas of Jammu & Kashmir, North-East and Assam only) and Commissioner of Police, Delhi.

According to the order, the subscriber or service provider or any person in charge of the computer resource will be bound to extend all facilities and technical assistance to the agencies and failing to do will invite seven-year imprisonment and fine.

The MHA gave the authorisation under 69 (1) of the Information Technology Act, 2000 which says that the Central government can direct any agency after it is satisfied that it is necessary or expedient to do so in the “interest of the sovereignty or integrity of India, defence of India, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence relating to above or for investigation of any offence.”

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THE FREE THOUGHT PROJECT

Mainstream Media Now Openly Reporting on the Elite Lining Up to Ingest the Blood of Children

What was once a conspiracy theory is now the subject of mainstream media reports as more and more of the elite begin lining up to ingest the blood of children.

By Matt Agorist

December 24, 2018

Once the talk of conspiracy theorists — the rich ingesting the blood of the young to foster longevity — is now a reality and an actual business in the United States. Not only is it a business but billionaires are actually admitting their interest in it. Now, even the mainstream media is reporting it.

“Could the secret to eternal youth be found in blood transfusions from young people? Some claim that transfusions with “young blood” from teenagers can reverse the aging process,” the report from CBS reads.

“I’m looking into parabiosis stuff, which I think is really interesting. This is where they did the young blood into older mice and they found that had a massive rejuvenating effect,” Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and adviser to Donald Trump told Inc. magazine. “I think there are a lot of these things that have been strangely under-explored.”

But it’s no longer an experiment with just mice. The startup company by Jesse Karmazin, Ambrosia, is doing this with humans, and the rich are lining up to get the blood of the young.

“Their brains are younger, their hearts. Their hair, if it was gray, it turns dark again,” Karmazin said of the treatment.

As Vanity Fair reports, Ambrosia, which buys its blood from blood banks, now has about 100 paying customers. Some are Silicon Valley technologists, like Thiel, though Karmazin stressed that tech types aren’t Ambrosia’s only clients and that anyone over 35 is eligible for its transfusions.

As The Free Thought Project reported in January, a study published in Science and Nature Medicine revealed that transfusing young mouse blood into old mice can actually prevent the symptoms of aging. This groundbreaking discovery could lead to medical breakthroughs and the development of new medicines. However, a report from the Vice health news outlet “Tonic” has pointed out far more sinister applications for this knowledge.

News Report

It was suggested in the report that aging elites are using the blood of young people as a type of youth serum. Now, we know that they actually are using it.

“We found that it was safe and feasible to administer infusions of young plasma weekly,” Dr. Sharon Shaw, an Alzheimer’s researcher at Stanford, said.

A similar claim was made by journalist Jeff Bercovici last year, after he conducted several interviewswith Silicon Valley aristocrats including Peter Thiel, and learned about this transfusion procedure called “parabiosis,” where the blood of young people is used to prevent aging.

“There are widespread rumors in Silicon Valley, where life-extension science is a popular obsession, that various wealthy individuals from the tech world have already begun practicing parabiosis, spending tens of thousands of dollars for the procedures and young-person-blood, and repeating the exercise several times a year,” Bercovici reported.

In his article, Bercovici also expressed concerns about a developing black market for young people’s blood.

While there is certainly nothing wrong with willing young adults selling their blood to the elite, the underlying theme of this practice has strong roots in the occult.

In most modern cultures, mass murder and human sacrifice still takes place out in the open under the cover of warfare, while many argue that cannibalism also still takes place but behind closed doors.

It is only in the past few hundred years that the practice of cannibalism among royals has not been publicized. In Europe, around the time of the American Revolution “corpse medicine” was very popular among the ruling class, Charles II even brewed his own.
Dr Richard Sugg of Durham University has conducted extensive research into the practice of corpse medicine among the royalty.

“The human body has been widely used as a therapeutic agent with the most popular treatments involving flesh, bone or blood. Cannibalism was found not only in the New World, as often believed, but also in Europe,” Sugg said.

“One thing we are rarely taught at school yet is evidenced in literary and historic texts of the time is this: James I refused corpse medicine; Charles II made his own corpse medicine; and Charles I was made into corpse medicine. Along with Charles II, eminent users or prescribers included Francis I, Elizabeth I’s surgeon John Banister, Elizabeth Grey, Countess of Kent, Robert Boyle, Thomas Willis, William III, and Queen Mary,” he added.

If this wasn’t strange enough, the current royal family of England claims to be direct descendants of Prince Vlad III Dracula of Wallachia (modern Romania). This was the sick and depraved ruler, Vlad the Impaler, who was known as a butcher and who eventually became the inspiration for the most famous vampire stories in history.

Aside from the gruesome historical and occult background of such practices, there is a lack of data that suggests the process even works. Despite Karmazin’s claims that “young blood is causing changes that appear to make the aging process reverse,” scientists have yet to identify a link between blood transfusions from the young and any tangible health benefits.

“There‘s just no clinical evidence [that the treatment will be beneficial], and you‘re basically abusing people‘s trust and the public excitement around this,” Stanford University neuroscientist Tony Wyss-Coray, who conducted a 2014 study of young blood plasma in mice, told Science magazine last summer, as reported by Vanity Fair.

(“I wondered afterward if it could be really possible that the day will come when under the guise of scientific experimentation and achievement and mercy killing they're going to literally drink blood to save themselves!” September 1975 – David Berg)

AMMC

RT

Indonesia raises volcano alert, reroutes all flights around erupting Anak Krakatau

December 27, 2018

© Antara Foto / Bisnis Indonesia / Nurul Hidayat / via Reuters

An ash column from the erupting Anak Krakatau volcano has forced Indonesia’s aviation chiefs to reroute all flights between Java and Sumatra islands, just days after a deadly tsunami triggered by the volcano killed more than 400.

“All flights are rerouted due to Krakatau volcano ash on red alert,” the government air-traffic control agency AirNav said in a release. After raising the volcano's alert level on Thursday, authorities went on to impose a five-kilometer exclusion zone.

Authorities continue to urge people to stay clear of the coast, already devastated after an underwater landslide caused by the eruption of Anak Krakatau triggered a deadly tsunami that killed at least 430 people last Saturday night.

The disaster also left nearly 1,500 people along the coastal community injured, with over 100 locals still missing. Amid fears that ongoing volcanic activity could trigger another tsunami, more than 21,000 have been evacuated to higher ground.

The massive death toll from the tragedy has been partially blamed on the tsunami warning system which failed to predict the deadly waves that devastated coastal towns around the Sunda Strait, between the islands of Sumatra and Java.

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Channel NewsAsia

Indonesia issues 'extreme weather' warning for tsunami-hit coast near Krakatoa

December 26, 2018

A plume of ash rises as Anak Krakatau erupts in Indonesia, Dec 23, 2018, in this picture obtained from social media. (Photo: Reuters/Susi Air)

TANJUNG LESUNG, Indonesia: Indonesian authorities warned on Wednesday (Dec 26) of "extreme weather and high waves" around the erupting Anak Krakatoa volcano, urging people to stay away from the coast already devastated by a tsunami that killed more than 400 people.

Clouds of ash spewed from Anak Krakatoa, almost obscuring the volcanic island where a crater collapse at high tide on Saturday sent waves up to 5m high smashing into the coast on the Sunda Strait, between Java and Sumatra islands.

Indonesia's meteorology agency (BMKG) said late on Tuesday the rough weather around the volcano could make its crater more fragile.

"We have developed a monitoring system focused specifically on the volcanic tremors at Anak Krakatau so that we can issue early warnings," said BMKG head Dwikorita Karnawati, adding that a 2km exclusion zone had been imposed.

The confirmed death toll is 429, with at least 154 people missing. More than 1,400 people were injured and thousands of people have moved to higher ground.

The vast archipelago, which sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire", has suffered its worst annual death toll from disasters in more than a decade.

The latest disaster, coming during the Christmas season, evoked memories of the Indian Ocean tsunami triggered by an earthquake on Dec 26, 2004, which killed 226,000 people in 14 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia.

The Saturday evening tsunami followed the collapse of an area of the volcano island of about 64 hectares, or about 90 football pitches.

The waves generated engulfed fishing villages and holiday beach parties at resorts, leaving a coast littered with crushed vehicles, felled trees. Chunks of metal, wooden beams and household items have been strewn across roads and rice fields.

In 1883, the volcano then known as Krakatoa erupted in one of the biggest blasts in recorded history, killing more than 36,000 people in a series of tsunami, and lowering the global surface temperature by one degree Celsius with its ash.

Anak Krakatoa (child of Krakatoa) is the island that emerged from the area in 1927, and has been growing ever since.

Rescuers were trying on Wednesday to reach several villages still inaccessible by road.

Thousands of people are staying in tents and temporary shelters like mosques or schools, with dozens sleeping on the floor or in crowded public facilities.

Ayub, a 20-year old fisherman sleeping with his family in a tent provided by the military, said conditions were not ideal due to the rain, but that they had enough to eat.

"Everything is destroyed ... My boat, motorcycle, house - all of it," he told Reuters.

"The most important thing is we’re alive.”

MailOnline

Earthquake from Mount Etna volcano jolts Sicily, injuring ten and sending panicked villagers fleeing their homes as cracks appear in the street

• Quake was one of 1,000 tremors this week linked to volcano's ongoing eruption

• It was 4.8 magnitude and occurred at the relatively shallow depth of 0.6 miles

• Rural homes and older structures were damaged including a Madonna statue

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

PUBLISHED: 09:16, 26 December 2018 | UPDATED: 11:04, 26 December 2018

Article

STRANGE SOUNDS

Powerful earthquake hits Venezuela creating wide cracks in the ground and walls, damaging homes and churches

December 27, 2018

Article

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Until next week...Happy New Year and God bless you.
Almondtree Productions

"God is our refuge and strength, a help in the afflictions that have come heavily upon us. Therefore will we not fear when the earth is troubled, and the mountains are removed into the depths of the seas. Their waters have roared and been troubled, the mountains have been troubled by his might. Pause."
(Psalm 46:1-3)