One of con­tem­po­rary man’s great­est idio­cy once he has been exposed to a lit­tle edu­ca­tion is the belief that the new knowl­edge he is exposed to reveals the non-exis­tence of God.
Hence he begins a cru­sade against his Creator while he strug­gles might­i­ly yet unsuc­cess­ful­ly to come up with a plau­si­ble alter­na­tive expla­na­tion for his mis­er­able existence.
Some Education can do that to a fool.
Noted Apologist Dr. Ravi Zachariah in com­ment­ing on this idio­cy , point­ed out that Liberalism in the Halls of acad­e­mia have turned knowl­edge into an Anti-God phe­nom­e­non in recent times.
Dr. Zachariah point­ed to the fact that his­tor­i­cal­ly the ‚most edu­cat­ed peo­ple were the most Religious until recent­ly when Liberalism invad­ed Academic spaces advanc­ing a view that sci­ence dis­proves God.
Unfortunately for these hea­thens Science and God are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive. Science explains God’s great­ness not dis­prove his existence.

Nowadays it’s almost impos­si­ble to hear good old Christian Hymns/​songs, songs which just caused unsaved to get up out of their seats and walk up to the Altar so that their lives may be altered. In many cas­es tears stream­ing down their faces.
Whatever hap­pened to the good old songs we loved ?
I know , I know these are con­tem­po­rary times but has God changed ? Do we sim­ply throw out every­thing old and good for every­thing. new? We can enjoy the new songs at the same time we remem­ber the old can’t we? I believe so.

Evacuations and mil­i­tary train­ing great­ly harmed live­stock and res­i­dents’ farmland

B’Tselem’s research indi­cates that on 29 and 30 April 2015 rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Civil Administration (CA) served tem­po­rary evac­u­a­tion orders to some six­ty fam­i­lies, num­ber­ing some 410 peo­ple includ­ing approx­i­mate­ly 120 minors, in sev­en Palestinian com­mu­ni­ties in the north­ern Jordan Valley. The orders required some fam­i­lies to leave their homes and prop­er­ty for peri­ods of three to twelve hours. Other fam­i­lies were required to evac­u­ate their homes for sev­er­al hours a day, for sev­er­al days run­ning. The evac­u­a­tion was ordered for a mil­i­tary maneu­ver in the area.

The fam­i­lies were giv­en only a few days to pre­pare for the evac­u­a­tion. Some of the res­i­dents received writ­ten orders from the CA, while oth­ers were noti­fied of the evac­u­a­tion only through the Tubas District of the Palestinian Authority. The com­mu­ni­ties required to evac­u­ate: Ibziq, Khirbet Humsah, Khirbet a‑Ras al-Ahmar, Zra’ ‘Awad, al-Burj, ‘Ein al-Meyteh and Khirbet al-Malih. Residents were required to stay out of their homes for part of the day, some­times allowed to return home only in the evening. The evac­u­a­tion process began on 3 May 2015 and con­tin­ued in some com­mu­ni­ties through 9 May. The com­mu­ni­ty of Khirbet Humsah was par­tic­u­lar­ly hard hit, as some sev­en­ty of its res­i­dents had to leave their homes for sev­er­al hours a day for a full week. The 110 or so res­i­dents of Khirbet a‑Ras al-Ahmar and Zra’ ‘Awad had to evac­u­ate their homes one day for sev­er­al hours. The 230 or so res­i­dents of Ibziq, al-Burj, ‘Ein al-Meyteh and Khirbet al-Malih had to do so for sev­er­al hours on two days.

It is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult for whole fam­i­lies, includ­ing chil­dren, to be evac­u­at­ed on such short notice. With no prop­er­ly arranged place to stay, they must find a way to ensure shel­ter, food and drink away from home in the intense, gru­el­ing heat of the Jordan Valley.

Heijar Abu Zahu, 59, of al-Ibziq, relat­ed the fol­low­ing to B’Tselem researcher ‘Aref Daraghmeh on 12 May 2015:

We went through a few rough hours when we were evac­u­at­ed from our home. We could take almost noth­ing with us, nei­ther tents nor any­thing else. The place they told us to go to was far away and we had no shel­ter, no tent or any­thing, only the shade of the trac­tors and a few carts. We had almost no water and food. We took only a few things with us and they ran out. There was noth­ing near­by. It was awk­ward, because I and the oth­er women and girls couldn’t go to the toi­let, because there was noth­ing we could use to screen or con­ceal us. I have high blood pres­sure and res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems. I took my med­ica­tion in the morn­ing, but I for­got it at home and couldn’t go back for it.

The evac­u­at­ed com­mu­ni­ties live sole­ly off farm­ing and shep­herd­ing. Evacuating them and hold­ing mil­i­tary maneu­vers on their land and in the vicin­i­ty is high­ly detri­men­tal to their liveli­hood. During the evac­u­a­tions, the res­i­dents had to leave their live­stock behind, and the ani­mals remained untend­ed in the extreme heat. B’Tselem’s research has found that over the course of the mil­i­tary maneu­ver, ten sheep and goats died in the evac­u­at­ed com­mu­ni­ties. In addi­tion, ammu­ni­tion rem­nants from the mil­i­tary train­ing caused fires. Reports from the local coun­cils of the Jordan Valley com­mu­ni­ties stat­ed that dozens of hectares of pas­ture and cul­ti­vat­ed agri­cul­tur­al went up in flames. The maneu­vers also includ­ed troops cross­ing farm­land, and cul­ti­vat­ed plots in Ibziq and a‑Ras al-Ahmar were trampled.

Amineh ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Abu Kabash, 66, of Khirbet Humsah, told B’Tselem researcher ‘Aref Daraghmeh on 4 May 2015:

The mil­i­tary has been train­ing more fre­quent­ly in the Jordan Valley over the last three years. The increased fre­quen­cy fol­lows an offi­cial pol­i­cy one of whose declared goals is to pre­vent Palestinians from liv­ing on land declared by Israel as fir­ing zones. These parcels of land cov­er rough­ly 46% of the Jordan Valley (see map). Declaring areas as fir­ing zones is one of sev­er­al meth­ods that Israel employs to pre­vent Palestinians from access­ing land in the Jordan Valley.

The min­utes of a meet­ing of the Subcommittee for Judea and Samaria of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, held on 27 April 2014 and pub­lished by Israeli dai­ly Ha’aretz, clear­ly show that one goal of the mil­i­tary maneu­vers held in the area is to remove Palestinians from land there. Colonel Einav Shalev, an Operations Branch Officer at Central Command, said in the meet­ing: “I think that one of the good steps that could fall between the cracks is restor­ing fir­ing zones in places where they are meant to be and still are not. [That is] one of the main rea­sons that we, as a mil­i­tary sys­tem, send a lot of the train­ing maneu­vers to the Jordan Valley… When the troops march, peo­ple moved aside, and I’m mak­ing no dis­tinc­tion between Jews and Palestinians here, I’m speak­ing gen­er­al­ly… There are some places [where] we sig­nif­i­cant­ly less­ened the amount of train­ing, and weeds cropped up”.

Under inter­na­tion­al human­i­tar­i­an law, an occu­py­ing state is per­mit­ted to oper­ate with­in the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ry for two rea­sons only: the ben­e­fit of the local pop­u­la­tion and imme­di­ate mil­i­tary con­cerns relat­ing to the military’s actions in the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ry. As an occu­py­ing pow­er in the West Bank, Israel is not allowed to use land there for gen­er­al mil­i­tary pur­pos­es such as train­ing for war­fare, tvs pow­er semi­con­duc­tor and gen­er­al maneu­vers. It cer­tain­ly is not allowed to use such a pre­text to harm the liveli­hood of pro­tect­ed per­sons, nor take steps to expel them from their homes.

Israel must imme­di­ate­ly stop the tem­po­rary evac­u­a­tion of Palestinian com­mu­ni­ties in the West Bank for the pur­pose of mil­i­tary train­ing, and must cease all oth­er actions tak­en in an attempt to force Palestinians out of the area. Israel is duty-bound to enable local res­i­dents to live their lives, includ­ing allow­ing them to build their homes legal­ly and use local water sources.
Military forces 7 Palestinian com­mu­ni­ties in Jordan Valley to evac­u­ate homes for maneuvers

The big news out of the new Pew poll on Americans and reli­gion was the pre­cip­i­tous drop in the num­ber of Americans call­ing them­selves “Christian” and its poten­tial impact on the Christian Right and future reli­gion itself in the U.S. But there’s anoth­er num­ber lurk­ing in the poll that may prove just as con­se­quen­tial: there are 3 mil­lion few­er peo­ple call­ing them­selves Catholic today than in 2007, the last time Pew con­duct­ed their exten­sive poll. As a result, the share of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion that iden­ti­fies as Catholic dropped from approx­i­mate­ly 24 per­cent to 21 percent.

Why is this such big news? Because despite unpop­u­lar popes and still-sim­mer­ing pedophil­ia scan­dals, the per­cent­age of Catholics in the U.S. has remained remark­ably steady for decades. The rel­a­tive sta­bil­i­ty of the Catholic pop­u­la­tion allowed many on the Catholic right to dis­miss calls for reform in the church and gave the Catholic bish­ops polit­i­cal clout when it came to oppos­ing things like no-cost con­tra­cep­tion in the Affordable Care Act in the name of “Catholics.”

But now it appears that the Catholic Church is in a demo­graph­ic free-fall, as it sheds adher­ents faster than any faith oth­er than the main­line Protestant denom­i­na­tions, which have been in decline for decades. Nearly one-third of all American adults were raised Catholic, but a stun­ning 41 per­cent — four in ten of those who marched to the alter in their lit­tle white First Communion dress­es and suits — no longer iden­ti­fy with Catholicism.

Why is the Catholic Church sud­den­ly crash­ing? The real­i­ty is that the Catholic Church has been shed­ding adher­ents for a long time. But it was gain­ing new parish­ioners just as fast, thanks to the dra­mat­ic increase in Hispanic migra­tion to the U.S. The influx of Hispanics, who are over­whelm­ing Catholic, helped make up for the depart­ing white, native-born parish­ioners and masked their con­tin­ued defec­tion from the church. As a result, one-third of Catholics in the pews today are Hispanic.

But now the Hispanic influx into the church has slowed, large­ly as a result of a decline in Hispanic migra­tion to the U.S., which since hit­ting a peak in 2007 has dropped as a result of the reces­sion. And Hispanics too are increas­ing­ly aban­don­ing the Catholic faith. The Pew sur­vey found the per­cent­age of Hispanics call­ing them­selves Catholic dropped below 50 per­cent for the first time, from 58 per­cent in 2007 to 48 per­cent today. And while near­ly 20 per­cent of Hispanics now iden­ti­fy as Evangelicals, that’s only up three points since 2007. The big jump is in the num­ber of unaf­fil­i­at­ed Hispanics, with 20 per­cent of Hispanics say­ing they don’t have a reli­gion, up six points since 2007.

Read more here:

http://​www​.salon​.com/​2​0​1​5​/​0​5​/​2​1​/​t​h​e​_​c​a​t​h​o​l​i​c​_​c​h​u​r​c​h​s​_​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​_​d​o​w​n​f​a​l​l​_​w​h​y​_​i​t​s​_​d​e​m​o​g​r​a​p​h​i​c​_​c​r​i​s​i​s​_​i​s​_​g​r​e​a​t​_​n​e​w​s​_​f​o​r​_​t​h​e​_​c​o​u​n​t​ry/

With 2.18 bil­lion adher­ents, Christianity has become a tru­ly glob­al reli­gion over the past cen­tu­ry as rapid growth in devel­op­ing nations off­set declines in Christianity’s tra­di­tion­al strong­holds, accord­ing to a report released Monday. Billed as the most com­pre­hen­sive and reli­able study to date, the Pew Research Center’s “Global Christianity” reports on self-iden­ti­fied Christian pop­u­la­tions based on more than 2,400 sources of infor­ma­tion, espe­cial­ly cen­sus and sur­vey data.

Findings illus­trate major shifts since 1910, when two-thirds of the world’s Christians lived in Europe. Now only one in four Christians live in Europe. Most of the rest are dis­trib­uted across the Americas (37 %), sub-Saharan Africa (24 %) and the Asia-Pacific region (13 %). “In two out of three coun­tries in the world, the major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion iden­ti­fies as Christian,” said Conrad Hackett, lead researcher on the “Global Christianity” report. “I had no idea about that. … I was surprised.”

The report con­firms Christianity’s stand­ing as the world’s largest reli­gion, with 32% of the glob­al pop­u­la­tion. Islam is sec­ond with about 23%, accord­ing to a 2009 Pew report.

A close look at the details reveals a few ironies:

• Although Christianity traces its begin­nings to the Middle East and North Africa, only 4% of res­i­dents in these regions claim the Christian faith today.

• Meanwhile, the faith has grown expo­nen­tial­ly in sub-Saharan Africa, from just 9% of the pop­u­la­tion in 1910 to 63% today. Nigeria, home to more than 80 mil­lion Christians, has more Protestants than Germany, where the Protestant Reformation began.

“As a result of his­toric mis­sion­ary activ­i­ty and indige­nous Christian move­ments by Africans, there has been this change from about one in 10 (sub-Saharan Africans) iden­ti­fy­ing with Christianity in 1910 to about six in 10 doing so today,” Hackett said.

For its part, Europe is more reli­gious­ly diverse than it was in 1910, when 94% was Christian. Still, Europe has­n’t aban­doned its Christian her­itage, accord­ing to the report. Today, 76% of Europeans self-iden­ti­fy as Christian.

“Many peo­ple may have the impres­sion that a small­er per­cent­age of Europe claims to be Christian” than is actu­al­ly the case, Hackett said.

The report also sheds light on the dif­fi­cult ques­tion of how many Chinese are Christians. Researchers have strug­gled to get reli­able num­bers since China’s poli­cies on reli­gion are thought to dis­cour­age Christians from self-iden­ti­fy­ing as such in offi­cial surveys.

Adjusting for such vari­ables, Pew researchers believe Christianity has flour­ished despite a pol­i­cy for­bid­ding Christianity among Communist Party mem­bers. Researchers esti­mate the Christian com­mu­ni­ty in China includes 5% of the pop­u­la­tion, or 67 million.

http://​usato​day30​.usato​day​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​r​e​l​i​g​i​o​n​/​s​t​o​r​y​/​2​011 – 12-20/chris­tian­i­ty-growth-africa-europe/52125920/1

The Vatican con­firmed it had con­clud­ed a treaty which effec­tive­ly recog­nis­es Palestinian state­hood, prompt­ing crit­i­cism from Israel, which says such recog­ni­tion pre­empts essen­tial peace negotiations.The treaty — which has yet to be signed — states that the Vatican has switched its diplo­mat­ic rela­tions from the Palestine Liberation Organisation to the “state of Palestine”, thus giv­ing fur­ther impe­tus to grow­ing inter­na­tion­al calls to rec­og­nize a Palestinian state.

An esti­mat­ed 2,000 pil­grims from the region, some wav­ing Palestinian flags, were on hand for the can­on­iza­tion of the first saints from the Holy Land since the ear­ly years of Christianity. The cer­e­mo­ny fol­lowed a meet­ing between Pope Francis — who vis­it­ed both Israel and the occu­pied West Bank a year ago — and Mr Abbas at the Vatican on Saturday. It comes days after the Vatican con­firmed it had con­clud­ed a treaty which effec­tive­ly recog­nis­es Palestinian state­hood, prompt­ing crit­i­cism from Israel, which says such recog­ni­tion pre­empts essen­tial peace nego­ti­a­tions. The treaty — which has yet to be signed — states that the Vatican has switched its diplo­mat­ic rela­tions from the Palestine Liberation Organisation to the “state of Palestine”, thus giv­ing fur­ther impe­tus to grow­ing inter­na­tion­al calls to rec­og­nize a Palestinian state.

While the sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion of the two 19^th cen­tu­ry nuns is intend­ed to be a pure­ly reli­gious, Mr Abbas hailed it as a land­mark in the Palestinian strug­gle for polit­i­cal recog­ni­tion. Their sto­ry pro­vid­ed “an inspi­ra­tional mes­sage which.…emphasizes our uni­ty, and affirms our deter­mi­na­tion to build a sov­er­eign, inde­pen­dent and free Palestine based on the prin­ci­ples of equal cit­i­zen­ship and the val­ues of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and sub­lime human­i­ty”, he said before depart­ing for Rome at the head of a large del­e­ga­tion. The two nuns will be the first fig­ures from the Middle East to be rec­og­nized as saints since the ear­ly days of Christianity. They will also be the first Arabic-speak­ing Catholic saints.

Marie Alphonsine Ghattas — to be known as St Marie Alphonsine — was born in Jerusalem and ded­i­cat­ed her life to wom­en’s edu­ca­tion and left behind a net­work of con­vents, schools and reli­gious cen­tres, known as the Rosary Sisters. She died, aged 80, in British Mandate Palestine in 1927. Mariam Bauardy Haddad, was born in the vil­lage of Ibillin in what is now Israel’s Galilee region in 1846 and died in Bethlehem in1878. She estab­lished a Carmelite con­vent in Bethlehem which still exists today. Her body lies buried nearby.

Both women have been canon­ised in hon­our of mir­a­cles said to have been attrib­uted to prayers made to them after their deaths. Their recog­ni­tion comes at a time when hun­dreds of thou­sands of Christians in the wider Middle East have been flee­ing jihadist vio­lence car­ried out by groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).
Despite being the birth­place of Christianity, Christians make up less than two per cent of the pop­u­la­tion of Israel and the occu­pied Palestinian ter­ri­to­ries — with num­bers hav­ing dropped in recent decades because of emigration.

Welcome to Israel the land of white European peo­ple who prac­tice Zionism and Judaism >
A place where real African Jews are mar­gin­al­ized and dis­crim­i­nat­ed against in the land of their fore-fathers.