Strikingly similar...

Richard Dawkins and Radovan Karadzic look like twins if you ask me...Karadzic is a living example of what happens when you apply Dawkins believes. These two men have brought nothing but death both physically and spiritually. Quite sad. This is no delusion!

Yom Kippur...."It is finished!"

Yom Kippur...one of the High Holy days in Judaism. It began last night at sundown and goes through the day today. It is known in English as the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16) and is a beautiful picture of Christ. It is a festival which longs for a lasting mediator, because Moses, Aaron, and the High Priests were not only insufficient but temporary as well. Now we finally have a mediator in Christ(I Tim. 2:5-6) who will never fail us and will always be there seated at the right hand of God on our behalf. Only the High Priest could enter the Holy of Hollies; only once a year could he enter; only would he live in the presence of God if he was "clean." We longer have to fear, for our mediator and priest is Christ who lived a perfect life...able to stand before God as a mediator and priest forever! Yom Kippur is also the festival of the sacrifice that would cover the sins of the people. And each year an insufficient sacrifice would be slain....every year....every year, year after year. Who would not long for a more permanent sacrifice!? Praise be to God that "it was finished" at the cross!
Christians today do not understand Yom Kippur very well. For many Christians, it's just one of those "Old Testament laws that we do not have to observe anymore and therefore is not as important as the NT." What a shame that some Christians think like this! Christ himself said he did not come to "abolish the law..but to fulfill the law." This would imply that in order to fully understand what Christ did for us at the cross, we must understand what he fulfilled in the OT. Just as we look back to the cross for salvation and remember the cross through sacraments such as the Eucharist...so the Old Testament saints looked forward to a redeemer, Meshiach, High Priest, and sacrifice that would be final. Yom Kippur is a beautiful picture of Christ and it would do Christians good to know and understand this festival and its part in the metanarrative of God's redemption of humanity!

Happy Rosh Hashanah!

May you be inscribed in the Book of Life!

Good advice

It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it.
-Aristotle

A Calvinist witnessing

Putting things in perspective

Quite Funny

This makes the "Onion" even funnier...

One giant slip in Bangladesh news

Armstrong did not say the hoax had been "one giant lie" for mankind

Two Bangladeshi newspapers have apologised after publishing an article taken from a satirical US website which claimed the Moon landings were faked.

The Daily Manab Zamin said US astronaut Neil Armstrong had shocked a news conference by saying he now knew it had been an "elaborate hoax".

Neither they nor the New Nation, which later picked up the story, realised the Onion was not a genuine news site.

Both have now apologised to their readers for not checking the story.

"We thought it was true so we printed it without checking," associate editor Hasanuzzuman Khan told the AFP news agency.

"We didn't know the Onion was not a real news site."

The article said Mr Armstrong had told a news conference he had been "forced to reconsider every single detail of the monumental journey after watching a few persuasive YouTube videos and reading several blog posts" by a conspiracy theorist.


The truth is that Neil Armstrong never gave such an interview. It was made up
Daily Manab Zamin

"It took only a few hastily written paragraphs published by this passionate denier of mankind's so-called 'greatest technological achievement' for me to realise I had been living a lie," the fake article "quoted" Mr Armstrong as saying.

The made-up quote went on to say that although the journey had felt real, in fact "the entire thing was filmed on a sound stage, most likely in New Mexico".

"I suppose it really was one small step for man, one giant lie for mankind."

'Numerous hits'

The story was published on the Onion's website on Monday and on Wednesday, the Daily Manab Zamin translated it into Bengali, attributing it to the Onion News Network in Lebanon, Ohio. It then ran in New Nation on Thursday.

Daily Manab Zamin, the only tabloid newspaper in Bangladesh, published an apology to its readers on Thursday, saying the report had "drawn a lot of attention".

"We've since learned that the fun site runs false and juicy reports based on a historic incident," it said.

"The Moon landing one was such a story, which received numerous hits on the internet.

"The truth is that Neil Armstrong never gave such an interview. It was made up. We are sorry for publishing the report without checking the information."

Good Speech...

Speech made by Israeli PM Netanyahu...listen to the whole speech if you are going to listen to it :)

You go girl !!

It is not to often that this happens in popular culture...this is a nice change of pace!

Interesting insights from a girl who survived the Blitz

The British Home Front: Recollections of Pamela Lazarus, 10 October 2001

It wasn’t much fun being a small kid at that time. It was too scary. London was a smoggy city, filled with gray skies, gray fog, rainy days and one seldom saw a blue sky or sunshine. Or so it seemed. And indoors, it always seemed to be night. Everyone had black curtains on the windows so that no light would escape into the street, and more importantly, be seen from the German airplanes flying overhead. Lights could show them a good place to drop a bomb. Besides, electricity was expensive, and not to be used if not necessary.

My Dad was away in the army, somewhere in Europe and my mother was very nervous. She was a young woman in her mid 20’s, with a little girl (me) and a new baby, and she wanted someone to look after her, and there wasn’t anyone to do it. So she cried a lot, and when the siren would go off to warn of an air-raid, she would scream in fear. I always felt responsible for her, like I should be her mother and take care of her. But I was only three and four and five and six and didn’t know how, except by not being a burden.

In the beginning, the bombing was at night. She would tell me to quickly! quickly! put on a sweater or coat and shoes and run downstairs. I would hide under the kitchen table until she had dressed herself and wrapped up the baby. Then we would run through the long, narrow garden to the air-raid shelter. It seemed always to be night, and dark, with sirens screaming and wailing.

The shelter was simply some corrugated steel sheets made into a shed against the brick, garden wall, with a sloping roof. It had a dirt floor and two wooden benches inside on which to sit. No heat, no light. Mother brought candles if she remembered, or else we sat in the dark. If a stranger was on the street when the sirens began, they could knock at any house door and be taken in to the shelter, and spend the night in the shelter.

Mother was always complaining about the rations. She wasn’t a good cook and didn’t know how to make exotic things like puddings or any treats, so our food was very simple. Mostly something boiled or fried. There was often nothing—nothing at all—to eat and we got used to being hungry. . . .

* * *

The City Authorities would regularly send people (women with small children) out of the City, into the country for safety. Mother would go with much grumbling and complaining. She was a City person.

The train would be packed to the limit with American soldiers coming and going somewhere. Every seat was taken, every foot of ground had someone crammed into it. As a small child, I could not step over the rucksacks or around the people, so the soldiers would pass me down the corridor, from hand to hand, with my mother trying to keep up. And they gave me chewing gum! I learned to say “Any gum, chum?” for a stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum.

Those yanks! I thought they were the grandest, most glamorous people in the world.

Easy smiling, handsome, glamorous looking, movie-star sounding, generous and friendly.

Yanks! With oranges and chocolate bars in their backpacks, silk stockings in their hip pocket, chewing gum (Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit) in their hands. All to be given away, to us, if only we can get to talk to them. If only your young and pretty aunt will go dancing with one, and then invite him home for tea.

They aren’t like us English. To be proper we must be standoffish, serious, and quiet. (Children should be seen and not heard). And we shouldn’t want or take more than one of anything.

But the Yanks! Their uniforms are smooth and beautiful; their movements are relaxed, spacious. They take up lots of space, just standing there. They have wonderful accents. Sometimes hard to understand, but wonderful to hear when they draaawl their words. It sounds soft, unthreatening, friendly. They talk easily, loudly to each other—they laugh easily, out loud, even in public places!

They like children! How astonishing—they actually like children! Talk to us, tousle our hair, sit us on their laps, tell us we’re cute (what’s cute??), give us sticks of gum. And we don’t have to save it—we can eat it. Before dinner! And they don’t get angry if we ask for more. Or if we hang around them, stay close, touch them. This must be what having a father is like.

Age 5—in love. Head-over-heels madly in love—with Yanks. . . .

During one of these exits from the city, we were staying with a woman and her four daughters in a big farm house. These pretty girls were being dated by American soldiers and one day one of the soldiers brought an extraordinary treat to the house. It was something I had never seen before and that the girls had not seen in 4 or 5 years—a fresh orange! The orange was peeled, with everyone standing around the table watching. Then, it was carefully divided into segments, and each person got one segment. First we licked it, so no drop of juice could escape. Then, we took tiny nibbles, letting the juice come slowly into our mouths, and held it there. Don’t swallow too fast! Then take another tiny nibble, until finally, the whole slice was gone. How terrible that there was no more. Seeing what a great success the gift had been, the soldier decided he had to be a hero to the nth degree.

A few days later he came back with his friend, and a carton, a whole carton of cans of sliced peaches. 12 cans. 12 CANS! Wow! What to do with such booty? Urgent conversations took place. Suggestions made and discarded. Finally, with everyone watching, the carton, less one can, was taken down into the cellar, and buried under the heap of coal.

Then, everyone was sworn to secrecy. No one must tell what was hidden there.

Some time passed, and one day there was a knock at the door. Military police. They wanted to search the house for stolen contraband from the PX. My heart was racing . . . would we go to jail? Would the soldiers be arrested? What would happen? They searched everywhere, but did not want to get dirty moving the heap of black, sooty coal, and so the peaches were undiscovered. But we all felt horribly guilty whenever a can was opened, and it spoiled the pleasure in eating those sweet slices.

Most of our country trips were not so exciting or pleasant. The people in the country were paid for the room and board of the Londoners, and they didn’t like us. They would come to the train station when we’d arrive, and choose the family they would take. They didn’t like fat people much because they would eat too much. They didn’t like Jews because they were supposedly all the awful things that have ever been said about Jews. And we were Jewish.

Mother had pinned a tiny Star of David to my undershirt, hoping it would work like a good luck charm to help keep me alive. One evening, the lady of the house walked into our room while my mother was giving me a sponge bath, saw the Star of David and became hysterical. She told us to leave her house, screaming that we had ‘contaminated’ everything we had touched—her dishes, her knives and forks—her very air!

We walked to the train station along the stony country lane, and my doll, my precious doll, my only toy, fell from the carriage where our bags of stuff were stacked. Her china head cracked and broke. We spent the night sitting on the bench at the train station waiting for the morning train to take us back to London. I was heartbroken and cried for hours.

Back in London, one day my Zaida (Grandfather) and Mum were pushing the baby carriage along the High Street of our neighborhood, in the middle of the day, when the siren began it’s up and down wailing. Mother wanted to run to the tube station shelter because it was closer. But Zaida said “No, we cannot leave Booba (Grandmother) alone. She would be too frightened.” Mother insisted on going to the station . . . . But Zaida grabbed hold of the baby carriage and began pushing it, running, toward home. Mother and I had no choice but to follow him.

We spent the rest of the day and all the night in the dark, in the shelter. In the morning, when it was quiet, we came out, only to hear on the news that the subway station we had almost gone to had been bombed. All the people down there on the subway platform had died.

When the war was over, there was a party on the street. And some time later the soldiers began coming home.

I begged my mother to allow me to run down the stairs and answer the door when my daddy came home. And she said yes.

It seemed a long time later that the doorbell rang, and I remember very well the excitement of that moment. I ran to the door, opened it, and a giant stood there. A tall, tall man in uniform, with a backpack. A total stranger. I don’t remember him at all after that moment for many years. My mother told me that I kept asking her when he was going away again, because I didn’t like this stranger telling me what to do.

Source: Website Timewitnesses: Memories of the Last Century http://timewitnesses.org/english/~pamelay.html. Permission granted by Pamela Lazarus.

Sad....but true

The "Good Book"

An interesting article from Slate.com about a Jewish man who read the Bible cover to cover and said this about it. Interesting to see what non-believers say about Scripture, particularly a non-religious Jew.

That's a lot of money!!

I don't think American quite grasp really how large the stimulus bill really is. The bill that Congress pushed very quickly through Congress with the President prodding it along. Many in Congress of which didn't even have time to read the 1,000+ page bill before they had to vote. Think of it this way.....

If Congress spent $1,000,000 (yes that is a million!) every DAY since the time of Christ's birth to the present year....

...it would still not equal the total of the this single bill.



1,000,000 x 365 x 2009 = 733,285,000,000

Only a couple tens of billions dollars yet to go!!

Unbelievable!

To fight a war you must fight battles

I have heard Evangelical Christians argue that it is not that important anymore to elect pro-choice legislators or a president because only the Supreme Court can overturn Roe v. Wade. Rather that we need to focus on other helpless groups who we can actually help. And that we may be electing the wrong representatives because we have missed other people God cares about because we are solely fixed on ending aboriton in the US. And that we must pick our battles more wisely. And to a certain extent they are correct...we may not be able to abolish abortion completely. And while abolishing abortion is the ultimate goal, I believe many Christians have given up the fight thinking that if abloshing abortion is not atainable then it just isn't worth fighting for. It's sad really...Christians should be pushing the issue. And even if abolishing abortion completely does not happen in our lifetimes, it is still worth the fight. And in the case of FOCA, every little battle won can have huge implications. Winning little battles can lead towards winning the war. Most wars are not won in one sweeping battle, but through little victories.