Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.
(2 Thessalonians 2:3)
There Come A Falling Away

***

WND

CHRISTIAN LEADER: DON'T SHARE FAITH WITH MUSLIMS

Keep it to yourself 'unless asked'

Published: May 26, 2016

LEO HOHMANN

Muslim migrants like these should not be evangelized by Christians, says the Archbishop of Canterbury and other Christian leaders. Despite that message, thousands of Muslims are flocking to churches to convert across Europe.

Britain’s highest-ranking man of the cloth, the archbishop of Canterbury, said Christians should not share their faith with Muslims and other non-Christians unless they are asked.

Archbishop Justin Welby made the comment last week at an interfaith event that included Islamic and Jewish leaders. He insisted Christians should not actively “proselytize” non-Christians, the Express reported.

The comments come as Britain is increasingly being Islamized, with 5.6 percent of its population now identifying as Muslim, dozens of churches being converted to mosques, and the city of London recently electing its first Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan.

Almost every major city in Britain has a Muslim enclave and the country is taking in at least 20,000 Syrian refugees.

Welby said Christians should be more concerned about “respect for the other,” and start by “listening before you speak.” They should offer “love that is unconditional and not conditional to one iota, to one single element, on how the person responds to your own declaration of faith; and of not speaking about faith unless you are asked about faith.”

Evangelical leaders rebuked the archbishop’s comments as unbiblical, saying they negate Jesus’ own words in the Great Commission of Matthew 28: 18-20 and many other teachings of Jesus and his disciples, the early church fathers and the Anglican church itself.

In the Great Commission Jesus said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

“Christianity has never merely been an intellectual acknowledgement of some particular set of doctrines,” said Bible teacher and evangelist Joel Richardson, author of “When A Jew Rules the World,” “The Global Jesus Revolution” and “The Islamic Antichrist.”

‘Shut the hell up…’

Richardson said James, the brother of Jesus, made it clear that “faith” without resulting action is a false faith.

“Christians who do not share their faith, may very well not even possess a genuine faith,” he said. “The message of the world to the Church today is essentially this: ‘Shut the hell up and go feed the poor!’ The spirit of the age is well pleased when Christians engage in productive social action but remain quiet concerning the reality of sin and the need of all men and women to repent.

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby

“They rage when we say, as Jesus so clearly did, that He alone is ‘the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes to the Father except by [Jesus].’ The exclusive message of Christianity drives the world nuts. When Christians withhold the gospel, the message that reveals the only way to life, they are actually placing their stamp of approval on the other’s spiritual death certificate.”

Pam Geller’s manual “Stop the Islamization of America” is the ‘How-to’ book on halting Shariah and jihad in the U.S.

“This is the most hateful act. Those who are genuine disciples of Jesus will not shut up (about the gospel message),” Richardson added. “The blind guide archbishop of Canterbury needs to repent himself and begin rightly shepherding his flock or resign.”

Evangelizing Muslim refugees ‘verboten’

The archbishop is not the only Christian leader teaching that Christians should keep their faith to themselves when engaging with Muslims.

Pastor Gerhard Scholte of the Reformed Keizersgracht Church, who also heads up the refugee task force of combined Amsterdam churches in the Netherlands, told the Daily Beast that his church does not promote conversions of non-Christians.

Thousands of Muslim migrants are walking into Europe’s churches and seeking to convert to Christianity. Astonishingly, this is not “good news” to Pastor Scholte and others working to resettle the refugees. They would apparently prefer the converts remain Muslim.

“Conversion to Christianity is not promoted in our church, so we see very little of it,” Scholte told the Daily Beast. “Everyone is a child of God,” whether Christian, Jew or Muslim. “Faith should not be conditional,” he said, echoing the comments of Welby.

The distaste for reaching out to Muslims with the gospel is also alive and well in the American church.

In fact, the nine major volunteer agencies or VOLAGs that contract with the U.S. government to provide refugee resettlement services are required to sign an agreement stating they will not proselytize any of the refugees in the process of helping feed, cloth and shelter them.

Among the primary VOLAGs contracting with the U.S. government to provide aid to refugees are agencies affiliated with the Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Jewish and evangelical Christian faiths.

Liberal church pastors participating in interfaith associations with imams also frown upon proselytizing Muslims. At the Tri-Faith Initiative in Omaha, Nebraska, for instance, where a United Church of Christ community church, a Reform Jewish synagogue and mosque have agree to build houses of worship on the same campus, the church has agreed not to erect any large Christian symbols on its exterior.

This falls in line with what Islamists regard as the “Pact of Umar,” who was Islam’s third caliph and conqueror of Jerusalem. He established a set of rules and regulations setting the conditions under which Christians and Jews were supposed to relate with Muslims. The Muslims were to rule supreme over the Christians and Jews, who were allowed to practice their own faith as “dhimmis” under the leadership of Islam.

This has been a tenet of Shariah law ever since, said Dr. Mark Christian, a former Muslim imam who converted to Christianity in his late 20s and emigrated from Egypt to the U.S.

“Umar did not come up with these rules on his own, it’s the Shariah law of inter-relationships between the three faiths,” Christian told WND.

Countryside Community Church agreed to not erect symbols or outward displays that are “insensitive” to other faiths participating in the Tri-Faith Initiative.

“We have the cross and the Star of David and who gets upset and is sensitive to any symbols like that? It is the Muslims,” Christian said. “Jews and Christians have been living next door on the same streets for years with no problems but history tells us that Muslims are very sensitive to everything, whether it be Christian proselytizing, crosses or even pork in the grocery stores.

“The reality is it is not about sensitivity it’s about making a statement — ‘we are supreme.'”

A sign of Christian apostasy?

Carl Gallups, a Florida Baptist pastor, radio host and author, said this is a sign of the apostate church foretold of in the biblical book of Revelation. They talk about love, but withholding the truth of Christ is hardly a loving thing for a Christian to do.

“These are the days of apostasy,” said Gallups, author of “Final Warning” and “Be Thou Prepared: Equipping Christians for Persecution and Times of Trouble.”

“Can you imagine Jesus ordering His disciples or the church to ‘keep your faith quiet?’ I guess this archbishop has never read the seven letters to the seven churches in Revelation?” he said. “Wow. It’s here folks…”

Richardson said Welby needs to repent and do some soul searching on how he could be willing to throw out such a basic Christian tenet as evangelism.

“If he does not (repent), faithful Anglicans throughout the world need to remove him,” Richardson said. “Yes, we Christians will care for the poor, the needy, the outcast, and the afflicted, but we will not shut up. If we remain silent, the very rocks themselves will cry out.”

The Church of England recently launched a campaign to reverse decades of declining membership. How the archbishop’s ban on proselytizing Muslims fits into that strategy is mind-boggling, said Gallups.

Gallups said that to eliminate or downplay the importance of Christian evangelism is to give a slap in the face not only to Jesus but all of his disciples who have gone to their graves as martyrs over the centuries while spreading the gospel in unfriendly places.

“Paul was beheaded, Steven was stoned, Peter was crucified and countless Church fathers were martyred for steadfastly obeying Christ’s command to share the good news of the gospel,” Gallups said. “This archbishop makes a mockery of their lives.”

Another former Muslim who is now a Christian pastor, Iranian-born Shahram Hadian, told WND that Pope Francis has put forth the same unbiblical ideas about keeping one’s faith hidden.

“You saw the pope go to the Hagia Sophia (in Turkey) and bow down to pray toward mecca,” Hadian said.

“We have the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops saying the same thing, that we want to love the refugees and bring them here, feed and clothe them but when you ask them if they have a plan to share the gospel they have no plan to share it because they feel like it’s offensive,” Hadian said.

He said this philosophy is proving “disastrous” in Europe, and plays right along with Islamic law.

“Europe has already passed anti-defamation of Islam laws and now in fact the archbishop comes out and says ‘don’t share your faith unless they first ask you.’ That’s not going to happen for the most part,” Hadian said. “Christians are getting orders to keep their faith silent and it’s unbiblical, absolutely unbiblical.”

Surrendering to Islamic subjugation

Hadian, pastor of Truth in Love Christian Fellowship in eastern Washington, said he has talked to many Christians involved in the refugee resettlement movement who say “the exact same thing” espoused by the archbishop of Canterbury.

“They say ‘we are going to wait until they ask us, we don’t want to push our faith on them.’ It really is a surrender,” he said.

“Christians, not Christianity but Christians, are surrendering to Islam. When you’re afraid to actually share the gospel, which the Bible says offers the power of eternal life, you are really surrendering ground to this other faith, which is Islam,” he continued.

“True Christianity will never surrender to Islam. But it’s the Christians, or the ones pretending to be Christian, who are surrendering to Islam and it’s not biblical. These are not representatives of the gospel. The spirit of God does not retreat, does not surrender ground, the only time it retreats is when Christians give it up.”

Paul McGuire, a pastor, author and former radio host in Southern California, said Archbishop Welby was betraying the gospel and entering a dark place spiritually.

“What is the difference between the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Webby and the Lord Jesus Christ and the original apostles? The difference is that Jesus Christ and the original apostles were faithful to God, whether men liked it of not,” McGuire said. Rev. Welby’s teaching that a Christian should not talk about their faith unless asked, is a teaching that Satan would have invented to prevent men and women from being saved by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. By biblical definition, the Archbishop of Canterbury is a ‘false prophet’ and a wolf in sheep’s clothing teaching his flock the doctrine of demons.”

***

***

YAHOO! NEWS

Pope and top imam embrace in historic Vatican meeting

May 23, 2016

Pope Francis (right) talks with Al-Azhar's Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayeb during a private audience at the Vatican, on May 23, 2016 (AFP Photo/Max Rossi)

Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis embraced the grand imam of Cairo's Al-Azhar Mosque at the Vatican on Monday in a historic encounter both sides hope will lead to greater understanding and dialogue between the two faiths.

The first Vatican meeting between the leader of the world's Catholics and the highest authority in Sunni Islam marks the culmination of a significant improvement in relations between the two faiths since Francis took office in 2013.

"Our meeting is the message," Francis said in a brief comment at the start of his meeting with Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, shortly after he had hugged and kissed his guest, Vatican officials told a small pool of reporters covering the event.

In a statement on the trip, Al-Azhar, an institution that also comprises a prestigious seat of learning, said the two sides had agreed to convene a "peace conference".

A statement quoted Tayeb as telling Francis: "We need to take a joint stance, hand in hand, to bring happiness to humanity. Divine religions were revealed to make people happy, not to cause them hardship."

The imam's deputy, Abbas Shuman, told Egyptian TV channel CBC that the two leaders had agreed to resume dialogue and that the proposed conference would cover the issues of poverty, extremism and terrorism.

The Vatican did not immediately confirm the conference plans. A spokesman said the talks had been "very cordial" with the imam spending 30 minutes with the pope and just over an hour in total at St Peter's.

Tayeb's decision to fly to Rome, unexpectedly announced last week, followed the easing of serious tensions that marked the reign of Francis's predecessor, Benedict XVI.

Ties were badly soured when the now-retired Benedict made a September 2006 speech in which he was perceived to have linked Islam to violence, sparking deadly protests in several countries and reprisal attacks on Christians.

Pope John-Paul II met the then-grand imam of Al-Azhar in Cairo in 2000, a year before the September 11 attacks on New York transformed relations between the West and the Islamic world.

Monday's visit was effectively the long-delayed reciprocal meeting and the Vatican said that both clerics had "underlined the great significance of this new meeting".

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a statement that the pope and the imam had "mainly addressed the common challenges faced by the authorities and faithful of the major religions of the world."

These included working together for world peace, rejecting violence and terrorism, and the situation and protection of Christians against a backdrop of conflict and terrorism in the Middle East."

- Promoting 'true Islam' -

The pope presented the imam with a copy of his recent encyclical, Laudato Si', a letter to the faithful in which he urges the world to wake up to the threat posed by climate change and economic inequality.

Tayeb decided to accept the invitation to Rome as a result of the numerous conciliatory gestures Francis has made to the Muslim world since being elected in early 2013.

"If it were not for these good positions the meeting would not be happening," Shuman told AFP on Sunday, adding that the imam wanted to promote "true Islam and to correct misunderstandings created by extremist terrorist groups."

"He encourages countries not to deal with their Muslim citizens as groups that present a threat," Shuman said.

"And he encourages Muslims in Western society to meld with their societies... it is a message for both sides."

After the tensions of the Benedict years, Francis moved quickly to set a new tone, sending a personal message to the Muslim world to mark the end of the first month of Ramadan of his pontificate.

The Argentinian pontiff followed up by pushing various inter-faith initiatives and he was accompanied by both Rabbi Abraham Skorka and Islamic studies professor Omar Abboud when he visited Jordan and Israel in 2014.But perhaps the gesture that clinched the deal was the most dramatic piece of political theatre of his papacy: his April visit to the migrant crisis island of Lesbos which concluded with him bringing three Syrian Muslim families back to the Vatican.

***

VATICAN INSIDER THE VATICAN

The Grand Imam: the world must unite against terrorism

Sheikh Ahmad Al-Tayyib between Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran and Monsignor Georg Gaenswein during his meeting with the Pope

dataPubblicazione : 2016/05/24

“I am in the heart of Europe and I would like to take advantage of my presence in this important Catholic institution - the Vatican - to launch an appeal to the whole world to unite and close ranks to confront and put an end to terrorism”, affirmed the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayyib, in an interview with Vatican media after yesterday’s audience with the Pope. “[Francis] is a man of peace [and] with him we resume a path of dialogue” after past misunderstandings, affirms the Sunni leader of the prestigious Cairo-based center of learning. “Islam has nothing to do with this terrorism,” he points out, stressing that Al-Azhar is revising school textbooks to eliminate the deviations introduced by “those who use violence and terrorism and by the armed movements that claim to work for peace”. Terrorism, affirms Al-Tayyib, “should not be presented as a persecution against Christians in the East; on the contrary, there are more Muslim than Christian victims.”

“I am in the heart of Europe and I would like to take advantage of my presence in this important Catholic institution - the Vatican - to launch an appeal to the whole world to unite and close ranks to confront and put an end to terrorism, because I believe that if this terrorism is neglected, it is not only easterners who will pay the price, but both easterners and westerners will suffer together, as we have seen,” said the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayyib (in an interview translated into Italian by the Arabic section of Vatican Radio) who continues his European trip in France today. “This is my appeal to the world and the free men of the world: make an agreement now and intervene to put an end to the rivers of blood. Let me elaborate a bit upon this: yes, terrorism exists, but Islam has nothing to do with terrorism and this applies to the Muslim ulema and to Christians and Muslims in the East. And those who kill Muslims, and who also kill Christians, have misunderstood the texts of Islam either intentionally or through negligence. A year ago Al-Azhar University held a ‘General Conference’ which brought together Sunni and Shia Muslim authorities, and Eastern Church leaders of different religions and confessions were invited, and even the Yazidi sent a representative to this conference held under the aegis of Al-Azhar. And among the most salient points of the joint statement was that Islam and Christianity have nothing to do with those who kill, and we asked those in the West not to confuse those belonging to deviant groups with the rest of the Islamic world and we said with one voice, both Muslims and Christians, that we are masters of this land, and we are partners and we each have a right to this land. We rejected forced emigration, slavery and the buying and selling of women in the name of Islam. Here I wish to say that the matter should not be presented as a persecution against Christians in the East, on the contrary, there are more Muslim than Christian victims, and we are all subject to this great catastrophe. In short I would like to conclude this point by saying that we cannot blame religions for the deviant behaviour of some of its followers because in every religion there is a deviant faction that raises the banner of religion to kill in its name.”

“[Al-Azhar] has a dialogue or rather a commission for an interfaith dialogue with the Vatican that had been suspended due to precise circumstances but, now that these circumstances are gone, we resume the path of dialogue and hope it will be better than it was before,” explained the Grand Imam.

“[Pope Francis] is a man of peace; a man who follows the teaching of Christianity which is a religion of love and peace, and by following His Holiness we have seen that he is a man who respects other religions and shows consideration for their followers; he is also a man who dedicates his life to serving the poor and the oppressed, and who takes responsibility for people in general; he is an ascetic man, who has renounced the ephemeral pleasures of worldly life. These are all qualities that we share with him which is why we felt eager to meet this man and to work together for mankind in this vast common area.”

The University of Al-Azhar is engaged in an important project to revise school textbooks. “We,” explained Al-Tayyib, “revise them in the sense that we clarify the Muslim concepts that have been deviated from by those who use violence and terrorism and by the armed movements that claim to work for peace. We have identified these misconceptions, and we have presented them - within a curriculum - to our students in middle and high schools; we have displayed the deviant side and the deviant understanding while at the same time we are trying to help our students understand the correct concepts from which these extremists and terrorists have deviated. [Furthermore,] at Al-Azhar we host the Imams of mosques which are located in Europe as part of a two-month program to provide training in dialogue, reveal misconceptions and talk about the integration of Muslims in their societies and European nations so that they can be an asset for the security, wealth and strength of those countries.”

In general, “I think the time has come for the representatives of the Divine Religions to forcefully and concretely turn humanity towards mercy and peace, so that humanity can escape the great crises we are now suffering. The man without religion is a danger to his fellow man, and I think people are now, in this twenty-first century, beginning to look around and to seek wise guides that can lead them in the right direction. All this has led us to this meeting and this discussion and the agreement to begin with the right step in the right direction.”

The grand Imam of Al-Azhar concluded by expressing his “sincere thanks, appreciation and hope - that I will take with me - to work together, Muslims and Christians, Al-Azhar and the Vatican, to lift the human being wherever he is, regardless of his religion and his belief, and save him from the crisis of destructive wars, poverty, ignorance and disease.” The interview was held at the residence of the Egyptian Ambassador to the Holy See and was attended by two editors of Vatican Radio: Father Jean-Pierre Yammine, head of the Arab section, and Cyprien Viet, from the French section together with Maurizio Fontana from the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. The interview was audio and video recorded by Vatican Radio and by the Vatican Television Centre and took place entirely in Arabic.

***

BREITBART

Pope Hails Election of Sadiq Khan, Celebrates Mass Muslim Migration Into Europe

by VIRGINIA HALE

May 20166,682

The Pope has hailed the election of Sadiq Khan as “Muslim” mayor of London, claimed mass Muslim migration is “necessary” for Europe, and blamed Paris and Brussels for the attacks on European soil.

In an interview with French newspaper La Croix, Pope Francis strongly implied that the terrorists who attacked Paris and Brussels did so because they “grew up in a ghetto.”

He also applauded the election of Muslim mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, stating it “illustrates the need for Europe to rediscover its capacity to integrate,” evoking “Pope Gregory the Great, who negotiated with the people known as barbarians who were subsequently integrated.”

However, the situation of mass Muslim migration that Europe now faces is distinctly different: the “barbarians” (the term referring in this case to Franks, Lombards and Visigoths) were Europeans, and did not follow a religion which historically, violently, conquered dozens of countries and preached supremacy.

Even today, the Muslim country Indonesia is currently committing what has been widely described as a genocide against Christian West Papuans with mass migration, violence and the banning of Papuan nationalism.

Pope Francis also claimed Europe’s declining birth rate is a “grave problem” that makes mass Muslim migration “necessary.” He described this “demographic emptiness” as a result of “a selfish search for well-being.”

The Pope stated that Muslims and Christians need to learn to live peacefully together, citing Lebanon as a good example of this. Though Lebanon is perhaps not the best illustration for the Pontiff to draw upon.

Lebanon was a majority Christian country up until the 1960s. In the 1970s, after an influx of Muslim refugees, tens of thousands of Christians were ethnically cleansed from the country.

Since 2005 there have been as many as 14 terrorist attacks a year in Lebanon, and the UK government’s travel advice on Lebanon advises against traveling to certain parts of the country as there is a “high threat from terrorism.”

Pope Francis criticised France’s “exaggeration” of the separation of church and state, expressing disapproval of the country’s ban on the niqab in public places. This type of veil has been banned in Muslim-majority countries Azerbaijan and Chad. Polls show the vast majority of people in Islamic countries, apart from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, widely disapprove of the garment.

Suggesting that the fear of migration in Europe is partly based on a fear of Islam, Pope Francis was asked whether he felt that such fears are justified. He said he didn’t think that “there is a fear of Islam as such but of [Islamic State] and its war of conquest, which is partly drawn from Islam.”

“It is true that the idea of conquest is inherent in the soul of Islam. However, it is also possible to interpret the objective in Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus sends his disciples to all nations, in terms of the same idea of conquest,” the Pope said.

***

BREITBART

Church of Scotland to Allow Same-Sex Marriage for Ministers

(AFP) –The Church of Scotland voted Saturday to allow its ministers to be in same-sex marriages, following years of deliberation.

The national church’s general assembly in Edinburgh voted to extend a law passed last May that permits its ministers to be in same-sex civil partnerships.

Commissioners in the Kirk, as the church is known in Scotland, voted 339 to 215 to allow ministers to be in same-sex marriages.

“We had a debate which made very clear that we were not interfering with our theological definition of marriage and were not going to the place where ministers or deacons could themselves be conducting same-sex marriages,” said the Very Reverend John Chalmers, principal clerk to the general assembly.

“It is an entirely different discussion.”

The Kirk retains the traditional view of marriage as being between a man and a woman.

However, individual congregations can “opt out” if they wish to appoint a minister in a same-sex marriage.

“In some ways we crossed the Rubicon last year when it was agreed that Kirk sessions could call someone in a civil partnership and for many people what today was about was simply tidying up and making the law of the church consistent with Scots law,” said Chalmers.

The Church of Scotland is Protestant, Presbyterian and has no bishops. Some 1.7 million people, or 32.4 percent of the Scottish population, are members, according to the last census in 2011.

More than 850 commissioners from across Scotland, the rest of Britain, Africa, Asia, North America, Europe, the Middle East and the Caribbean registered to attend the 2016 general assembly.

Colin Macfarlane, director of gay rights charity Stonewall Scotland, said: “Today’s result is great news for the Kirk and a progressive move forward.

“Empowering ministers to live their lives with honesty and integrity sends a powerful signal to faith communities and society as a whole.”

***

WND

STUNNER! OBAMA NAMES TRANSGENDER TO FAITH POST

'I blame the United Church of Christ for its lack of loving discipline toward Barbara'

Published: May 21, 2016

BOB UNRUH

President Obama (White House photo)

President Obama has appointed a transgender man to a prominent faith advisory position, sparking a flood of outrage from conservatives.

His recent announcement named Barbara Satin to be a member of the president’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, a choice commentator Tim Brown at Freedom Outpost scorched as a “mentally sick transgender man.”

“And America tolerates this depravity!” Brown wrote. “Satin needs repentance, not an advisory position, but I don’t blame Barack Obama for that. Instead, I blame the United Church of Christ for its lack of loving discipline towards Barbara. They have allowed this person to wander into sin without any loving restraints to call him to repentance and allow him to stay in good standing in the body of Christ rather than a stern and sharp rebuke of his sin towards the Creator.”

Obama had described Satin, along with others on a list of appointees, as “fine public servants [who] bring a depth of experience and tremendous dedication to their important roles. I look forward to working with them.”

Obama’s statement said Satin was the assistant faith work director for the National LGBTQ Task Force.

“She is an active member of the United Church of Christ and served on the denomination’s executive council as its first openly transgender member. Ms. Satin recently worked on the development of Spirit on Lake, a LGBTQ senior housing project in Minneapolis. She served on the board of directors for OutFront Minnesota from 2001 to 2008 and has served as chair of GLBT Generations since 1999. She has also served on the board of directors of PFund Foundation, a regional LGBTQ community foundation advancing social justice in Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin, since 2013,” Obama’s statement said.

Derrick Wilburn wrote on Allen West’s website, “Barack Obama has appointed a man who identifies as a woman to serve on his Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships.”

“Its nothing short of amazing how far this president has come since his public affirmation of belief that marriage is between one man an one woman just a few years ago,” he wrote. “Satin has a published biography which states in part, ‘At age 54, Barbara took early retirement and then began to explore more fully her transgender identity.’ ‘With the support of her children and a knowledgeable therapist, Barbara came to understand that her transgender identity was how God had made her and rather than being a curse it could be a blessing in her life.’ ‘As a way to more fully explore her identity, she moved out of the family home to live full-time as Barbara.'”

Peter LaBarbera, head of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, told OneNewsNow, “Obama is obsessed with promoting homosexualism and now transsexuality. He’s engaged in a war on normal for the last eight years, and it looks like he’s trying to do as much as he can to promote sexual and gender perversions as he can before he leaves office.”

LaBarbera said it’s especially notable that the council was intended to promote religious freedom.

“He takes something that was actually designed to promote religious freedom and respect for religion and he subverts it by putting in a transgender activist from a liberal church who is at odds with the God of the universe,” he said. “God made male and female. He didn’t make males to become females so the idea of transgender Christianity is absurd.”

“The reality is men make bad women and women make bad men, but that’s a little too complicated, apparently, for Barack Obama to understand,” he told the news agency.

Satin said in a statement, “I am both honored and humbled to be selected to serve on the president’s advisory council. Given the current political climate, I believe it’s important that a voice of faith representing the transgender and gender non-conforming community – as well as a person of my years, nearly 82 – be present and heard in these vital conversations.”

***

The Washington Post

Israel’s defense minister abruptly resigns in slap at growing ‘extremism’

Israel's defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, announced his resignation May 20, citing a lack of "trust" in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the governing party. (The Washington Post)

By William Booth May 20 at 10:56 AM

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to remake his governing coalition have set heads spinning, particularly the dumping of his well-regarded defense minister, to possibly bring aboard a polarizing maverick with few friends in Washington.

Definitely out: Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, who resigned his post on Friday. On the way to the door, Yaalon blasted Netanyahu, saying he has lost confidence in the prime minister’s decision-making and morals.

Maybe in: Avigdor Lieberman. He is a former foreign minister and current leader of an ultra-nationalist political party built around the 1 million Russian-speaking immigrants to Israel.

He has pressed for Arab citizens of Israel to move to the West Bank and wants to implement the death penalty for terrorists. He also wants to increase pension payments for the Russian newcomers.

Israeli pundits previously had called the current Netanyahu government the most right-wing in the country’s history, but this new coalition, if formed, will take the title.

Netanyahu’s closed-door negotiations are ongoing, and the deal has not been struck. There also is not a lot of wiggle room. Netanyahu’s coalition holds a one-seat majority in parliament.

In a news conference Friday, Yaalon, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, warned that Israel was drifting dangerously toward extremism.

“I fought with all my might against manifestations of extremism, violence and racism in Israeli society, which are threatening its sturdiness and trickling into the armed forces, hurting it already,” he said.

Yaalon appeared to be referring to support by Israeli leaders for a combat medic who fatally shot a wounded Palestinian attacker as he lay on a street in Hebron, in the occupied West Bank.

Thousands of Israelis rallied in Tel Aviv and proclaimed the soldier a hero. Human rights activists called the shooting an execution. The killing was captured on video.

Just a few days ago, it looked as if Netanyahu was about to strike a deal with the leader of the opposition in parliament, Isaac Herzog, who steers the center-left Labor Party.

The speculation was that Herzog would take the post of foreign minister and seek to resurrect peace talks with the Palestinians, with the support of Arab allies such as Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi.

***

RT

Israeli PM under fire after proposing hawkish far-right leader Lieberman to head defense

Published time: 20 May, 2016 03:52

Edited time: 20 May, 2016 06:25

Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon resigned on Friday to clear the way for former FM Avigdor Lieberman, a right-wing politician and new ally of PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Opposition decried the appointment, saying it would result in a policy “on the brink of madness.”

"I informed the PM that after his conduct and recent developments, and given the lack of faith in him, I am resigning from the government and parliament and taking a break from political life," Ya'alon said.

Ya'alon, a career military and former Chief of Staff of the IDF, joined Netanyahu’s Likud party in 2008.

Lieberman served as Israeli foreign minister from 2009 to 2012 and from 2013 to 2015. He currently chairs a right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party and is known for his controversial proposals. For example, Lieberman wants to “cut off heads” of Arab-Israelis not “loyal” to Israel, bomb Egypt’s Aswan dam, and offer Israeli towns with large Arab populations to the future Palestinian state in exchange for Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which would then become part of the Jewish state.

Speculation on his new role in Netanyahu’s cabinet arose after consultations between Lieberman and the Israeli prime minister on Wednesday. Netanyahu, who is the leader of the center-right Likud party, is eying to cement his current coalition’s shaky position, as it holds a majority of one in the Israeli parliament.

The possible appointment, which is expected to be decided by the weekend, has prompted a storm of criticism from the Israeli opposition and Palestinian politicians, who anticipate an even more hostile military policy under Lieberman, who himself lives in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Isaac Herzog, the leader of the center-left Zionist Union, which had been expected to enter into coalition with Likud before Netanyahu’s sudden U-turn in favor of Lieberman, said that if the Israeli hawk joins the government, it will result in a policy “on a brink of madness.” He believes that choosing such a radical figure as head of the defense ministry would mean that Israel is preparing to “embark on a journey of war and funerals,” as cited by Guardian.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry issued a statement slamming the upcoming government reshuffle as “fresh proof there is no real peace partner in Israel,” while calling Lieberman “an extremist,” according to Haaretz.

With his appointment, Israel would send a “message to the world that Israel prefers extremism, the occupation and settlements to a peace accord,” the statement reads.

An unnamed Palestinian official told the paper that appointing such an outspoken anti-Palestinian politician known for pro-settlement views to head Israel’s defense ministry would actually serve as “proof to the international community that the emerging government, including the one leading it, isn’t interested at all in an agreement [with Palestine].”

The Israeli military establishment also appears to be less than enthusiastic about the prospect of having a defense chief with fewer qualifications than outgoing defense minister, who has vast combat experience.

While not naming Lieberman or Netanyahu, Ya’alon lashed out at his critics in a Tel Aviv speech on Thursday, accusing certain political forces of carrying out a “full volume attack [on] our basic values.”

“Our moral compass for basic questions has been lost,” Ya’alon told Israel’s youth movement at the army’s Tel Aviv headquarters, as cited by The Times of Israel.

Former defense minister Moshe Arens said in a radio interview that it’s unlikely that Lieberman will ever be able to fill Ya’alon’s shoes.

“I hope Lieberman lives to 120, but I think that even if he does, he will not gain the prowess, knowledge and experience that Ya’alon has,” he said, as cited by Reuters. “These kinds of chances should not be taken.”

The controversial decision to appoint Lieberman to the post of defense chief was preceded by a row between Netanyahu and Ya’alon, who backed the prosecution of Elor Azaria, an Israeli soldier who shot an unarmed Palestinian attacker back in March. In contrast, Netanyahu personally expressed support for the family of the soldier, who is now on trial for manslaughter.

The rift deepened after Ya’alon backed Major General Yair Golan, who drew parallels between tendencies in Nazi Germany and present day Israel in a speech devoted to Holocaust Remembrance Day.

While Netanyahu’s office said that the IDF general “was mistaken in his comments and it would be good if he fixed them,” Ya’alon stood by Golan, saying that he was a “valued commander, driven by values and many accomplishments,” and that “the attacks on him [were] due to intentional, distorted interpretations of something he said.”

***

***

NPR

In Search For Cures, Scientists Create Embryos That Are Both Animal And Human

May 18, 20162:08 PM ET

Heard on All Things Considered

Jeannie Phan for NPR

A handful of scientists around the United States are trying to do something that some people find disturbing: make embryos that are part human, part animal.

The researchers hope these embryos, known as chimeras, could eventually help save the lives of people with a wide range of diseases.

One way would be to use chimera embryos to create better animal models to study how human diseases happen and how they progress.

Perhaps the boldest hope is to create farm animals that have human organs that could be transplanted into terminally ill patients.

But some scientists and bioethicists worry the creation of these interspecies embryos crosses the line. "You're getting into unsettling ground that I think is damaging to our sense of humanity," says Stuart Newman, a professor of cell biology and anatomy at the New York Medical College.

The experiments are so sensitive that the National Institutes of Health has imposed a moratorium on funding them while officials explore the ethical issues they raise.

Nevertheless, a small number of researchers are pursuing the work with alternative funding. They hope the results will persuade the NIH to lift the moratorium.

"We're not trying to make a chimera just because we want to see some kind of monstrous creature," says Pablo Ross, a reproductive biologist at the University of California, Davis. "We're doing this for a biomedical purpose."

The NIH is expected to announce soon how it plans to handle requests for funding.

Recently, Ross agreed to let me visit his lab for an unusual look at his research. During the visit, Ross demonstrated how he is trying to create a pancreas that theoretically could be transplanted into a patient with diabetes.

The first step involves using new gene-editing techniques to remove the gene that pig embryos need to make a pancreas.

Working under an elaborate microscope, Ross makes a small hole in the embryo's outer membrane with a laser. Next, he injects a molecule synthesized in the laboratory to home in on and delete the pancreas gene inside. (In separate experiments, he has done this to sheep embryos, too.)

After the embryos have had their DNA edited this way, Ross creates another hole in the membrane so he can inject human induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS for short, into the pig embryos.

Like human embryonic stem cells, iPS cells can turn into any kind of cell or tissue in the body. The researchers' hope is that the human stem cells will take advantage of the void in the embryo to start forming a human pancreas.

Because iPS cells can be made from any adult's skin cells, any organs they form would match the patient who needs the transplant, vastly reducing the risk that the body would reject the new organ.

But for the embryo to develop and produce an organ, Ross has to put the chimera embryos into the wombs of adult pigs. That involves a surgical procedure, which is performed in a large operating room across the street from Ross's lab.

Pablo Ross of the University of California, Davis inserts human stem cells into a pig embryo as part of experiments to create chimeric embryos.

Rob Stein/NPR

The day Ross opened his lab to me, a surgical team was anesthetizing an adult female pig so surgeons could make an incision to get access to its uterus.

Ross then rushed over with a special syringe filled with chimera embryos. He injected 25 embryos into each side of the animal's uterus. The procedure took about an hour. He repeated the process on a second pig.

Every time Ross does this, he then waits a few weeks to allow the embryos to develop to their 28th day — a time when primitive structures such as organs start to form.

Ross then retrieves the chimeric embryos to dissect them so he can see what the human stem cells are doing inside. He examines whether the human stem cells have started to form a pancreas, and whether they have begun making any other types of tissues.

The uncertainty is part of what makes the work so controversial. Ross and other scientists conducting these experiments can't know exactly where the human stem cells will go. Ross hopes they'll only grow a human pancreas. But they could go elsewhere, such as to the brain.

"If you have pigs with partly human brains you would have animals that might actually have consciousness like a human," Newman says. "It might have human-type needs. We don't really know."

That possibility raises new questions about the morality of using the animals for experimentation. Another concern is that the stem cells could form human sperm and human eggs in the chimeras.

"If a male chimeric pig mated with a female chimeric pig, the result could be a human fetus developing in the uterus of that female chimera," Newman says. Another possibility is the animals could give birth to some kind of part-human, part-pig creature.

"One of the concerns that a lot of people have is that there's something sacrosanct about what it means to be human expressed in our DNA," says Jason Robert, a bioethicist at Arizona State University. "And that by inserting that into other animals and giving those other animals potentially some of the capacities of humans that this could be a kind of violation — a kind of, maybe, even a playing God."

Ross defends what his work. "I don't consider that we're playing God or even close to that," Ross says. "We're just trying to use the technologies that we have developed to improve peoples' life."

Still, Ross acknowledges the concerns. So he's moving very carefully, he says. For example, he's only letting the chimera embryos develop for 28 days. At that point, he removes the embryos and dissects them.

If he discovers the stem cells are going to the wrong places in the embryos, he says he can take steps to stop that from happening. In addition, he'd make sure adult chimeras are never allowed to mate, he says.

"We're very aware and sensitive to the ethical concerns," he says. "One of the reasons we're doing this research the way we're doing it is because we want to provide scientific information to inform those concerns."

Ross is working with Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte from the Salk Intitute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., and Hiromitsu Nakauchi at Stanford University. Daniel Garry of the University of Minnesota and colleagues are conducting similar work. The research is funded in part by the Defense Department and the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM).

("Is not this written in the Book of Jasher?"--Joshua, x. 13. "Behold it is written in the Book of Jasher."--II Samuel, i. 18

“And all the sons of men departed from the ways of the Lord in those days as they multiplied upon the face of the earth with sons and daughters, and they taught one another their evil practices and they continued sinning against the Lord.

And every man made unto himself a god, and they robbed and plundered every man his neighbor as well as his relative, and they corrupted the earth, and the earth was filled with violence.

And their judges and rulers went to the daughters of men and took their wives by force from their husbands according to their choice, and the sons of men in those days took from the cattle of the earth, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and taught the mixture of animals of one species with the other, in order therewith to provoke the Lord; and God saw the whole earth and it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon earth, all men and all animals.

And the Lord said, I will blot out man that I created from the face of the earth, yea from man to the birds of the air, together with cattle and beasts that are in the field for I repent that I made them.

And all men who walked in the ways of the Lord, died in those days, before the Lord brought the evil upon man which he had declared, for this was from the Lord, that they should not see the evil which the Lord spoke of concerning the sons of men.

And Noah found grace in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord chose him and his children to raise up seed from them upon the face of the whole earth.” Jasher 4:16-21

Faithfully translated (1840) from the original Hebrew into English)

PART FOUR: How the Vatican Will Play Right into ISIS’ Hands

Recently at a conference hosted by the Vatican, participants called for the Catholic Church to renounce its “just war” doctrine and “for Pope Francis to write an encyclical on nonviolence and ‘just peace.’” [i] Why is this issue of rejecting “Just War” raised now? Because of a secret that we spell out convincingly in the upcoming FINAL ENTRY to our 4-year investigation—The Final Roman Emperor, the Islamic Antichrist, and The Vatican’s Last Crusade—in which readers will discover how, among some Catholic hierarchy as well as mystics within Rome, it is believed the current pope is following an ancient scheme that will soon involve “Just War” theory.

Allow me to explain.

Over the last few years and on more than one occasion, Pope Francis as well as top Vatican diplomats and spokespersons have argued in favor of a coordinated international force to stop so-called Islamic State (ISIS) atrocities against Christians and other minorities throughout the Middle East. Recently this included Italian Archbishop Silvano Tomasi calling on the United Nations to “stop this kind of genocide.… Otherwise we’ll be crying out in the future about why we didn’t do something, why we allowed such a terrible tragedy to happen.”[ii] Pope Francis, himself, has tried to parse words between “stopping” ISIS and distancing himself from US-led bombing sorties, yet he, too, has used very specific language in recent days that has not gone unnoticed by this writer. These are hermeneutical efforts undoubtedly cultivated for theologians and knowledgeable persons to encourage them to see beneath his judiciously chosen phrases to his deeper sotto voce (“under voice”) communication, which clearly expresses his and Rome’s intentions to sanction a coming war, using terms like “unjust aggressor,” “genocide,” and even the very idiom, “Just War,”[iii] which are directly connected not only to specific activities of ISIS but are particular vocabulary extracted from the “Just War” theory” and “Just War” doctrine” (the latter is derived from Catholic Church 1992 Catechism, paragraph 2309, which lists strict conditions for “legitimate defense by military force”).

Both “Just War” traditions mentioned above (thoroughly examined in The Final Roman Emperor, the Islamic Antichrist, and the Vatican’s Last Crusade as it involves definitions by theologians, policy makers, and military leaders) repeatedly employ the very terms “unjust aggressor” and “genocide” for the purposes of ratifying those doctrines whenever “war is morally justifiable through a series of criteria, all of which must be met for a war to be considered just. The criteria are split into two groups: ‘the right to go to war’ (jus ad bellum) and ‘right conduct in war’ (jus in bello). The first concerns the morality of going to war and the second moral conduct within war,” which postulate that “war, while terrible, is not always the worst option. There may be responsibilities so important, atrocities that can be prevented or outcomes so undesirable they justify war.”[iv]

The fact that Pope Francis and other high-ranking churchmen have explicitly used precise “Just War” terms is telling and supports the predictions made in our FINAL ENTRY, a small part of which I summarize below. It also serves to clarify why Archbishop Tomasi, in his call to the UN for greater military action against ISIS, admitted his request for engagement was derived from “a doctrine that’s been developed both in the United Nations and in the social teaching of the Catholic Church.”[v] This is the dictum I believe certain power brokers at the Vatican (what Father Malachi Martin called the Masonic “Superforce”), and the pontiff will knowingly use to eventually engage the self-proclaimed caliph of the ISIS regime, who wants nothing less than a final, end-times Holy War leading to the arrival of the Islamic Mahdi (Messiah).

Once the proper balls are rolling as a result of what I predict in the upcoming final book, both ISIS and the Vatican will see themselves in the midst of specific unfolding prophecy. For their part, all the Vatican will need is the prophesied trigger events.

PREDICTION #1—Weapon of Mass Destruction

As detailed in The Final Roman Emperor, the Islamic State and their associates are going to use a weapon of mass destruction. It will be of such scope and impact as to raise the international outcry sufficient for Rome to play its first card, which, as noted above, has been primed by subtle references to the Just War theory in the lead-up to this predicted event. When this WMD (specific details and charts in the upcoming book) is used by ISIS, the Roman pontiff will call for the revitalization of the Christian rules for “Just War.”

Under a new US President working with NATO and non-NATO allies, the Pope and the UN, a coalition army similar to the 2003 invasion of Iraq will be formed to seriously engage the Islamic radicals. Geopolitics aside, the jihadist will see the Vatican’s sanction of war as a new and final religious crusade—indeed, an actual fulfillment of their thirteen-hundred-year-old Hadith, which allegedly quotes the sayings of the prophet Mohammed concerning a last-days caliphate that goes up against “the army of Rome” to initiate “Malahim”—the equivalent to Armageddon in Christian teachings, a battle that ISIS believes they will ultimately win. This war will, according to ISIS, provoke the coming of Mahdi (their Messiah), the Al-Masih ad-Dajjal (Antichrist), and Isa (Jesus), who spears the Antichrist figure and fights on behalf of the Muslim army.

We will reveal how the pope likewise will view himself—and Rome—as amidst unfolding prophecy, which Francis has alluded to on several occasions, including connecting ISIS terrorism with the end of the world.[vi] This final pope on Malachy’s list has even recommended that people read Lord of the World—a related 1907 book by Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson that depicts the reign of Antichrist and the Vatican’s relationship to the end of the world, which both Francis and emeritus Pope Benedict have called “prophetic.” This is not surprising, as the reigning pope is an avowed prophecy believer and knows that he is “Petrus Romanus,” the final pope (#112) from the famous “Prophecy of the Popes” attributed to St. Malachy (that is, unless Francis was not canonically elected, which we discuss in The Final Roman Emperor, an intriguing possibility that presents additional strange and prophetic alternatives to the narrative). The best-selling work by Putnam and myself titled Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope Is Here thoroughly and critically dissected this mystical prophecy and found widespread support for the document from Catholics and even evidence that, down through the years, cardinals elected popes who could somehow be viewed as fulfilling their line in this prophecy. As it involves Pope Francis, here is what the final line in the prophecy says:

In the extreme persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will sit Peter the Roman [Pope #112, Petrus Romanus], who will pasture his sheep in many tribulations, and when these things are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people. The End.

When elected Pope #112, Jesuit Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis) immediately did several fascinating things to wrap himself in his “Peter the Roman” title:

• First, he took as his namesake St. Francis of Assisi, an Italian (Roman) friar whose original name was Giovanni but that was later changed to Francesco di Pietro (Peter) di Bernardone—a name that can literally be translated “Peter the Roman” from the final line of the Prophecy of the Popes.

• Second, Pope Francis knows that Francis of Assisi was a prophet and that he predicted this final pope would “be raised to the Pontificate, who, by his cunning, will endeavor to draw many into error and death…for in those days Jesus Christ will send them not a true Pastor, but a destroyer.” It is astonishing that Francis would pick as a namesake a man that foretold this of the final pope.

• Third, Pope Francis named Pietro Parolin as the Vatican’s new secretary of state—a man who could sit on the throne of Peter if Pope Francis retires (like Benedict did), dies, or is killed, and whose name can also be viewed as “Peter the Roman.” If Francis was not canonically elected, Pietro Parolin would actually become the real Pope #112 under that scenario.

And then there are those famous last words from the Prophecy of the Popes itself, which says: “When these things are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people.” As you will learn in our fourth and final book, this idea, that the city of Rome will be

destroyed during the reign of pope #112 (and just ahead of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ as Judge), is a vision repeated in numerous ancient prophecies from Greek, Jewish, Catholic, and Muslim cultures! This includes what ISIS draws from their Hadith—that they will go to war against the army of Rome and destroy the Vatican’s headquarters. As mentioned in a prior online entry to this short series, ISIS has even produced a movie that depicts this apocalyptic event culminating in the destruction of Rome.[vii] In tandem with the prediction, they have threatened to kill Pope Francis,[viii] and the pontiff has responded by saying he is willing to be assassinated if that is God’s will; he just hopes it doesn’t hurt.[ix] As this narrative continues unfolding toward the conflict predicted in The Final Roman Emperor, it will become increasingly clear to the readers that both Pope Francis and ISIS believe they are engaged in an end-times scenario, making some of what Francis has said and done since his “election” understandable within a larger oracular context.

For example, in addition to what the ISIS Hadith and the Prophecy of the Popes says about the destruction of Rome, shortly after he accepted the pontificate, Pope Francis consecrated the world to “Our Lady of Fatima” during Mass in St. Peter’s Square.[x] Francis knows the prophecies and controversies connected to Fatima, including the vision of the “Holy Father” (pope) walking among a destroyed city (the Vatican) when ISIS-like fighters run in and kill him. Francis believes in this prophecy (obviously why he dedicated the world to precisely this Marian apparition), and ISIS vows to make it happen. In Petrus Romanus, we noted:

The third part of the Secret of Fatima, which was supposedly released in total by the Vatican June 26, 2000, seems to echo the visions of Pius X. A section of the material reads:

…before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way…on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions.[xi]

It’s interesting, given the prediction from Fatima, that Pope Francis has also reached out to Kabbalist rabbis, whose Zohar (the most important work of the Jewish Kabbalah, which was written in medieval Aramaic over seven hundred years ago) also foretells this destruction of Rome (Vaera section, volume 3, section 34) in connection with “Messiah’s” secret arrival in the year 2013 (is this why top rabbis in Israel are saying the Messiah’s presentation to the world is imminent?). And, after this “Messiah” makes himself known to the international community, “the kings of the world will assemble in the great city of Rome, and the Holy One will shower on them fire and hail and meteoric stones until they are all destroyed.”[xii]

The depth to which Pope Francis can be thought of as a mystic and believer in such prophecy involving the coming destruction of Rome may also be connected to his knowledge of the Cumaean Sibyl, whose prophecy about the return of the god Apollo (identified in the New Testament as the spirit that will inhabit Antichrist) is encoded on the Great Seal of the United States,[xiii] as well as in Catholic art (from altars to illustrated books and even her appearance upon the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, where four other Sibyls join her [Paul cast a demon out of one such prophetesses in the New Testament]), and the Old Testament prophets in places of sacred honor. Yet this Cumaean—who sits so prominently inside Catholicism’s most celebrated chapel—gave forth another famous and forgotten prophecy, which we examine in the FINAL ENTRY to show how she was quoted by early Church Fathers and actually connected the end-times Islamic Mahdi with a “Last Roman Emperor” (who arguably developed into the “Holy Pope” legend)—an eschatological figure whose time, and whose catastrophic war, is coming very soon.

Will Pope Francis be the one to play the role of the Last Roman Emperor? Or will it be another pontiff? Was there something strange about the conclave from which Pope Francis emerged to the pontificate? Something mentioned earlier in this entry that suggests he was not actually “canonically elected?”

Even some Catholics think “illegitimate” activity may have gone on behind closed doors during the last conclave[xiv] and that, for reasons we do not yet understand, Francis was put in as a temporary “placeholder” until the real pope #112 (Petrus Romanus) could be installed. This, too, might echo the choice of St. Francis of Assisi as a namesake, as the ancient friar did predict, “a man, not canonically elected, will be raised to the pontificate.” The mysterious reasons surrounding a “placeholder” pope—a false pope—is largely unknown to the public, but was foresaw by such mystics as Father Herman Bernard Kramer in his work, The Book of Destiny. During an unusual interpretation he made of the twelfth chapter of the book of Revelation concerning “the great wonder” mentioned in verse one, Father Kramer wrote:

The “sign” in heaven is that of a woman with child crying out in her travail and anguish of delivery. In that travail, she gives birth to some definite “person” who is to RULE the Church with a rod of iron (verse 5). It then points to a conflict waged within the Church to elect one who was to “rule all nations” in the manner clearly stated. In accord with the text this is unmistakably a PAPAL ELECTION, for only Christ and his Vicar have the divine right to rule ALL NATIONS… But at this time the great powers may take a menacing attitude to hinder the election of the logical and expected candidate by threats of a general apostasy, assassination or imprisonment of this candidate if elected.[xv]

Although we disagree with Kramer’s interpretation of the book of Revelation, his fear that “great powers” may have taken “a menacing attitude to hinder the election of the logical and expected candidate” echoes the sentiment of priests mentioned elsewhere in our book Petrus Romanus, who see a crises for the Church coming, and the Final Roman Emperor (Antichrist) rising as a result. As we move through 2016, Pope Francis is publically looking for a global political authority (such as the UN) to come alongside him to implement his religious and social agenda, President Barack Obama may set his eyes on becoming the UN Secretary General following the US Presidential election,[xvi] and Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu is very concerned about the ramifications of both. Will the pope or ex-president step forward to fulfill the Cumaean Sibyl’s prophecy…or are there others waiting in the wings? You will learn the shocking truth to these questions and why an ISIS WMD and a call by Rome to sanction war will soon result in both Muslims and Romans engaging in their own apocalyptica.

Oh…and as you will learn more extensively in The Final Roman Emperor, nearly a decade ago, a major Islamic website set the date on which this war and its Mahdi would unfold: “Based on our numerical analysis of the Quran and Hadith,” the Muslim scholars concluded, “the official beginning of the End of Time and the coming of the Imam Mahdi will most likely be in…2016.”[xvii]

Sources

[i] http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2016/04/15/just-war-theory-should-be-abandoned-says-conference-hosted-by-vatican/

[ii] David Stout, “Vatican Backs Military Campaign against ISIS,” Time, March 15, 2015, last accessed March 15, 2016, http://time.com/3745462/vatican-ISIS-syria-iraq-middle-east/.

[iii] “Pope Francis: US Action against ISIS a ‘Just War,’” CBN News, September, 8, 2014, last accessed March 15, 2016, http://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2014/August/Pope-Francis-US-Action-against-ISIS-a-Just-War.

[iv] “Just War theory,” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, last modified March 10, 2016, last accessed March 15, 2016, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war_theory.

[v] John L. Allen Jr., “Vatican Backs Military Force to Stop ISIS ‘Genocide,’” Crux News: Covering All Things Catholic, March 13, 2015, last accessed March 15, 2016, http://www.cruxnow.com/church/2015/03/13/vatican-backs-military-force-to-stop-ISIS-genocide/.

[vi] Thomas D. Williams, PhD, “After Paris, Pope Francis Tells Christians to Be Ready for the End of the World,” Breitbart, November 15, 2015, last accessed March 15, 2016, http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/15/paris-pope-francis-tells-christians-ready-end-world/.

[vii] Sophie Jane Evans, “ISIS’s Chilling Death March,” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3356503/ISIS-s-chilling-death-march-end-world-Jihadists-release-video-depicting-vision-future-battle-culminating-Colosseum.html.

[viii] Robert Windrem, “ISIS Magazine Debiq Singled Out Pope Francis Ahead of US Trip,” NBC News, September 22, 2015, last accessed March 15, 2016, http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/pope-francis-visits-america/ISIS-magazine-dabiq-singles-out-pope-francis-ahead-u-s-n431681.

[ix] Chris Perez, “Pope Francis: If I’m Assassinated, at Least Make it Painless,” New York Post, March 10, 2015, last accessed March 15, 2016, http://nypost.com/2015/03/10/pope-francis-if-im-assassinated-at-least-make-it-painless/.

[x] Edward Pentin, “Pope Francis’ Consecrating the World to Mary Culminates Fatima Celebration,” National Catholic Register, October 15, 2013, last accessed March 15, 2016, http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/pope-francis-consecrating-the-world-to-mary-culminates-fatima-celebration/.

[xi] Thomas Horn and Cris Putnam, Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope Is Here (Crane, MO: Defender Publishing, 2012), 454.

[xii] Thomas Horn, Zenith 2016: Did Something Begin in the Year 2012 that Will Reach its Apex in 2016? (Crane, MO: Defender Publishing, 2013), 371.

[xiii] For more information on this, see the appendix at the back of this book on the Cumaean Sibyl’s prophecy, the Great Seal, and the design and layout of the Vatican and Washington, DC.

[xiv] “Was Pope Francis Canonically Elected?” Catholic Truth, last accessed March 15, 2016, http://catholictruthblog.com/2013/12/30/was-pope-francis-canonically-elected/.

[xv] Rev. Herman Bernard Kramer, The Book of Destiny (Belleville, IL: Buechler Publishing Company, 1955), 277.

[xvi] Leah Barkoukis, “Report: Obama Wants to Become UN Secretary General, Netanyahu Doing Everything He Can to Stop Him,” Fox News, January 10, 2016, last accessed March 15, 2016, http://nation.foxnews.com/2016/01/10/report-obama-wants-become-un-secretary-general-netanyahu-doing-everything-he-can-stop-him.

[xvii] “End of Time Prophecies, Apocalypse & Eschatology,” Discovering Islam, last accessed March 15, 2016, http://www.discoveringislam.org/end_of_time.htm.

Economic Collapse

40 VOLCANOES ARE ERUPTING RIGHT NOW AS THE CRUST OF THE EARTH BECOMES INCREASINGLY UNSTABLE

Let’s talk about the volcanic eruptions that we have seen in recent days.

Michael Sndyer -

MAY 23, 2016

IMAGE CREDITS: LEAHHELINSKI | FLICKR.

Have you noticed that our planet has begun to shake, rattle and roll?

Over the past few days we have seen major volcanic eruptions in Costa Rica and Indonesia, and according to Volcano Discovery 40 volcanoes around the planet are erupting right now as you read this article. Meanwhile, earthquakes continue to shake the globe with alarming regularity. Just last week, Ecuador was hit by a magnitude 6.7 earthquake and a magnitude 6.8 earthquake in rapid succession. Overall, there have been more than 3,000 earthquakes of magnitude 1.5 or greater within the past month globally. So yes, I write constantly about the rapidly accelerating deterioration of our financial system, but the coming “collapse” is not just about money. I am convinced that we are entering a “perfect storm” in which a confluence of factors will absolutely cripple society and bring about changes that most of us would not even dare to imagine right now.

Let’s talk about the volcanic eruptions that we have seen in recent days. The eruption down in Costa Rica took authorities completely by surprise, and a thick layer of dust and ash is coating vehicles and buildings 30 miles away in the capital city of San Jose…

A volcano has erupted in central Costa Rica, belching smoke and ash up to 3,000m (9,840ft) into the air.

Hundreds of people have gone to hospital, complaining of breathing difficulties and skin problems.

Some schools were shut and some flights into the country cancelled or diverted.

People in the capital San Jose, about 45km (30 miles) west of the Turrialba volcano, said layers of ash had coated buildings and cars and there was a fierce smell of sulphur.

Leading up to this eruption, there were “swarms of small earthquakes” in the vicinity of the volcano, but scientists assured the public that these earthquake swarms were “not signs of an imminent eruption.”

Keep that in mind, because later in the article I am going to show you something.

But first let us talk about the other major eruption that is happening right now. Down in Indonesia, Mount Sinabung has violently erupted, and this is causing all sorts of chaos…

The death toll from a volcanic eruption in western Indonesia has climbed to six, an official said Sunday, with fears more could have been trapped by the hot ash.

Three people also remain in a critical condition after Mount Sinabung, a highly-active volcano on Sumatra island, unleashed a series of fresh eruptions on Saturday afternoon, disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.

“Nine people were struck by the hot clouds. Six died, and three others remain critical with burns,” he said, adding the injured had been taken to hospital.

According to one report, “torrents of lava” are pouring out of the volcano, and this is just one example of how volcanoes that were once considered to be “inactive” are coming to life all over the world. In fact, prior to 2010 Mount Sinabung had been dormant for about 400 years.

Meanwhile, there is “unprecedented” activity at Iceland’s very dangerous Baroabunga volcano. This one is not erupting quite yet, but we definitely want to keep an eye on it, because a major eruption there would have serious implications for Europe.

To finish this article, I would like to provide an update to a piece that I posted last week on End of the American Dream. Just prior to the eruption of the Turrialba volcano in Costa Rica, there were significant earthquake swarms in the vicinity of the volcano. Well, the exact same thing is happening at three major volcanoes in the United States right now.

I would like to share three images with you that come from Google Earth via the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. This first image shows the earthquake activity that has taken place in the area around Mt. St. Helens in recent days. Over the past month there have been 95 earthquakes in the region, and most of them have been centered right along the core of the volcano…

This next image shows what has been happening at Mt. Rainier. Those that follow my work closely already know that I consider it to be the most dangerous mountain in America and that I believe that a major eruption of the volcano is coming in the not too distant future. There have been 36 earthquakes at Mt. Rainier over the past month, and once again most of them have occurred right along the core of the volcano…

Mt. Hood is also a very dangerous volcano. There have been 126 earthquakes in the vicinity of Mt. Hood in recent days, and in this image you can see that the earthquakes have been centered very tightly on a spot on the south face of the mountain. This is alarming because it was also the south side of Mt. St. Helens that violently erupted back in 1980…

When there are major volcanic eruptions or major earthquakes in other parts of the globe, many Americans don’t seem to care too much because they don’t think that this rise in global seismic activity is any sort of a threat to them personally.

But the truth is that the entire west coast of the United States lies along the Ring of Fire, and virtually every other section of the Ring of Fire is roaring to life these days.

At some point, there will be historic earthquakes on the west coast.

At some point, there will be historic volcanic eruptions on the west coast.

Scientists assure us that these things are inevitable.

So let us certainly hope for the best, but putting our heads in the sand and pretending that these dangers do not exist is not going to help matters one bit.

***

SPUTNIK

Russia Has Last Seen Such Amassing of Hostile Forces on Its Borders in 1941

© AP Photo/ Shakh Aivazov

POLITICS

10:06 21.05.2016(updated 12:46 21.05.2016)

Russia has not seen such a major military buildup close to its borders since 1941 when the Third Reich sent the Wehrmacht to conquer the Soviet Union, Professor Stephen F. Cohen said in his recent interview on The John Batchelor Show, referring to NATO's increasingly assertive strategy in Eastern Europe and the Baltics.

"We have been watching for nearly a month a steady buildup of American and NATO forces along near Russia's borders – on land, on sea and in the air," he said. "There has been nothing like this on Russia's borders, such an amassing of hostile military force, since the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941."

Russia has been concerned with NATO's overall strategy and its recent moves particularly. Last week the US completed its first land-based component of the Aegis missile shield at an air base near Deveselu, Romania. A day later, the alliance held a groundbreaking ceremony in Poland. The Aegis Ashore base is scheduled to be deployed in Redzikowo by 2018.

Moscow has warned that the system could be detrimental for global peace and stability. NATO officials have tried to alleviate Russian concerns by saying that the Aegis system is purely defensive, but Cohen warned that it the complex could be used for other purposes.

"Somebody said that the only defensive weapon in military history is a foxhole; everything else could be used for offensive purposes. [NATO's missile defense system] could be used for offensive purposes. They can launch cruise missiles," he observed.

Russian officials and experts have also questioned whether it was reasonable to build a shield that is supposed to protect the West against Iran's ballistic missiles considering that Tehran does not pose any threat to its neighbors and beyond.

The Islamic Republic is not the real target. "The majority of our missile defense installations … are directed at Russia. They are not directed at Iran, that's a fairytale. The government puts it out, but nobody believes it," the analyst noted.

Professor Cohen has long warned that Washington's policies towards Russia have been the key reason for the recent cold spell in relations between the two global powers. This trend appears to be getting more dangerous.

"Are we sleepwalking towards an actual war with Russia or is this a plan to provoke a war with Russia?" he asked. "If we are sleepwalking, we all need to yell, 'Wake up!' If they actually now would not mind a war with Russia, then they are crazy. Because there is no way if there is war with Russia on Russia's borders that eventually some kind of nuclear weapons will not come into play."

***

RUSSIA INSIDER

Lavrov Warns NATO to Back Off

the Russian side will take all required steps to fend off the emerging risks and threats to our national security"

(TASS) May 25, 2016

Russia will make all required steps to fend off risks and threats to the country’s national security, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet.

"We do not want to be like those irresponsible politicians who, in order to please their own ambitions, are ready to easily sacrifice the interests of maintaining peace and stability in Europe, and, without thinking of consequences, keep raising the stakes, feeding alarmist moods," he said.

We do not intend to excessively dramatize the situation," Lavrov said while commenting on NATO’s increased presence in Central Europe.

"At that, we certainly can’t ignore the growing negative tendencies that form as a result of NATO’s course for deliberate disruption of the strategic balance of forces in Europe, including the strengthening of the North Atlantic alliance's military potential near the Russian borders, establishment of the European segment of the US global missile defense," he said.

"Such actions can’t be called other than destabilizing and short-sighted," Lavrov said.

"In this context, the Russian side will take all required steps to fend off the emerging risks and threats to our national security," the Russian foreign minister underscored.

Russia, Lavrov recalled, "is still committed to building the architecture of mutually beneficial and broad pan-European cooperation in the sphere of security on the basis of the principle of its indivisibility, resting upon international law."

"We hope commonsense finally prevails in NATO, and our Western partners find the strength to give up confrontational schemes conditioned by the desire to ensure their own security at the expense of others," he said.

***

Natural Blaze

6 Ways To Detox Fluoride – A Known Neurotoxin – From Your Body

MAY 22, 2016 By Amanda Froelich

Sodium fluoride is classified as a neurotoxin – in the same category as arsenic, lead, and mercury, but it’s still prevalent in the United States’ water supply. Here are six ways to detox the substance from your body.

For years, health experts have been debating about whether or not sodium fluoride is toxic to the human body. Small amounts applied topically may prevent tooth decay, but there is little evidence suggesting that fluoride improves health when it is ingested.

In fact, according to the world’s oldest and most prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, the additive is actually a neurotoxin and is classified in the same category as arsenic, lead, and mercury. Because it is commonly ingested through fluoridated water, certain foods, and commercial toothpastes, researchers believe that the additive is contributing to a worldwide “pandemic of developmental neurotoxicity” that results in disabilities such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, and other cognitive impairments.

The report coincides with 2013 findings by a Harvard University meta-analysis which was funded by the National Institutes of Health. The researchers concluded that children in areas with highly fluoridated water have “significantly lower’ IQ scores than those who live in areas with low amounts of fluoride in their water supply. In addition, the Harvard website states that “extremely high levels of fluoride are known to cause neurotoxicity in adults, and negative impacts on memory and learning have been reported in rodent studies.” In addition, “little is known about the substance’s impact on children’s neurodevelopment.”

Despite these findings, fluoride is still added to approximately 60% of the United States’ water supply. This is especially concerning, considering that sodium fluoride was once used as rat poison.

Because the toxin accumulates in the human body and can manifest in problems over time, including dental fluorosis – or far worse health issues, it’s important every individual follows the steps below to eliminate the additive from their body.

Note: You might experience detox symptoms at first – such as headaches, sluggishness, or aches and pains, but this is a sign that foreign agents are leaving your body. Drink plenty of water and follow the six steps listed below to naturally eliminate fluoride from your system.

1) Get Adequate Iodine

Iodine is an important element for the normal metabolism of cells, especially thyroid hormones. It pushes the fluoride from your body via urine. Some good sources of iodine include seaweed (nori, dulse, wakame, etc…), cranberries, organic yogurt, potatoes, organic strawberries, and organic navy beans.

2) Consume More Boron

Boron is a natural element that helps flush fluoride from your body. Boron-rich foods include most nuts, dates, prunes, honey, broccoli, bananas, and avocado.

3) Eat Some Tamarind

This African fruit and spice is used extensively in Ayurvedic medicine. It can be used in a tincture or tea to cleanse the body of fluoride.

4) Increase Magnesium/Calcium Intake

Most people are deficient in magnesium because the soils have been depleted of this mineral through modern agricultural methods. It plays an important role, however, in the metabolism and synthesis of nutrients within your cells. It also inhibits the absorption of fluoride into your cells. Along with magnesium, calcium seems to help attract fluoride away from bones and teeth, allowing the body to eliminate it.

Both should be taken together, and this can easily be accomplished by consuming dark leafy greens, nuts, seeds, fish, beans, whole grains, avocados, organic yogurt, bananas, dried fruit, and dark chocolate.

5) General Liver Cleanse

The most important step to detoxify from excess fluoride may be to cleanse your liver. The liver is responsible for over 400 functions in the body, and when it gets overburdened, a number of symptoms may manifest. Because fluoride isn’t a product found naturally in the body, some sources claim that it may get stuck in the liver.

If you drink lemon water upon rising and eat liver-friendly foods, such as garlic, turmeric, lemons, limes, and avocado, your body will have an easier time removing heavy metals and toxins.

6) Sit In A Sauna

Saunas are great for ridding your body of toxins, as they inspire the body to sweat them out. The penetrating heat feels good, as well. Just be sure to drink plenty of water before and after to prevent dehydration. If you have any medical conditions, consult your healthcare provider first.

By adopting a wholesome, plant-based diet, getting plenty of exercise, receiving 15-20 minutes of sunlight per day, thinking positive thoughts, and taking time off to keep your stress levels in check, you’ll find that you feel better and have more energy than before. These additional tips will improve your body’s ability to detox fluoride and other toxins from your system, as well.

***

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

“And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
(2 Corinthians 12:9)