“But the ways of the righteous shine like light; they go on and shine, until the day be fully come.”
(Proverbs 4:18)
Shine Like Light

WND

'THE RISE OF NATIONALISM CAN NO LONGER BE DENIED'

Exclusive: Theodore Roosevelt Malloch says U.K. 'Independence Day' bodes well for Trump

Published: June 24, 2016

THEODORE ROOSEVELT MALLOCH

June 23, 2016, will go down in British history as a most significant date – rivaling VE Day, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and even the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The vote to leave the EU is that important!

Like our own Fourth of July, June 23 will forevermore become known as Independence Day.

This breaking news story appears shocking to many, but is good for Donald Trump. And it rounds out a very bad week for President Obama and Hillary Clinton – Brexit plus the Supreme Court decision on immigration. Take note: the rise of nationalism can no longer be denied. It is a growing phenomenon not to be dismissed or ignored.

The British people in a democratic action have made their voice known and voted to leave the European Union. Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon will now be invoked, and Great Britain will no longer be tied to the yoke of Brussels. It will no longer have to foot the excessive bill presented by the Eurocrats or follow their dictates.

The euroskeptics, led by the likes of likely future Prime Minister Boris Johnson and cabinet members such as Michael Gove, Iain Duncan Smith and Priti Patel, have won the day and prevailed. As the queen herself purportedly said, “Give me three good reasons for staying in Europe.” The prime minister has announced he will step down by October, as he was utterly defeated.

The Union Jack can fly high again.

This does not mean the British won’t buy German cars, drink French wine, employ Polish plumbers or stop eating Italian pasta. What it does mean is that it will no longer give rise or be party to a European superstate that is controlled outside its national boundaries and its legally defined sovereignty.

Freedom was the rallying cry, and in a 52 to 48 percent victory (with over 72 percent turnout) the British people have accomplished what was thought impossible and unlikely only a few months ago. The argument for “taking your country back” won out over the fear mongering of David Cameron (Conservative leader), Jeremy Corbyn (Labour leader) and Tim Farron (Liberal leader) – and the entire British establishment. The elites have lost!

The vote broke into interesting regional differences with London and the South and Scotland voting to Remain, while the rest of England voted overwhelmingly to Leave.

Make no mistake, this is a popular revolution; it is nothing less. One question it raises worldwide is this: Is the reaction against globalism the new political tidal wave, and does it signal an eventual Trump presidency?

The effect on the British pound and on global markets is already being felt with massive selloffs and hits to the value of sterling. These are not thought to be lasting. Stabilization will prevail. But it will be a volatile period as the world adjusts to newfound populism and as the rest of Europe comes to terms with the great divorce. Indeed, a number of other European countries, from the Netherlands to Denmark to possibly France, may in time hold their own referendums, and the European project in the form of Brusselsocracy could be shattered and taken down – brick by brick.

When all is said and done there are four major conclusions to draw from the historic Brexit vote. They have to do with liberty, security, economy and global relations.

Taking up the cause of Locke and casting aside the philosophy of the European Rousseau, the Brits have cemented their place on the side of liberty. The Anglo-Saxon rule of law and the democratic spirit of a free people have triumphed over statism and the centralization of power.

The security of Britain was paramount in the campaign, and the notion that they would not be able to control their own borders clearly struck home. The immigration issue and the absolute fear of tides of people flowing into the country unabated gave rise to much of the populist and nationalist sentiment. The very posters used depicted throngs of masses in line to enter from outside the EU. A picture tells a thousand words, as the slogan goes. Britain also rejected the EU call for a standing army, instead wanting to double down on NATO, which has served it and the West so well.

The economic consequence of leaving Europe weighed heavily in the debate, and nearly every economist, all the banks and most of the large companies put forth a case that the economic costs of departure would be great. They lost.

The people wanted democracy more than a loaf of bread or more cash into the pockets of the “wankers” – as the super-rich are known here in the U.K. The cost of staying in Europe was actually equally great, and this case won the day. Loathing the unelected European institutions and their high expense and undemocratic nature has proved untenable for the U.K., at least.

Britain’s place in the world is well established both historically, in the Commonwealth, and in terms of size and role. Did tying its cart to a struggling and desperate union of 28 very different European partners make any sense? The answer was “No.”

Britain never joined the Euro currency or the European Central Bank, so the decision to leave all the other trappings of a failing Europe should not be made out to be more than it is. Britain is and will always be an island nation, apart from the continent and part of a “special relationship” with its distant cousin and former colony, the only superpower, the United States of America.

After the historic Brexit vote, this “special relationship” should be reassessed as the future of liberty depends on it. It is proper to ask: Will it survive the rest of this 21st century? Is it now perhaps more important than ever?

Our mutual and abiding interests, common worldview, congruence of sympathies, and the undeniably unique heritage of the Anglo-American tradition of LIBERTY should be our true future together. In my view with a shared Whig history, the King James Bible, the Anglican Church, long historical memory – all of these things make up a valuable Anglo-Atlanticist patrimony. Britain and America belong together, not in Europe.

The future will need such Anglo-American leadership more than ever before. Perhaps, herein lie the true “sinews of lasting peace,” as Churchill himself phrased it.

But the words that ring today throughout Britain, chiming from steeples and sung by loud choristers – in every town and in every Hobbit-like shire are those of the past civil-rights leader, “Free at last, free at last, Thank God almighty, we are free at last.

The Face Of Love

Life is not fair. Job understood this when he said, “Man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble.”1 In a country that is as rich as ours, millions of people go to bed hungry every night. That is, if they are lucky enough to have a bed or a home, for that matter. The amazing thing is, many people blame God for the misfortunes of humanity.

On a very cold, winter’s day, a young girl stood on a busy street corner begging for food, money, or whatever she could get. She stood there cold and shivering as vicious winds penetrated her thin, tattered clothes. Hundreds of people walked past her but only a few dared to look in her direction. A well-dressed, prosperous looking gentleman looked at the young girl and shook his head before getting into his expensive automobile. When he arrived at his huge, warm, luxurious home, he sat down at the dinner table with his family and began to feast on a meal that was fit for a king.

After eating his dessert, his mind went back to the hungry little girl that he had seen earlier. As he thought about her thin, dirty, shivering body, he started questioning God for allowing such conditions to exist. He said, “God, how can you let this happen? Why don’t you do something to help that little girl?” He heard God responding to his question with the words, “I did. I created you.”

God blesses us so that we can bless others. But instead, too many people have subscribed to the philosophy, “I got mine. You get yours.” They don’t care if you have enough food as long as their refrigerator is full. They don’t care if gangs terrorize your neighborhood as long as their community is safe. They don’t care if you have health care as long as their family is insured. There are a lot of problems in this world. But God has already done what He needs to do to solve them. He created you.—Burton Barr Jr.

WND

CHRISTIANS ABDUCTED BY ISLAMISTS TELL STUNNING ESCAPE STORY

Fled from locked basement through tunnel, walked 2 days across desert

Published: June 20, 2016

BOB UNRUH

Three Christians working with Bibles4Mideast who were reported missing a week ago have been reunited with their coworkers and are telling a stunning story of abduction and threats and even a mysterious tunnel escape from a locked basement prison and two days’ walk across the desert to safety.

Pastor Paul Ciniraj, the director of Bibles4Mideast, sent WND a report on the return of Pastors Stephan and Samuel and Evangelist James on Monday evening in the Middle East.

WND reported a week ago that the three were attacked and beaten by “Muslim extremists” and then disappeared after they began to be suspicious over their safety in a hospital and asked to be discharged.

The members of the organization that delivers Bibles to underground house churches at various locations in 17 countries in the Middle East, a region entirely dominated at this point by Islam, reportedly got into a taxi en route home, then vanished.

The ministry, which for security reasons does not disclose its exact locations and operations, said on Monday the escape by the three men was miraculous.

They were tired and weak because of food and sleep deprivation and their long walk across the desert.

But they described how they had been returning from a worship service June 12 when they were accosted and attacked.

“Extremists jumped on us with iron pipes and stickers, took the Bibles from our hands by force, [tore them and threw them away].”

Then “somebody started beating us.”

The attackers were distracted when a bus of travelers stopped nearby, and those rescuers took the three to the hospital.

There, however, the missionaries were suspicious of what was happening and asked to be discharged.

They then hired a taxi, a “fake,” called that because they are unlicensed.

“There were two other passengers also inside the taxi. But when [the] car moved, they [pointed a] revolver toward us,” the three reported.

At that point they were bound and gagged, assaulted again and locked in a cellar that had the odor of dead bodies.

There was only one door, and “We thought our death is near.”

But “after three or four days,” they saw a light spread over the room and sensed “costly perfume.”

“While we were praying we saw a small creature was going through a small hole. We got a nail from the wall and tried to make the hole bigger. We felt there would be … some chance for us to escape. So we [dug] the hole deeper and bigger. And we saw a small door opening to a narrow passage,” they said.

One hundred meters into the tunnel, it opened up into the desert outside the terrorists’ compound, they said.

In the moonlight, they started following a large bird, whether eagle or falcon, they didn’t know.

“More than 42 hours we walked through the desert. It was very hot. Temperature was … above 45°C (113 °F) and [windy],” they wrote in the report.

They rested during the second night, and in the morning, they saw a house and knocked on the door.

“Our fellow missionaries opened the door and were astonished seeing us. We embraced together and rejoiced in our Lord,” they said.

WND had reported earlier that ministry officials had searched the trio’s route, nearby hospitals and even airports.

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REUTERS

In Jerusalem's cramped Old City, Christians feel the squeeze

JERUSALEM, JUNE 21 | BY SLEIMAN JAD

An Orthodox Christian priest walks in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City June 21, 2016. REUTERS/RONEN ZVULUN

When hundreds of Jewish nationalists marched through the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City this month, waving banners and chanting songs in what has become an annual ritual, it wasn't only Muslims watching warily. Christians were, too.

Religious tension is nothing new in a city that has been the home of three faiths for centuries. But the outlook for the Christian minority, squeezed inside the ancient walls of the Old City and caught in the midst of a months-long wave of violence involving Muslims targeting Jews, has seldom looked tougher.

While the Muslim population rises steadily, now making up 75 percent of the 38,000 residents in the city's alleys, and the Jews increasingly make their presence felt via the annual march and their settlements beyond the Jewish Quarter, the number of Christians has not risen in 50 years, hovering around 7,000.

"If a thousand Muslims leave Jerusalem, that's one thing," said Jamal Khader, head of the Latin Patriarchate Seminary near Bethlehem. "But if a thousand Christians leave, you threaten the identity of Jerusalem as a city of multiple faiths."

That concern is clear to Basil Saed, 28, the owner of a gym in the Christian Quarter. After an attempted stabbing by a Muslim in the Old City several weeks ago, Saed came face-to-face with an Israeli military policeman hunting for the suspect.

"He was trembling he was so terrified," said Saed, a prize-winning weightlifter who wears a large gold cross around his neck. "In an instant he could have shot and killed me."

To Saed, both Israel's tight security and the Muslim unrest make him uneasy, and raise questions for his community.

"If we weren't strong, we'd all be gone by now," he said.

SQUEEZED OUT

In the narrow, cobbled streets of their quarter, Christian families have been running arts and souvenir shops for generations, earning money from the steady flow of religious and other tourists who flock to sites like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site where Jesus is believed to have been buried.

With the surge in violence that Jerusalem and surrounding areas have experienced since last October, tourism has become more erratic. Anecdotally, locals and tour guides say visitor numbers have dropped off sharply, hurting trade.

Residents like Youseph Shbeita, 35, the third generation owner of a religious icon shop near the Holy Sepulchre, are determined to hang on, seeing no option. But they can understand why younger Christians would want to leave.

"When you're in the minority, you have to go with the flow," he said, expressing a sense of responsibility for trying to preserve a Christian presence in the city where Jesus preached. "We just hope for calm, always for calm."

Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer and activist who closely follows the community, said he feared it was being squeezed out by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with its tendency to focus on the Jewish and Muslim narratives.

"Since much of the epicenter of this round of violence has been in and around the Old City, it has increased their vulnerability," he said, pointing to the lack of political and social institutions for Christians to depend on.

"I think it's safe to say there are more Christian Palestinians in Chicago today than there are in Jerusalem."

Most of the Christians in Jerusalem are Palestinians. Historically, the community has played a prominent role in the opposition to Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, putting it at odds with Israel.

Inside the walls of the Old City, however, there is still a degree of mutual dependence - Muslim merchants run stores on land owned by the Christian church, and Israeli Jews stop to buy fruit or a felafel from Muslim and Christian stallkeepers.

Even so, Saed, the weightlifter, doesn't feel confident.

"For now, the Muslims and Jews are fighting each other," he said. "But when they stop they'll both look at us."

(Reporting by Jad Sleiman; Editing by Luke Baker/Mark Heinrich)

***

WND

ABORTIONIST HISSES AT PRO-LIFER: 'I LOVE' KILLING UNBORN BABIES

Holds scissors near man's throat in 'demonic' confrontation outside clinic

Published: June 19, 2016

An abortionist in California, apparently upset by the presence of a pro-life activists standing outside his clinic, charged through the front doors of the facility while wielding a pair of scissors and proclaimed his “love” of tearing unborn babies apart in the womb.

The bizarre exchange with Dr. Robert Santella outside his Family Planning Associates abortion facility in San Diego was captured on video and uploaded to YouTube, reported LifeSite News.

“Stinky breath!” screamed Santella when the sidewalk counselor told him to repent.

“That’s pretty evil of you,” the counselor responds.

The abortionist then raises the scissors in his right hand as if to stab the counselor in the neck.

“That’s what you do to babies,” the pro-life activist calmly replies. He mocks the abortionist and tells him to “keep tearing the babies apart.”

“I will … I love it. I love it!” Santella sneers.

In a different version of the video, another pro-lifer at the scene describes the abortionist’s demeanor as “demonic.”

The counselor also urges the abortionist to accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.

“Oh, I never go to Christ,” Santella says repeatedly. “I don’t listen to Christ!”

“I do have a darkened heart,” he affirms, “very, very much so.”

A smiling security guard who witnessed the whole incident eventually calls Santella back inside the building, claiming he had a phone call.

In 1983, Santella’s license was suspended for 60 days by the California State Board of Medical Quality Assurance. He was also put on probation for five years after injuring three female patients and contributing to another woman’s miscarriage, reported the news site.

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LifeSiteNews

Pope’s rhetoric against ‘fundamentalist’ Catholics could help pave way for active persecution

John-Henry Westen

From the desk of the editor.

Editor’s note: This is part 3 of a series examining Pope Francis’ papacy over the last three years.

June 15, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – It’s one of the most frequent talking points of Pope Francis. It’s definitely part of his appeal for the media and simultaneously one of the most hurtful things for those inside the Church for whom the faith means everything. I’m speaking of the Pope’s penchant for castigating faithful adherents of the Catholic faith as “obsessed,” “doctors of the law,” “neo-pelagian,” “self-absorbed,” “restorationist,” “fundamentalist,” “rigid,” “ideological,” “hypocritical,” and much more.

The effect of the all-too-frequent barrage from the lips of the Pontiff himself is potentially deadly. It confirms the prejudice of the world against faithful Christians as the media constantly portrays them – as hypocrites and worse. Moreover, it permits the false categorization of adherent Christians with fundamentalist Islamic radicals who need to be suppressed to ensure public safety.

Who can blame the media for such comparisons when the Pope has made them himself? “Fundamentalism is a sickness that we find in all religions,” said the Pope in November while flying home from Africa. “Among Catholics there are many, not a few, many, who believe to hold the absolute truth,” he added. “They go ahead by harming others with slander and defamation, and they do great harm. … And it must be combated.”

Given the inordinate amount of time he spends condemning them, it would be ludicrous to suggest the Pope is only speaking of the infinitesimal number of practicing Catholics who do have a deranged puritanical bent.

It has now been freely admitted by Vatican authorities that there was an extreme liberal group of Cardinals known as the St. Gallen group who backed the papal election of Cardinal Bergoglio. But even if Pope Francis has an ideological dispute with conservative Cardinals such as Cardinal Raymond Burke, his repeated public criticisms against Catholics who hold to the “absolute truth” is potentially a great danger to the faithful.

In addition to the fact that Pope Francis’ remarks along these lines contradict his predecessors (see end of this article), they are a grave danger because secular authorities are all too willing to crush freedom of religion for Christians with the excuse that they are stomping out dangerous fundamentalism. With the Pope’s own words they can equate Catholics who would hold to all of the Church’s teachings with Islamic or Hindu fundamentalists who employ violence and torture as means of conquest.

Recall the chilling words of Princeton Professor Robert George in his famous address, “No more comfortable Catholicism.” He noted that the world has no animosity toward a nominal Catholic who just goes to Mass, but it’s much different when it comes to one who “actually believes what the Church teaches on issues such as marriage and sexual morality and the sanctity of human life.”

He said that it is still possible to be a “safe” or “comfortable Catholic” today “if one in fact does not believe what the Church teaches, or, for now at least, even if one does believe those teachings but is prepared to be completely silent about them.” Professor George warned, however, that there are severe consequences awaiting those who will not yield to the pressure. “To be a witness to the Gospel today is to make oneself a marked man or woman,” he said.

It is exactly that distinction -- between faithful and nominal Catholics -- that the world is reading into Pope Francis’ regular haranguing of “fundamentalist” Catholics as opposed to others. The frequency is such that it is beyond the scope of this article to point to all the instances in the last three years of the pontificate. But these few should exemplify the point (emphasis added throughout):

- From the September 19, 2013 Jesuit magazine interview: “If the Christian is a restorationist, a legalist, if he wants everything clear and safe, then he will find nothing... Those who today always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‘security,’ those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists—they have a static and inward-directed view of things. In this way, faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies.”

- Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel) released November 26, 2013: “A supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline leads instead to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying. … Since it is based on carefully cultivated appearances, it is not always linked to outward sin; from without, everything appears as it should be. But if it were to seep into the Church, it would be infinitely more disastrous than any other worldliness which is simply moral.”

- June 2014 interview with Spanish-language magazine La Vanguardia: “The three religions, we have our fundamentalist groups, small in relation to all the rest. A fundamentalist group, although it may not kill anyone, although it may not strike anyone, is violent. The mental structure of fundamentalists is violence in the name of God.”

- In his October 19, 2014 closing address to Extraordinary Synod on the Family, Pope Francis spoke of “traditionalists” with their “hostile inflexibility,” and their failure to allow themselves to be “surprised by God.”

- In the January 2015 book-length interview, The Name of God is Mercy, Pope Francis says “scholars of the law” are “the principal opposition to Jesus; they challenge him in the name of doctrine.” And he adds, “This approach is repeated throughout the long history of the Church.”

- In a September 2015 radio interview with Radio Milenium, Pope Francis said, “Fundamentalists keep God away from accompanying his people, they divert their minds from him and transform him into an ideology. So in the name of this ideological god, they kill, they attack, destroy, slander. Practically speaking, they transform that God into a Baal, an idol. … No religion is immune from its own fundamentalisms. In every religion there will be a small group of fundamentalists whose work is to destroy for the sake of an idea, and not reality.”

- In his closing address to the Synod on the Family in October of 2015, the Pope condemned “the closed hearts which frequently hide even behind the Church’s teachings or good intentions, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and superficiality, difficult cases and wounded families."

- Pope Francis’ homily on January 18, 2016 reads: “Christians who say ‘it’s always been done that way,’ and stop there have hearts closed to the surprises of the Holy Spirit. They are idolaters and rebels who will never arrive at the fullness of the truth.”

- The official Vatican radio report on his homily of June 9, 2016 reads: “Pope Francis warned on Thursday against an excessive rigidity, saying those within the Church who tell us ‘it’s this or nothing’ are heretics and not Catholics.”

Pope Francis has himself recognized the increasing “educated” or “polite persecution” that seeks to restrict rights to freedom of religion and conscientious objection. What he evidently does not see is that his rhetoric against Catholics who he perceives as “fundamentalist” is providing fodder for the enemies of Truth to oppress faithful Catholics, even violently. Let us pray with urgency that Pope Francis might have his sight restored.

Quotes from Church documents and his predecessors that run counter to the sentiments expressed by Pope Francis (emphasis added throughout):

- St. Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 2:14: “Therefore, brethren, stand fast: and hold the traditions, which you have learned, whether by word or by our epistle.”

- The canon of the Mass in the Extraordinary Form as prayed for over 1000 years noted that the Mass was offered the Church’s hierarchy and “all orthodox believers of the catholic and apostolic faith.”

- Speaking to bishops of Latin America in 1979, Pope St. John Paul II said: “To be watchful for purity of doctrine, the basis in building up the Christian community, is therefore, together with the proclamation of the Gospel, the primary and irreplaceable duty of the Pastor, of the Teacher of the faith. How often Saint Paul emphasized this, convinced as he was of the seriousness of the accomplishment of this duty (cf. 1Tim 1:3 –7; 18 –20; 4:11, 16; 2Tim 1:4–14). Over and above unity in love, unity in truth is always urgent for us.”

- In 1984 Pope St. John Paul II told bishops from Chile: “Our firmness will come from this solid foundation, since the Church today, despite all the difficulties that encircle it, cannot speak in a way different from that which Christ spoke. For this reason, the Church, especially the Pastors, should be united around the Absolute Truth, that is God, and proclaim it in all its integrity and purity.”

- Pope St. John Paul II wrote in the 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor: “An attitude of this sort (one who makes his own weakness the criterion of the truth about the good) corrupts the morality of society as a whole, since it encourages doubt about the objectivity of the moral law in general and a rejection of the absoluteness of moral prohibitions regarding specific human acts, and it ends up by confusing all judgments about values.”
- In a speech made in the Vatican Basilica on the eve of his election to the papacy, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said: “Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be ‘tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine’, seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires.”
- Under Pope Benedict, in 2007 the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith taught: “For a long time, the reason for evangelization has not been clear to many among the Catholic faithful. It is even stated that the claim to have received the gift of the fullness of God’s revelation masks an attitude of intolerance and a danger to peace.”

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BREAKINGISRAELNEWS

Rabbi Kanievsky Consoles Grieving Father: “The Messiah is Already Here”

By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz June 15, 2016 , 11:30 am

“For the B’nei Yisrael shall sit solitary many days without king and without prince and without sacrifice and without pillar and without ephod or teraphim; afterward shall B’nei Yisrael return and seek Hashem their God and David their king; and shall come trembling unto Hashem and to His goodness in the end of days.” Hosea 3: 4-5 (The Israel Bible™)

Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, a leading authority in Haredi Jewish society, seen in the ultra orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Bnei Brak. September 13, 2011. (Photo: Yaakov Naumi/Flash90)

During a condolence call in Bnei Brak, Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, a leading authority in mainstream Ultra-Orthodox Judaism, promised a grieving father whose son had just passed away, “The redemption is closer than ever”.

It was reported in Kooker, a Hebrew language Orthodox news service, that Rabbi Kanievsky approached the bereaved man, who asked the rabbi, “How can you console me, when my dear son left behind ten orphans?”

Rabbi Kanievsky answered him, “Don’t be sad. The Messiah is already here. He will reveal himself very soon and your son will see his children again.”

The grieving father took comfort in Rabbi Kanievsky’s words, Kooker wrote.

It was reported last July that Rabbi Kanievsky predicted the Messiah would come this year since it is the year after a Shmittah (sabbatical) year. According to an ancient Jewish tradition quoted in the Talmud, the Oral Law, the Messiah will come in the year after the seven-year Shmittah cycle ends. This year in the Hebrew calendar will end on the evening of October 2.

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CBNNEWS

Does the New Petra Discovery Hint at Biblical Prophecy?

06-13-2016

You've most likely seen this famous, ancient site in movies like "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" and "The Mummy Returns."

Biblical prophets like Daniel and Isaiah and even Jesus spoke about the monumental structure at Petra in connection to end time prophecy.

Now, archaeologists have discovered an enormous platform has been hiding in plain sight near this amazing place in Jordan.

Using Google Earth, high satellite imagery, and drones, archaeologists Sarah Parcak and Christopher Tuttle were able to locate and observe the long-hidden edifice, which consists of a 184-by-161-foot platform that encloses a slightly smaller platform within.

The interior platform has a small 28-by-28-foot building centered on the top that opens to the east. Along the east side it appears the structure was lined with a row of columns that once supported a monumental staircase.

According to a study recently published in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, the structure sits only about a half mile south of the ancient city's center. It is roughly as long as an Olympic-size swimming pool and twice as wide.

However, it is still unclear what the structure's function was.

"The enormous platform has no known parallels to any other structure in Petra," archaeologists say.

Petra draws hundreds of thousands of visitors from across the world every year because of its link to biblical prophecy.

The Bible identifies Bozrah (Hebrew), or Petra (Greek), as one of the significant areas during the end times. Prophetic passages like Micah 2:12 and Isaiah 63:1-6 describe the area of Petra in Jordan as the place where Jews flee when the Antichrist begins persecution. It is where they remain safely protected by God during the Great Tribulation.

The message spoken by the prophets are even echoed in Matthew 24:15-16 when Jesus warns, "when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains."

The good news is that according to the book of Daniel, Jordan is the one place the Antichrist will not be able to overcome.

"He will enter the glorious land of Israel, and many nations will fall, but Moab, Edom, and the best part of Ammon will escape," Daniel 11:41 says.

Moab, Edom and Ammon are all in Jordan. In fact, Ammon which is now known as Amman, is the capital and most populous city of Jordan.

Although it's uncertain what the newly discovered structure near Petra was used for or if it will serve any purpose in the future, one thing is sure: hundreds of thousands of tourists visit Petra, Jordan, each year.

One day, as these prophecies indicate, it may very well be a large group of Jewish refugees making the trip to these iconic buildingshewn from the red sandstone.

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CNN

UNHCR: Refugee numbers reach highest ever recorded

By Eve Parish, CNN

Updated 1544 GMT (2344 HKT) June 18, 2015

A Syrian refugee mother comforts her children, after being rescued from a fishing boat carrying 219 people.

Story highlights

UNHCR: More than half the world's refugees are children

42,500 people were displaced every day on average in 2014

U.N. High Commissioner: "The world is at war"

(CNN)There are more refugees in the world today than ever previously recorded -- and more than half are children, the United Nations refugee agency said Thursday.

Nearly 60 million people were counted as forcibly displaced in 2014, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

If those people were the population of one country, it would be the 24th largest in the world.

One person out of every 122 on the planet is said to be either a refugee, internally displaced or seeking asylum. Last year on average, each day saw another 42,500 people driven from their homes.

'World at war'

The conflict in Syria has been the biggest single driver of displacement, according to the refugee agency's Global Trends report -- but far from the only one.

"One clearly gets the impression that the world is at war -- and indeed many areas of the world are today in a completely chaotic situation," said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres at a news conference earlier.

In 2014, 13.9 million people became newly displaced -- a record number for a single year. Just 126,800 refugees were able to return to their homes -- the fewest in 31 years.

Millions of Syrians displaced

urkey became the world's top refugee-hosting nation in 2014, with 1.59 million Syrians within its borders. Within the EU, Germany and Sweden received the most asylum applications.

Most refugees come from the Middle East, with 7.6 million Syrians taking to the road within their own country, and 3.88 million having become refugees.

Many more come from sub-Saharan Africa, fleeing conflicts in the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and elsewhere.

In Asia, the report highlights growing numbers of people fleeing Myanmar.

And in the Americas, there was a rise in the number of people seeking to escape gang violence in Central America.

Asylum claims in the United States were up 44% over the year.

Agencies sound alarm

The Institute for Economics and Peace, a global think tank, also sounded the alarm about the growing refugee crisis.

On Wednesday it said in its Global Peace Index that almost 1% of the world's population are now refugees or internally displaced people -- the highest level since 1945.

It said violence cost the global economy $14.3 trillion last year. Amnesty International: Worst refugee crisis since WWII 03:43

In a briefing paper, Amnesty International also called the current refugee crisis the worst since the Second World War.

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RT

65 million people displaced worldwide, breaking all records – UNHCR

Published time: 20 Jun, 2016 10:03

UN has released alarming displacement statistics claiming 65 million people are now displaced worldwide. Syria and Afghanistan have raised the bar to set the new world record. And progress in the work being done is slow, the agency head says.

According to UNHCR the current figure stands at 65.3 million, up from 2014’s record of 60 million displaced since World War II. The refugee influx into Europe last year has contributed by 10 percent, the agency said on Monday.

“An unprecedented 65.3 million people around the world have been forced from home. Among them are nearly 21.3 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18,” UNHCR writes in remarks to its Global

The figure also jumped by 50 percent in the last five years, meaning that one in every 113 people on Earth is now a refugee, an IDP or an asylum-seeker.

"The refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean and arriving on the shores of Europe, the message that they have carried is that if you don't solve problems, problems will come to you," the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said at a news briefing.

"It's painful that it has taken so long for people in the rich countries to understand that," he continued. "We need action, political action to stop conflicts, that would be the most important prevention of refugee flows."

On average, 24 people were being displaced any given minute in 2015, amounting to 34,000 people per day. In 2005 that figure was only six per minute. And the number has doubled since 1997. The Syria war raised that by another 50 percent alone when it started in 2011.

Put together, the fighting in Syria, Afghanistan, Burundi and South Sudan have led to displacements amounting to 21.3 million people, half of them children, according to the agency. More than half of the displaced come from three countries – Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia.

In wealthier industrialized nations, a record two million asylum claims were filed in 2015, the report says. Nearly 100,000 stood for unaccompanied children. That is not only three times the number since 2014, it’s also the global record. Of those northern nations, Germany continued to lead with 441,900 claims, followed by the United States, with 172,700 claims – mostly from southern neighbors, where people fled from gang and drug-related violence.

The High Commissioner is also worried that the huge influx precipitated a rise in xenophobia, something he calls “a very defining featured of the environment in which we work.

"Barriers are rising everywhere - and I'm not just talking of walls. But I'm talking about legislative barriers that are coming up, including in countries in the industrialized world that have been for a long time bastions of principle in defending the fundamental rights linked to asylum."

Commenting on the refugee deal between the EU and Turkey, Grandi has criticised the mentality of believing the problem is solved once the European flow is halted.

"The fact that that flow has stopped does not mean the problem of displacement has ended. It may have ended for some countries that don't have to deal with it anymore, for now," he said.

Furthermore, work isn’t being done fast enough: the plan for some EU members to take in 160,000 asylum seekers from Greece and Italy is not being implemented swiftly enough. To date, only 2,406 of those have been relocated.

"There is no Plan B for Europe. Europe will continue to receive people seeking asylum,” Grandi added. "Everybody has to share responsibility now.”

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mental_floss

What is Kaliningrad, and why is it cut off from the rest of Russia?

Luke Spencer

20 . 06 . 16

Looking at a map of Europe, you might notice something unusual sandwiched between Poland, Lithuania, and the coastline of the Baltic Sea. It’s a small slice of Russia, completely cut off from her motherland by several hundred miles, and it’s called Kaliningrad.

Kaliningrad is an obscure Russian exclave surrounded by members of the European Union, a remnant of the time when the Baltic states separated from the former Soviet Union. Remarkably, it remains largely unknown elsewhere in Europe and the United States.

Technically, Kaliningrad is an “oblast,” or state, and part of the Russian Federation despite being geographically separated from it. It’s home to around 900,000 Russians, many of whom live in the largely grim concrete capital city, also called Kaliningrad.

GETTY IMAGES

For centuries, this coastal city had a rich historical heritage under a much different name. Kaliningrad—named for Mikhail Kalinin, Chairman of the Soviet Presidium under Stalin—was once Königsberg, the capital of Prussia. Founded by the original Teutonic Knights in 1255, it flourished as a trading port and guild city that was part of the influential North German trading organization the Hanseatic League. Königsberg was also the birthplace, in 1724, of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, who lived almost his entire life there. It was a city of universities, castles, cathedrals, and bridges.

Most of Königsberg’s rich culture was all but destroyed during World War II. The city was heavily bombed by the Royal Air Force, with the ruins seized by the Red Army in April 1945. The remaining German population either fled or was expelled by force, the city renamed, and much of its heritage concreted over. Today the capital is characterised by drab concrete tower blocks and a high unemployment rate.

The sad story of Königsberg’s destruction is best summed up by the construction of the House of the Soviets. A particularly imposing example of brutalist Soviet architecture, it was designed in 1960 to be the central administration centre of the Kaliningrad Oblast. It was built upon the ruins of Königsberg castle: Rather than preserve what they saw as a “centre of fascism,” the Soviets blew up the old fortress of the Grandmasters of the Teutonic Order. Nicknamed the “buried robot” by locals due to its resemblance to a giant concrete robot’s head, the building was never finished. Construction stopped in the 1980s, as the robot head began to sink into the ground. The ancient subterranean tunnels under the old castle also began to give way, in what became known as the “revenge of the Prussians.” The exterior was finally finished in 2005, in time for a visit from President Putin, but the inside remains empty and unfinished.

THE HOUSE OF THE SOVIETS. IMAGE CREDIT: VOLKOV VITALY VIA WIKIMEDIA // CC BY 1.0

The foundation of the House of the Soviets is also rumoured to be the last resting place of the infamous Amber Room, one of the great lost works of World War II. Constructed by the Prussians as a gift to Peter the Great, this dazzling chamber of gold and amber panels, once considered the “eighth wonder of the world,” was installed at the Russian Imperial Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg. After the Nazi invasion in World War II, the priceless room was dismantled by the Germans and sent to Königsberg for display in the old Teutonic Castle, whereupon it was never seen again after the castle was bombed. Whether it remains buried under the rubble of the old castle, or whether it was stolen, is one of the great mysteries of the war.

While Kaliningrad isn’t well-known in the United States, it is firmly in the minds of the Russian government and NATO. As Russia’s only European port that remains ice-free all year long, the oblast is currently home to the imposing Baltic Fleet, the Russian Navy’s presence in the Baltic Sea (Crimea is also ice-free, but the geopolitical situation there is rather complicated). It has also seen vast amounts of troops and weapons poured into the region, to the increasing alarm of the West. Dmitry Gorenburg, an expert on the Russian military with the Centre for Naval Analyses in Arlington, Virginia, told Radio Free Europe that Kaliningrad is the “obvious place” to build up military hardware: “It's almost like you can set it up as a forward-operating base without leaving your own country’s territory.”

Today, Kaliningrad remains an obscure part of Europe that speaks to the carving up of centuries of history that followed World War II. Its dull concrete hides what was once a beautiful medieval city—and may also be hiding the missing eighth wonder of the world.

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thestar.com

James Cameron joins Search for Atlantis project

Avatar director an executive producer on documentary, being directed by Simcha Jacobovici.

By DEBRA YEOStaff Reporter

Mon., June 13, 2016

The man who gave us Titanic and Avatar is getting aboard a documentary hunt for the mythical city of Atlantis. James Cameron has joined Search for Atlantis as an executive producer.

Principal photography on the doc, a followup to 2011’s Finding Atlantis, has begun, with filming in Sicily, Malta, Crete, Santorini and Sardinia and off the coast of Spain for underwater portions, Discovery Canada said in a news release.

Discovery is partnering with National Geographic Channel and Toronto’s Associated Producers on the doc, directed by Emmy-winning, Jewish-Canadian filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici, who previously teamed with Cameron on 2006 TV movie The Exodus Decoded.

“Finding the historical and archeological truth behind the Atlantis myth has always been a fascination of mine,” said Cameron in the release. “Our exploration team will investigate several new theories about where the real Atlantis was, who these mysterious people were and what disaster wiped them from the Earth over three millennia ago.”

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MailOnline

Has a KRAKEN been spotted on Google Earth? Monster hunters claim to have found 120m long giant squid-like creature

• Used Google Earth to find size of creature which showed 30m (100 feet)

• Sighting occurred on April 9, 2016 using 63° 2'56.73"S 60°57'32.38"W

• Said it must be the Kraken, but also looks like a Plesiosaur

• Another theory is this disturbance could be an underwater UFO

By Stacy Liberatore For Dailymail.Com

PUBLISHED: 00:13, 16 June 2016 | UPDATED: 19:16, 16 June 2016

Nordic folklore speaks of a massive creature that haunted the icy seas of the North Sea, where it attacked passing vessels with gigantic tentacles.

And conspiracy theorists claims to have spotted this mythical Kraken swimming off the coast of Deception Island near Antarctica.

Using Google Earth, this sea monster appears to be 120m from head to end, with ‘the mid area of a giant squid’.

Aconspiracy theorists claims to have spotted this mythical Kraken swimming off the coast of Deception Island near Antarctica. Using Google Earth, this sea monster appears to be 100 feet from head to end, with ‘the mid area of a giant squid’

A well-known conspiracy theorist claims to have spotted the Kraken causing ‘a massive disturbance in the ocean’.

The sighting occurred on April 9, 2016, when Waring looked at the coordinates 63° 2'56.73"S 60°57'32.38"W in Google Earth.

Another conspiracy theorist has posted about the find, suggesting it could be an underwater UFO coming out of the ocean.

‘It looks like the Kraken,’ Scott C Waring shared on UFO Sightings Daily.com.

‘I used Google ruler and it says this is 30 meters (100 feet) from head to end, but the end looks like just the mid area of a giant squid, which means it could be 60+ meters long with tentacles.

'That sounds like the Kraken to me.’

The sighting occurred on April 9, 2016, when Waring looked at the coordinates 63° 2'56.73"S 60°57'32.38"W in Google Earth – although it is not clear how or where he obtained these exact coordinates.

A video of the unusual sighting was posted on YouTube by uploader Wowforreeel.

***

CNN

Doctors issue warning about LED streetlights

By Richard G. "Bugs" Stevens, The Conversation

Updated 1800 GMT (0200 HKT) June 21, 2016

Photo: Los Angeles LED streetlights Ocean Front Walk in Venice

Story highlights

The American Medical Association urges communities to minimize health and environmental risks

White LEDs are thought to be five times more effective at suppressing melatonin than sodium lamps

The American Medical Association (AMA) has just adopted an official policy statement about street lighting: cool it and dim it.

The statement, adopted unanimously at the AMA's annual meeting in Chicago on June 14, comes in response to the rise of new LED street lighting sweeping the country. An AMA committee issued guidelines on how communities can choose LED streetlights to "minimize potential harmful human health and environmental effects."

Municipalities are replacing existing streetlights with efficient and long-lasting LEDs to save money on energy and maintenance. Although the streetlights are delivering these benefits, the AMA's stance reflects how important proper design of new technologies is and the close connection between light and human health.

The AMA's statement recommends that outdoor lighting at night, particularly street lighting, should have a color temperature of no greater than 3000 Kelvin (K). Color temperature (CT) is a measure of the spectral content of light from a source; how much blue, green, yellow and red there is in it. A higher CT rating generally means greater blue content, and the whiter the light appears.

Apparently This Matters: L.A.'s fancy new streetlights

A white LED at CT 4000K or 5000K contains a high level of short-wavelength blue light; this has been the choice for a number of cities that have recently retrofitted their street lighting such as Seattle and New York.

But in the wake of these installations have been complaints about the harshness of these lights. An extreme example is the city of Davis, California, where the residents demanded a complete replacement of these high color temperature LED street lights.

Can communities have more efficient lighting without causing health and safety problems?

Two problems with LED street lighting

An incandescent bulb has a color temperature of 2400K, which means it contains far less blue and far more yellow and red wavelengths. Before electric light, we burned wood and candles at night; this artificial light has a CT of about 1800K, quite yellow/red and almost no blue. What we have now is very different.

The new "white" LED street lighting which is rapidly being retrofitted in cities throughout the country has two problems, according to the AMA. The first is discomfort and glare. Because LED light is so concentrated and has high blue content, it can cause severe glare, resulting in pupillary constriction in the eyes. Blue light scatters more in the human eye than the longer wavelengths of yellow and red, and sufficient levels can damage the retina. This can cause problems seeing clearly for safe driving or walking at night.

You can sense this easily if you look directly into one of the control lights on your new washing machine or other appliance: it is very difficult to do because it hurts. Street lighting can have this same effect, especially if its blue content is high and there is not appropriate shielding.

The other issue addressed by the AMA statement is the impact on human circadian rhythmicity.

Color temperature reliably predicts spectral content of light -- that is, how much of each wavelength is present. It's designed specifically for light that comes off the tungsten filament of an incandescent bulb.

However, the CT rating does not reliably measure color from fluorescent and LED lights.

Another system for measuring light color for these sources is called correlated color temperature (CCT). It adjusts the spectral content of the light source to the color sensitivity of human vision. Using this rating, two different 3000K light sources could have fairly large differences in blue light content.

Therefore, the AMA's recommendation for CCT below 3000K is not quite enough to be sure that blue light is minimized. The actual spectral irradiance of the LED -- the relative amounts of each of the colors produced -- should be considered, as well.

The reason lighting matters

The AMA policy statement is particularly timely because the new World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness just appeared last week, and street lighting is an important component of light pollution. According to the AMA statement, one of the considerations of lighting the night is its impact on human health.

In previous articles for The Conversation, I have described how lighting affects our normal circadian physiology, how this could lead to some serious health consequences and most recently how lighting the night affects sleep.

In the case of white LED light, it is estimated to be five times more effective at suppressing melatonin at night than the high pressure sodium lamps (given the same light output) which have been the mainstay of street lighting for decades. Melatonin suppression is a marker of circadian disruption, which includes disrupted sleep.

Bright electric lighting can also adversely affect wildlife by, for example, disturbing migratory patterns of birds and some aquatic animals which nest on shore.

Street lighting and human health

The AMA has made three recommendations in its new policy statement:

First, the AMA supports a "proper conversion to community based Light Emitting Diode (LED) lighting, which reduces energy consumption and decreases the use of fossil fuels."

Second, the AMA "encourage[s] minimizing and controlling blue-rich environmental lighting by using the lowest emission of blue light possible to reduce glare."

Third, the AMA "encourage[s] the use of 3000K or lower lighting for outdoor installations such as roadways. All LED lighting should be properly shielded to minimize glare and detrimental human and environmental effects, and consideration should be given to utilize the ability of LED lighting to be dimmed for off-peak time periods."

There is almost never a completely satisfactory solution to a complex problem. We must have lighting at night, not only in our homes and businesses, but also outdoors on our streets. The need for energy efficiency is serious, but so too is minimizing human risk from bad lighting, both due to glare and to circadian disruption. LED technology can optimize both when properly designed.

Richard G. "Bugs" Stevens is a professor in the School of Medicine at the University of Connecticut.

***

True Activist

How The Dairy Industry Tricked Humans Into Believing They Need Milk

How big government helps big dairy sell milk

Amanda Froelich

June 1, 2016

Despite the fact that one can get their daily recommendation of calcium, potassium, and protein from fruits and vegetables, the dairy industry has spent billions of dollars to convince consumers otherwise.

Got Milk? We sure hope not. Despite being a somewhat tasty addition to coffee, tea, and delectable treats, the ingredient – when pasteurized – is highly toxic to the human body. In fact, physicians such as Dr. Willet, who has conducted many studies and reviewed the research on the topic, believe milk to be more of a detriment to the human body than an aid.

This is because despite popular belief, the food has never been shown to reduce fracture risk. In fact, according to the Nurses’ Health Study, dairy may increase risk of fractures by 50%! This concerning finding is supported by the fact that countries with lowest rates of dairy and calcium consumption (like those in Africa and Asia) have the lowest rates of osteoporosis.

Considering that approximately 3/4 of the world’s population is unable to digest milk and other dairy products, it seems clear the food is not an ideal substance for consumption. However, the average consumer doesn’t know this. From celebrity endorsements to advertisements by the dairy industry, most have been taught to believe that dairy is an ideal food for optimum health.

Because there’s so much misinformation surrounding the subject, Vox recently created a video which illustrates the facade of the dairy industry. One of the points made is that despite the fact that consumers can get the daily recommendation of calcium, potassium, and protein from fruits and vegetables, the dairy industry has spent billions of dollars to convince the populace otherwise.

If you were taught that one must drink milk to grow up “big and strong,” you’re not alone. However, now is the time to get educated on the facts.

Because milk is very mucus-forming in the human body, it is believed to contribute to allergies, ear infections, Type 1 diabetes, anemia, and even constipation. In addition, the food may contribute to various types of cancers as consumption of the product increases the body’s level of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1).

The good news is that there are plenty of tasty, creamy dairy alternatives that are not only easy-to-make, they’re affordable. ‘Milks’ from rice, almonds, cashew, hemp, and even coconut can be found in most grocery stores, and some companies even sell dairy-free ice cream – such as Ben & Jerry’s! In fact, the non-dairy milk market has surged within the past few years. Almond milk sales, in particular, have increased by 250 percent from 2000-2015 to almost $895 million.

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Until next week...keep on believing.
Almondtree Productions

“And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.” (Luke 12:15)
“O death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man that liveth at rest in his possessions, unto the man that hath nothing to vex him, and that hath prosperity in all things.

(Sirach 41:1 Apocrypha)