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Another Arrest in Yaakov Teitel Case

Breaking news: Yaakov Teitel arrested in Ami Ortiz case

Potential breakthrough in Ami Ortiz case

Why did Yaakov Teitel terrorise Christians and Messianic Jews?

Have a look at these contrasting headlines and news stories from Israel Today:-

Palestinians do the opposite of recognizing Jewish state

One of Israel’s key demands in the current peace process is that the Palestinians simply recognize Israel as the national and historical homeland of the Jews. But last week Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority punctuated its refusal to do so by claiming the Jews have no historical ties whatsoever and are aliens in the land.

In a show on official Palestinian Authority TV on October 22, a leading Palestinian historian and a senior government official lectured their audience on how the Jews of Israel have no connection to any land in the Middle East, and are inventing archeological finds to support their false claims.

By contrast, the two insisted that the Palestinians have 4,000-5,000 years of history in the land. Many have pointed out before that such claims run completely counter to other Palestinian claims. For example, the Palestinians say they are Arabs and therefore descendants of Abraham. However, Abraham had not yet been born 4,000 years ago.

Over the past few decades, an avalanche of archeological finds and historical documentation have attested to the Jews’ strong and rich history in the region, while very little has been produced to support an Arab presence dating back any further than the Muslim conquest 1,300 years ago.

And:-

Israeli soldiers forced to remove Bible verse from checkpoint

Israel National News reports that a group of Israeli soldiers constantly on duty at a checkpoint outside the Palestinian-controlled Samarian town of Nablus have been forced to remove a Bible verse they used to adorn their station after it was deemed offensive to the local Arab population.

The verse used was from Psalm 18, which is a prayer of thanksgiving by King David after God helped him to overtake and destroy his enemies. The portion used by the soldiers read: “I did not return until they were destroyed.”

The soldiers explained that they used the verse to refer to their mission to identify and prevent Palestinian terrorists from infiltrating Israel proper.

But an ultra-left-wing Israeli women’s group known as Machsom Watch (Checkpoint Watch) insisted that the verse was offending local Arabs who traveled through the checkpoint every day. The army ultimately agreed and ordered the soldiers to remove the biblical reference.

Speaks volumes to me. Whilst the Palestinian media is busy stirring up trouble, anger and resentment, the Israeli’s are worried about offending.

How’s this for a revolutionary thought, perhaps ministers of the Gospel shouldn’t retire and then there wouldn’t be a bloomin’ pension crisis in the Church of England.

You think I’m joking?. Where in the Bible does it talk of folk retiring? Does Jesus give the command to be a minister of the Gospel until a certain age and then put your feet up? Is there any evidence of this as a precedent in the New Testament? No! In fact quite the opposite.

Times

The increased longevity of the clergy, combined with greater regulation and the credit crunch, has left the Church’s new pension scheme with liabilities of £813 million, nearly almost double the £461 million market value of its assets.

The scheme, created in 1998 and part-funded by churchgoers who are being asked to put more in the collection pot than ever before to pay clergy pensions, has been especially hard hit because all its investments were placed in the stock market at the end of the 1990s. But in putting all its cash into equity, the Church was following established financial norms. Before that, the Church Commissioners, who manage the assets of the Church, had been criticised for losing millions of pounds in speculative property investments.

Clergy are in one of the few jobs that still enjoy fixed-benefit schemes. However, they are especially vulnerable to a pensions crisis because they live in tied accommodation owned by the Church and their meagre stipend of £20,000 leaves little surplus to invest in a retirement home or private pension scheme. Their pension works out at about two thirds of their stipend plus a lump sum, and they are entitled to work until the age of 70, although at present they can retire at 65 if they wish.

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A new Maine television ad by opponents of a marriage restoration amendment has been criticized for using a self-identified Catholic mother to promote homosexual “marriage.” Catholicvoteaction.org says the ad is “lying” about the Catholic Church.

Is The Gay Marriage Debate Over?

More Intolerance by the Forces of Tolerance

From Catholic Culture

By a 53%-47% margin, Maine voters have repealed a measure that would have legalized homosexual marriage in the state– even though, in the words of the Associated Press, “the stars seemed aligned for supporters of gay marriage. They had Maine’s governor, legislative leaders and major newspapers on their side, plus a huge edge in campaign funding.”

Bishop Richard Malone of Portland has been an active supporter of traditional marriage, ordering a collection in all parishes on behalf of the effort. The shepherd of the state’s sole diocese noted in a recent referendum alert:

Please let your conscience be formed by these clear and authoritative words of Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger): “In those situations where homosexual unions … have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty.” A Catholic whose conscience has been properly formed by Scripture and the teachings of the Catholic Church cannot support same sex marriage. Please vote YES on question 1.

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

Maine Voters Repeal Gay Marriage Law

Marriage wins again; media moan

Maine: “It’s a personal rejection of us and our relationship”

Defeat in Maine a harsh blow to gay-marriage drive (AP)

Diocese of Portland in Maine

Same-sex marriage in Maine (Wikipedia)

Counterfeit ‘Marriage’ Rejected in Maine

HUGE Win in Maine as Voters Reject Same-sex Marriage!

An interesting article from the Guardian today, which follows on from a recent article about schisms within atheism:-

Is there an atheist schism? – Dawkins et al bring us into disrepute

The article begins with a denial that there can exist a schism within atheism, because atheism cannot be a ‘movement’:-

Guardian

Atheism itself, atheism as such, isn’t and can’t be a movement, because atheism is, at a minimum, simply non-theism: non-belief in any god. Mere non-belief in any X can’t by itself constitute a movement, because it’s merely an absence (or at most a refusal) of belief.

This is a flawed argument and simply word play. Atheism is not a ‘non-belief’, but an active belief that there is no God. This fact is amply demonstrated within the comment section of this blog. Atheists have become dogmatic, aggressive and evangelistic, which is evidenced over and again, by their activities on Christian forums. They are ‘pumping’ a belief system, not a non-belief.

The irony is, that this article seems to go on to whinge about the differences between the two main groups of atheists [within the movement] and the problems that this is causing them.

Atheism can however include something like a movement, of course, as can other beliefs and non-beliefs. Some of the disagreement among atheists is around this issue. Many atheists want to be able to be atheists without being dragooned into some boring noisy unsubtle bad-tempered “movement”. Many other atheists want to be able to be overt explicit unbashful atheists without constantly being told to be more euphemistic or evasive or respectful or just plain silent by other atheists, who surely ought to know better.

This “who surely ought to know better” is one place where the disagreement really grips. To the first group – let’s call them plain atheists – this idea looks like typical political hegemonising, like ideological policing, like the demand for uniformity and agreement and loyalty that always goes with a “movement”. It looks like groupthink. To the second group – call them movement atheists – that’s not it, it’s just that other atheists should understand that euphemism and respect have been the norm for a long time and we really ought to be allowed to talk freely.

I’m in the second group, but when I try hard enough, I can see why people in the first group want to be able to be atheists without taking on a whole lot of extra baggage.

The problem, of course, is that what each group wants is incompatible with what the other group wants. In a perfect world, plain atheists could just ignore movement atheists, and movement atheists could mutter away without disturbing their quieter friends. But in the real world, many plain atheists feel that movement atheists bring the whole notion of atheism into disrepute. We make it more difficult for plain atheists to be just that, because the world at large now thinks of atheists in general as movement atheists.

Read Entire Article

Sounds like a schism within a ‘movement’ to me?

Fascinating article from Bloomberg. I wonder why the ‘giants’ of the banking world feel the need to tour churches to enlist the sympathies of Christians? Oh yes of course, they are having a moral crisis, or more accurately, society is questioning their morality.

Personally, I no longer care one way or the other about the morality of the banking system, as frankly, everything today is built upon the foundation of worshipping mammon, greed, manic control and self gain and that won’t change until Jesus comes back. It doesn’t matter what ideological system humans put in place for society, it will always come back to this, because that is the nature of fallen humans. Tinkering around the edges of society won’t fix this problem, only a radical overhaul in the hearts of men by God Himself and a renewed relationship with Him, will suffice.

Bloomberg

Profit ’Not Satanic’ Barclays Says After Goldman Invokes Jesus

Barclays Plc Chief Executive Officer John Varley stood at the wooden lectern in St. Martin-in-the- Fields on London’s Trafalgar Square last night and told the packed pews of the church that “profit is not satanic.”The 53-year-old head of Britain’s second-biggest bank said banks are the “backbone” of the economy. Rewarding high- performing bankers with more pay doesn’t conflict with Christian values, he said. Varley was paid 1.08 million pounds ($1.77 million) and no bonus in 2008.

“Talent is highly mobile,” Varley, a Catholic, said. “If we fail to pay or are constrained from paying competitive rates then that talent will move to another employer.”

“Is Christianity and banking compatible? Yes,” he said in an interview after the speech in the 283-year-old church. “And is Christianity and fair reward compatible? Yes.”

Varley joins Goldman Sachs International adviser Brian Griffiths and Lazard International Chairman Ken Costa as London bankers who’ve gone into London churches in recent weeks and invoked Christianity to defend a banking system that critics say has created wealth and inequality in the U.K.

“The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest,” Goldman’s Griffiths said Oct. 20, his voice echoing around the gold-mosaic walls of St. Paul’s Cathedral, whose 365-feet-high dome towers over the City, London’s financial district. “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieving greater prosperity and opportunity for all.”

Bonuses to Rise

City bonuses may rise by 50 percent to 6 billion pounds this year, according to the Centre for Economics & Business Research Ltd., even after the U.K. economy contracted for six consecutive quarters, driving unemployment to a 14-year high of 7.9 percent. The gap between rich and poor in the U.K. reached its widest in five decades last year, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a non-partisan research group.

“The levels of inequality in London are just mind- boggling,” said Nicholas Sagovsky, canon theologian at the 764- year-old Westminster Abbey, where British monarchs are crowned and Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Mary I are buried.

Bankers are trying to defuse public anger at a financial crisis that triggered a state bailout of lenders including Lloyds Banking Group Plc and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc. The two banks yesterday got 31.3 billion pounds more from the government, after receiving 37 billion pounds last year.

“It’s terrible to say things like that in a church,” Neil Jameson, executive director of London Citizens, a non-profit that campaigns on issues from low pay to crime, said of Goldman’s Griffiths. “He should be condemned,” Jameson said.

Read Entire Article

Further Internet Link

Top Boss Tells Church Crowd ‘Profit Is Not Satanic’

John Varley Defends Bonuses: Profits Are “Not Satanic” Barclays CEO Tells London Church Crowd

In an extraordinary address, Barclays chief executive John Varley said banks are the ‘backbone’ of the economy and paying out bonuses is compatible with Christianity.

It is interesting to note that Damian Thompson has written about the upcoming BBC documentary on Christianity, as in one sense, this series represents a test case to see if the new Muslim head of BBC religious programming Aaqil Ahmen, really will be impartial and professional towards Christianity as he has stated.

Previous related posts:-

BBC’s Muslim head of religion reveals a Protestant work ethic – Christianity is still the schedule’s cornerstone, says Aaqil Ahmed

Controversial Muslim to be head of BBC religion

BBC supports Islam and attacks Christianity says ex-presenter Don Maclean

Church of England to confront BBC over treatment of Christianity

Muslim appointed BBC Head of Religion

Telegraph

Christianity is the world’s biggest religion, yet the BBC has not produced a major documentary series about it for decades. That will be rectified tomorrow, when BBC Four begins A History of Christianity, a six-part series presented by Diarmaid MacCulloch, an Oxford history professor whose books about Cranmer and the Reformation have been acclaimed as masterpieces.

[.....]

……MacCulloch continues: “It took a long time for the West to wake up to the fact that religion was back with a vengeance in almost literal terms, and that Europe’s move towards serene indifference to faith was the exception, not the rule.”

[.....]

……Fair enough – and his discussion of the tortuous theological controversies that divided early Christians is brilliantly concise. But warning bells sounded, for me, when he wheeled out his first expert – veteran multiculturalist Martin Palmer, whom the BBC had apparently flown to China to explain to MacCulloch how peaceful this “disappeared” Christianity had been. He made the lost Christians sound as respectful of other faiths as a Thought for the Day presenter, though there was no real evidence to back this up. East good, west bad: very BBC. I make this point to MacCulloch, and he almost concedes it, saying he knew where Palmer “was coming from”.

The problem is that Palmer’s liberalism dovetails all too comfortably with MacCulloch’s own world-view, which is indignantly critical of what he regards as male-dominated, triumphalist Western Christianity – especially of the Roman Catholic variety. (A few days after we talked, he fumed in The Observer about Pope Benedict’s approach to disaffected Anglicans.)

How closely will A History of Christianity reflect its presenter’s prejudices? We shall have to see; I’ve only watched the first episode. MacCulloch, however, will not take kindly to the suggestion that his interpretation of Christian history is slanted towards the liberal Left. “Dogmatism” is one of his pet hates, but press him on his own contentious opinions and what does he say? “People don’t like hearing it told as it is.”

- A History of Christianity is on BBC Four tomorrow at 9.00pm

Read Entire Article

Related Internet link today on Aaqil Ahmed from George Pitcher over at the Telegraph

Yesterday, I talked about the popularity of doomsday scenarios. What’s behind the phenomenon? Simple – a lack of faith.

By Chuck Colson Christian Post

In the film The Day After Tomorrow, audiences were told that global warming could produce an instant ice age. Seriously! In 10,000 B.C., they were told that the pyramids were built by aliens using mammoths for the heavy lifting. Well, this same film director will tell us on the History Channel this month that life as we know it will end on December 21, 2012.

Now, to be fair to Roland Emmerich, he is simply trying to entertain people by literally projecting their anxieties onto the big screen.

If you Google “December 21, 2012,” you will get nearly 7 million hits. Do a similar search at Amazon and you find more than 400 books on the subject. There is obviously a lot of interest and more than a little anxiety about that date and both will only grow as we get closer to what’s already being called “12/21.”

December 12, 2012, is the last day listed on what is known as the Maya “long count calendar.” That calendar marks what the Maya-a now non-existent civilization-regarded as the end of the present cycle of creation.

What makes this fact rise above the level of a historical curiosity is, first of all, the Maya’s astronomical prowess. They charted the movements of celestial bodies with an accuracy unmatched until the invention of the telescope and, in some instances, not until the 20th century.

This alone isn’t enough to explain the unease about December 21, 2012, especially since, according to archaeologists, the Maya themselves never said anything about what would happen that day. Their real-world descendants find the hype annoying and are tired of getting letters from fourth-graders saying “they’re too young to die.”

This unwarranted and unwelcome attention to a long-extinct civilization is, like all apocalyptic thinking, a manifestation of cultural anxiety. Events like the 2004 tsunami and concerns about the economy, terrorism, and the environment remind us how vulnerable we really are.

Until relatively recently, we, like the psalmist, knew where are our help came from, and wouldn’t fear even if the mountains fell into the sea.

Then that faith in the biblical God was replaced by a faith in human prowess and, eventually, faith in nothing.

Well, Western culture might have lost its faith, but folks have not lost their anxieties. So since we are no longer willing to embrace the ancient faith, many looked for solace or explanation in other ancient faiths, or at least new-age versions of these faiths.

So we’re told that the ancient Maya, the Hopi Indians, and the Chinese text I Ching all predict that 2012 will be a time of “extraordinary shift.”

But they don’t. It’s all hype.

What’s going on here is the idea that we live in a random and unintelligible universe, and that’s more terrifying than the cataclysms predicted for the year 2012. So we grasp at straws or over-interpret obscure texts, or we despair.

But there is a third alternative-real faith. Christians know that God is working out His purposes in history, and that faith removes all anxieties.

The Christian Post

ISTANBUL (Compass Direct News) – A Coptic Christian blogger in Egypt entering his second year of prison without charge is being pressured to convert to Islam in exchange for his freedom, his attorneys said.

On Oct. 3, 2008, Hani Nazeer, a 28-year-old high school social worker from Qena, Egypt and author of the blog “Karz El Hob” (“Love Cherries”), was arrested by Egypt’s State Security Investigations (SSI) and sent to Burj Al-Arab prison. Although police never charged him with any crime, Nazeer has been detained for more than a year under Egypt’s administrative imprisonment law.

Gamel Eid, executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), the group representing Nazeer, said Nazeer was arrested unfairly and now is being coerced to abandon his faith.

“Hani complains about that, it happened, and it’s true,” said Eid. “But the police do it in a subtle way. They do it by inspiring the inmates to suggest to Nazeer that if he converts to Islam, police will work to get him out of prison.”

Nazeer is confined in what is commonly known as the “general population” area of the prison, meaning he is housed with both violent and non-violent felons. Nazeer told his attorneys he is often treated harshly. Despite this, Eid said Nazeer is constant in his faith.

A few days before his arrest, on Oct. 1, 2008, a group of young Muslims in Nag Hammadi saw his website and clicked on a link to an online copy of “Azazil’s Goat in Mecca,” a novel written under the pseudonym “Father Utah.” The book is a response to “Azazil,” a novel critical of Christianity by Yusuf Zidane that is famous in Egypt.

While Zidane’s critique of Christianity garnered him awards throughout the Arab world, locals protested the link to Utah’s site.

Insulting religion is considered a crime in Egypt, although typically the law is only enforced when Islam is criticized. Police have not publicly produced any evidence linking Nazeer to Utah’s work. After Nazeer was arrested, posts continued on Utah’s website. It is unclear if the teenagers who saw Nazeer’s website and were offended were students at his school.

Eid said the deeper issue was that Nazeer upset Islamic authorities by criticizing the increasing Islamization of Egyptian civil society and irked church leaders by lamenting political involvement of the Coptic Orthodox Church. In one post, Nazeer wrote said that a gathering of activists at a Coptic church was inappropriate because churches were meant to be venues for prayer, not for politics.

Police had detained Nazeer’s relatives at a police station and threatened to hold them until he came out of hiding, Eid said, and Nazeer turned himself into a police station in October 2008 – on the advice of Bishop Kirollos of Nag Hammadi, Nazeer reported to his attorneys.

Kirollos assured Nazeer he would be detained no more than four days and then be released. According to Nazeer and the ANHRI, the bishop colluded with authorities to get rid of Nazeer, whose online criticism had become bothersome.

“[Kirollos] is the one who turned me in after he denounced me to security,” Nazeer told his attorneys. “He bluffed [that] we were going for a short investigation and it will be all over. Then I found out it was a charade to turn me in to state security.”

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15,000 Bibles in Malaysia Seized Over ‘Allah’ Reference

Jerusalem Post

Malaysia rejects call to release 10,000 confiscated Bibles

“Actually the publications, the Bibles are already banned,” said the official, refusing to elaborate. He declined to be named because he is not authorized to make public statements.

The Malaysian government has refused to release 10,000 Bibles confiscated for using the word “Allah” to refer to God, a banned translation in Christian texts in this Muslim-majority country, an official said Wednesday.

An official from the Home Ministry’s publications unit said the government rejected pleas by church officials to allow the Bibles, imported from Indonesia, into the country. Christians say the Muslim Malay-dominated government is violating their right to practice their religion freely.

A Home Ministry official said the government told the importer last month to return the Indonesian-language Bibles, which are still with customs.

Related Internet Link

Malaysian Christian group slams government seizure of Bibles

THE Malaysian government has refused to release 10,000 Bibles confiscated for using the word ‘Allah’ to refer to God, a banned translation in Christian texts in this Muslim-majority country, an official said on Wednesday.