Bingo caller at New York synagogue charged with gaming fraud for fixing games

Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; Jeremiah 22:13a

This sort of scandal can be found in any kind of organization that raises money by gambling. As reported by Jordan Fenster of the Rockland/Westchester Journal News, August 10, 2018 (link in original):

Bingo!

A 71-year-old man changed the outcome of multiple bingo games at the Yorktown Jewish Center, according to a police.

The defendant, Neil Simon Gross, was charged with gaming fraud.

Police said Gross was the bingo ball caller, giving him the opportunity to change the games' outcome and violate the "rules of casino gaming."

Lt. Tom Gentner of the Yorktown Police Department said someone made a complaint to the state Gaming Commission.

Gentner said he did not know if any monetary prizes were at stake. "I've never played bingo," he said.

Brad Maione with the New York state Gaming Commission would not get into specifics, citing an ongoing investigation, but said, "The statute for gaming fraud stipulates that the value exceeds $1,000," for it to be considered a felony.

After being tipped off to the alleged fraud, the gaming commission conducted an investigation at the Yorktown Jewish Center "hand-in-hand" with town police, Maione said.

Bingo is apparently a big deal at the Yorktown Jewish Center, with an entire page devoted to the games on the organization's website.

Gross turned himself in to police on Thursday. He was charged with gaming fraud, an E felony, and was released without bail. He is due back in court on Sept. 11.

Several calls to the Yorktown Jewish Center were not immediately returned.

Mainline and Southern Baptist churches in South Carolina are in decline

...I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Matthew 16:18b

...Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? Luke 18:8b

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
For men shall be lovers of their own selves,...
...Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away...
...For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. II Timothy 3:1-2a, 5; 4:2-3

The New Testament prophesies that the last days preceding the return of the Lord Jesus Christ will be times of increasing apostasy, so it comes as no surprise to this blogger to read that even in America's alleged Bible Belt (as in Canada's alleged Bible Belt), nominal Christianity is in decline.

The Lord is still building His church--right on schedule. The churches that are in decline are the ones that "have a form of godliness," but have fallen into apostasy--as indicated, for example, by the presence of women in positions of leadership, and substituting the social gospel for the true gospel--and the gates of hell are prevailing against them.

Many of the new churches that are springing up are using the methods of the Church Growth Movement, marketing Christianity as a consumer product to satisfy the desires of the customer. As the saying goes, "what you win them with is what you win them to," also stated as "what wins them is what keeps them." If worldly entertainment is what attracts people to church, that will be what keeps them there, and they'll leave if they're being sufficiently entertained. There's nothing particularly "consumer-friendly" in the true gospel of Jesus Christ, yet His church has been around for 2,000 years, and will be around for eternity.

As reported by Sarah Ellis of the Columbia State, August 9, 2018 (bold, links in original):

South Carolina churches are shedding thousands of members a year, even as the state’s population grows by tens of thousands.

In the place we call the Bible Belt, where generations have hung their hats on their church-going nature and faithful traditions, an increasing trend of shrinking church attendance — and increasing church closings — signal a fundamental culture shift in South Carolina.

At least 97 Protestant churches across South Carolina have closed since 2011, according to data from the Lutheran, Presbyterian, United Methodist and Southern Baptist denominations. An untold number of other closings, certainly, are not captured by these statistics.

Many churches are dying slow deaths, stuck in stagnation if not decline. And if they don’t do something, in the near future, they’ll share the fate of Cedar Creek United Methodist, a 274-year-old Richland County congregation that dissolved last year; Resurrection Lutheran, a church near downtown Columbia that will hold its last service on Sept. 2; and the dozens of churches that sit shuttered and empty around the state.

At the same time, some churches are growing, and some growing quickly. But they might not look much like the churches your grandparents (and their grandparents) were raised in. From meeting in unconventional places to tweaking their traditions, many churches are adapting, offering something different that many people thought the church couldn’t do for them.

What they’re doing reflects the results of an ongoing conversation among churches: How can they stay alive?

At Whaley Street United Methodist Church near downtown Columbia, the small crowd of remaining members are quick and cheerful to say they’re a “small but friendly” church. A couple dozen people sat spaced out among the wooden pews on a Sunday morning earlier this summer, when the Rev. Joe Cal Watson delivered an efficient sermon titled, “What is church?”

“I miss the days when church and Sunday were so important … the world stopped so we could focus on our faith,” Watson said from the pulpit. Sunday mornings still matter, he told the flock, but how the church treats people and helps people in need are more important.

Whaley Street’s congregation is a fraction of the size it once was when the surrounding Olympia and Granby mill villages were thriving.

The church simply doesn’t know how to grow these days, though it hasn’t stopped hoping for growth.

“We’re open. We’re friendly. But we do have an old-time service,” said Mary Anna Spangler, a member of 30 years. “But the big problem is how do you get (people) in the door and then keep them?”

FAITH BY NUMBERS

The South is slowly catching up to national and European trends shifting toward what many call a “post-Christian” culture — that is, a society with characteristics no longer dominantly rooted in Christianity.

Studies and surveys have documented the decline of self-identified Christians and the rise of “nones,” or the religiously unaffiliated, across the United States for years.

The Pew Research Center describes the United States as in the midst of “significant religious change. ”The share of Americans who identify with Christianity is declining, while those who say they have no religion is growing rapidly.”

In the South, more than three-quarters of adults identify as Christians, and more than 8 in 10 people consider religion to be somewhat or very important in their lives, more than in any other region of the country, according to Pew.

But, as in the rest of the country, a shrinking proportion of Southern adults say they regularly attend religious services — 74 percent in 2014, down 3 percent from seven years earlier. And surveys tend to inflate how often people actually attend religious services, Pew notes.

South Carolina is in step with those trends, and it shows in church statistics, particularly among Protestant denominations.

While Catholics are actually increasing in number in South Carolina, largely driven by influxes of northern and Hispanic newcomers to the state, major Protestant denominations report declines in membership and numbers of churches in recent years.

Consider:

--United Methodists and Southern Baptists, which together account for more than 3,000 churches and nearly 800,000 church members in South Carolina, report five-year membership declines of 5 percent and 18 percent, respectively.

--United Methodists lost 12,707 members and closed 30 churches in the state between 2012 and 2017. By comparison, 29 new United Methodist churches opened in the state in the past 50 years.

--The number of S.C. Southern Baptist churches has held steady at around 2,100 during the past five years — thanks in part to new church plants canceling out closures. Not all Southern Baptist churches report their statistics to the convention each year, but among those reporting, there were nearly 130,000 fewer members in 2017 (568,519) than in 2012 (698,041), according to statistics published by the S.C. Baptist Convention.

“The reality is that 80-plus percent of (S.C. Southern Baptist) churches are plateaued or declining, meaning they haven’t grown by any measurable percentage in 10 years, or they’ve actually lost membership,” said Jay Hardwick, who leads the church-planting team for the S.C. Baptist Convention. “And a large percentage of those are in a window where if something drastic doesn’t happen within five to 10 years, they’ll close their doors. They won’t have anything.”

NOT-SO-SACRED SUNDAYS

A church, particularly a Southern church, used to be a community center.

It was where you made friends and kept up with friends, where you ate supper on Wednesday nights, played on a softball team, sent the kids after school, fulfilled your community service duties, made business connections, got your musical fix in the choir and maybe joined a reading or knitting club.

And being a part of a church once was, essentially, a status symbol for many people in the South.

“Where do you go to church?” was a regular get-to-know-you question; the answer said something about who you were.

“You didn’t have a choice when I was a child. You went to church,” said Happy Meglino, who grew up in a Southern Baptist church and now attends Whaley Street United Methodist with her husband, Mark, and their 5-year-old daughter, Julianna. “My mom played the organ, and my brother and I were going to be there every time the doors were open. And your friends were there, too. … If you were going to be a good Southern girl, accepted socially, you went to church. If you didn’t go to church, mmm, we don’t know about you.”

Now, though, a church isn’t a line you need on your social resume.

“If you just want to be a philanthropic person, there are a gazillion opportunities for you to feed hungry people, clothe cold people, do service projects, build a house,” said David Turner, the minister of music and worship at Ebenezer Lutheran Church in downtown Columbia.

The oldest Lutheran church in Columbia, Ebenezer once boasted a large, multigenerational congregation of families who lived in nearby neighborhoods. The city used to close streets for its annual vacation Bible school.

Now, Turner said, the church’s attendance numbers are lower than ever.

“1950 was great, but it’s not 1950 anymore,” Turner said.

A key issue for the future, Turner says, is whether church leaders will have the knowledge and skill to guide churches toward a new future or be stuck in a past when Sunday mornings were sacred.

Many of the churches that are failing have not kept up with the pace of change in their communities, and they stopped making a difference outside the walls of the church.

When a church becomes more concerned with looking inward at itself rather than reaching outward to the people around it, it’s lost its core function, said Hardwick, the Southern Baptist church planter.

“Relevance has nothing to do with how cool and creative the church is, if the music’s cool and the lights are great and the staging’s just right,” Hardwick said. “Relevance has everything to do with making a difference.

“If this church disappeared, would anybody in our community know or care?”...

...NEW METHODS, OLD MISSION

Fewer than 1,000 feet from the door of Whaley Street United Methodist, upwards of 300 people gather in Columbia’s 701 Whaley event hall on Sunday mornings.

They comprise Downtown Church, a 7-year-old Presbyterian church born, in part, out of a feeling that other churches were “answering questions I wasn’t asking and not answering questions I was,” said the Rev. Amos Disasa, co-pastor.

The founders of the church saw people looking for an experience that a so-called traditional church didn’t provide.

“We sensed a need for a place for people who were persistently asking questions about God and were very interested in their own spirituality but were not opting into the formal institutions that would typically provide those answers,” Disasa said. “They’re weren’t going to church on Sundays, but it wasn’t that they had given up on God. They were disinterested in the institution of a church as it is.”

There’s no one-size-fits-all model of church, especially not in 2018. And there’s also no reason to expect people to show up at any church just because it’s there, many church leaders are recognizing.

“We early on taught our folks we have to be the ones that go out and share Christ and share what we’re doing with folks, because if we open our doors and just sit there and expect folks to come up, it’s not going to happen,” said Jody Ratcliffe, the founding pastor of the 2-year-old Church at West Vista.

The door to the Church at West Vista also happens to be the door to a bar.

One Sunday a month, the fledgling church meets at New Brookland Tavern on State Street, a popular Sunday brunch area. The rest of the month, church happens in living rooms throughout the Columbia metro area.

West Vista’s “house church” model is, in some ways, a throwback to the earliest days of the Christian church, but it represents a major shift from the traditional church model of recent centuries.

In a rapidly changing religious landscape, there is one critical element of a church that must not change, Hardwick said: The gospel message and mission.

Almost anything else is fair game.

“The message never changes, but the methods are always up for change,” he said.

‘EXPERIENCE THE EXPECTED’

As much change as the church is undergoing, church tradition isn’t dead — no more than Brookland Baptist Church in West Columbia is at 8 a.m. on a Sunday.

In many ways, Brookland represents the way church has been for generations.

Families sit together in long pews. They wear dresses and suits and ties and hats. A big, swaying choir fills the stage, and paper bulletins double as fans (though, an usher will hand you a real paper fan if they see you sweating). Golden offering plates are passed.

A robed pastor’s booming, lyrical voice preaches a message that lifts you out of your seat, and when he calls you to the altar, it is no suggestion; you come.

But Brookland is also reaching people — 3,500 of them or so on an average Sunday morning — in ways the church never did before. Big screens flank the pulpit, alternating live video feeds with scrolling lyrics to old-school hymns being played by a full band with, yes, drums and electric guitars.

You can pass the offering plate right along and give your tithe via text message or on the church’s website.

If you didn’t come to church on Sunday morning, you might come for lunch during the week at the massive conference center, which is used for all kinds of events, church- and nonchurch-related. Or your kids might play basketball in the wellness center or catch a quick word from the Rev. Charles Jackson, the pastor, on Twitter.

That’s all part of an evolving strategy to reach the people who are and will become the next generation of Christians, the church says.

“First of all, you’ve got to think about who that next generation is,” said Marnie Robinson, a member and church spokesperson. “The church may be trying to force them to be the church of yesteryear, and they’re not those people. … We need to talk to the millennials as if they are important and teach them the message of Christ; teach them and show them.”

But still, “church is church,” Robinson said, and many people are looking to “experience the expected.”

“When you do church, when you go to church, you expect to hear a good word,” Robinson said. “You expect to experience good music, and you expect a good prayer. Music, prayer and the word — you’ve got worship right there. All the other good stuff that happens is extra.”

Brookland will keep adapting, but it’s not going anywhere, Robinson said. And neither is the greater church, she feels sure.

“The church is one of the oldest institutions in the world, so I don’t think it’s going anywhere,” Robinson said. “How we do church may change, may be changing. But church is not going anywhere, and I take solace in that.”

THE END?

Consistency and tradition were beloved among the rural Cedar Creek United Methodist congregation in Blythewood, and consistency and tradition sustained the church for 274 years, until it closed in 2017.

“I think that most churchgoers like things to be the way they’ve always been,” said the Rev. Alice Deal, who retired this summer as pastor of Cedar Creek’s remaining sister churches on the Fairfield Circuit, Bethel UMC and Monticello UMC. About 40 church members, mostly seniors, remain between the two of them.

A command to change, though, comes from the one they worship, Deal said. “The holy one of Israel speaks through the prophet Isaiah and says, ‘I am about to do a new thing. Do you not see it springs forth?’ I think newness is what we’re called to be open to and to embrace, but that’s not always easy to do,” she said.

Some won’t change, held back by fear or stubbornness or practicality or something else.

But some will reach a point where “the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of change,” Hardwick said.

“They realize, man, if we stay the same, we will put the death knell, perhaps, of gospel ministry in this community,” he said. “Then we’re going to be willing to make the hard decision that it’s going to require of us, kind of a whatever-it-takes mindset.”

But for some churches, the most faithful choice they can make is to close and invest their resources elsewhere, Hardwick said.

The futures of Monticello and Bethel are looming.

“I don’t know what the future holds,” Deal said, “but I know who holds the future. In God’s perfect will and God’s perfect time, what God intends for these churches will happen.”

Examples of what I mentioned at the beginning of this post can be found in this report by Miss Ellis in the State, August 9, 2018:

Sunday mornings at Ebenezer Lutheran Church are almost exactly what you’d expect them to be — except, perhaps, for all the empty pews.

At a recent service at Columbia’s oldest Lutheran church, about 40 or 50 people sat in the hushed hall of Ebenezer’s stunning sanctuary. There were a handful of children, many more white-haired heads and at least one homeless person...

...About 180 years younger than Ebenezer, Downtown Church has built its identity, in part, on its willingness to change — to try new things and to let go of things that don’t work or don’t matter or have run their course.

It’s an attractive place for people like Amanda McAlhaney, who shied away from “traditional” churches most of her life. She felt little personal connection there and was turned off by fear-based messages, she said.

What she and her husband, Shawn, found at Downtown Church is a down-to-earth message that consistently translates to their everyday lives, she said.

“For me, this church is just about being a good human being,” McAlhaney said. “I’m always thinking how I’m going to relate this to life, and I think that has been something missing in other sermons (in other churches). … The formality drops or disappears, and you’re just there to worship. … That’s something that’s been really special about it for me, when people just don’t want the formality of the traditional church.”

Turner said he’s trying to push Ebenezer to look for ways to get people into the church through the “side door and back door” — because, these days, people aren’t walking into a church just because it’s there, he said.

“I think you find some way for people to, first and foremost, connect socially, and then you turn it into a spiritual formation event,” Turner said. “We’re a consumeristic culture now, and so you can fight it and you can roll your eyes about it … it sort of is what it is. So I think, get them pulled in, and you can have that conversation after they’re invested in the program.”

Maybe it’s offering a chance to volunteer at a soup kitchen, opening the church as a performance hall during the week or allowing nonmembers to be married in the sanctuary, Turner suggested. The point is to give people another reason, any reason, to connect with the church.

At Downtown Church, it’s easy to embrace change — to try new things and let go of others — because the survival of their congregation “is not the point of existing,” Disasa said.

“We try really hard to be OK with the idea that Downtown Church may not exist someday,” said the Rev. Dawn Hyde, the church’s co-pastor with Disasa. “And it’s not the end of the world. It’s not the end of faith. It’s not the end of God.”

Belgium now euthanizes children as young as 7

I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: Deuteronomy 30:19

For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord.
But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death. Proverbs 8:35-36

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Proverbs 14:12 (also Proverbs 16:25)

Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people. Proverbs 14:34

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,...
...And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Romans 1:22,28

Surely some future historian, surveying our times, will note sardonically that it took no more than three decades to transform a war crime into an act of compassion, thereby enabling the victors in the war against Nazism to mount their own humane holocaust, which in its range and in the number of its victims, may soon far surpass the Nazi one. It is significant that, whereas the Nazi holocaust has received lavish TV and film coverage, the humane one goes rolling along largely unnoticed by the media. Malcolm Muggeridge, Sanctity of Life, Chatelaine, December 1979, p. 138

Professing themselves to be "progressives," they became "regressives," going back to the days before Hippocrates, when doctors were as likely to kill their patients as heal them. This blogger predicted exactly this sort of thing years ago; countries that once fought against the Nazis are increasingly adopting their policies, while still regarding the Nazis as villains. It therefore comes as no surprise to this blogger to see items such as the following, as reported by Henry Samuel of the London Daily Telegraph, August 7, 2018 (links in original):

Paris--Two children, aged nine and 11, have become the world’s youngest to be euthanised, according to a report.

The unnamed minors were administered lethal injections in Belgium, which has the world’s only law allowing terminally ill children in “unbearable suffering” to choose to die.

Their deaths, which occurred in 2016 or 2017, were revealed in a report from the CFCEE; the commission that regulates euthanasia in Belgium, and their ages were confirmed by a Belgian official.

It confirmed that Belgian doctors had given lethal injections to three children over the two-year period, including to a 17-year-old who was suffering from muscular dystrophy.

The nine-year-old, who had a brain tumour, and the 11-year-old, who was suffering from cystic fibrosis, were the first children under 12 to be euthanised anywhere, a member of the CFCEE told The Washington Post.

One of the most permissive countries in the world, Belgium amended its euthanasia law in 2014 to make it legal for doctors to terminate the life of a child, however young, who makes the request.

They must be judged to have the mental capacity to make the decision and receive parental consent.

Supporters of the law say a child should not be made to suffer against their will but opponents say children are too young to make the decision to die.

The July 17 report notes that three minors were among thousands of people to have died under Belgium's radical euthanasia regime between January 1, 2016 and December 31, 2017.

It merely describes all three as under 18 but a Belgian official has now disclosed their ages to the Washington Post.

Luc Proot, a member of the CFCEE, defended the decision to authorise the young euthanasia cases, saying: “I saw mental and physical suffering so overwhelming that I thought we did a good thing.”

For euthanasia to proceed in Belgium, doctors must first verify that a child is “in a hopeless medical situation of constant and unbearable suffering that cannot be eased and which will cause death in the short term.”

Once a child has expressed a wish for euthanasia in writing, child psychiatrists conduct examinations, including intelligence tests, to determine their level of discernment and ensure they were “not influenced by a third party.” Parents can, however, overuse their request.

Belgium's decision to extend its euthanasia laws to all minors provoked outrage in the country and abroad.

Belgium’s bishops called the law “a step too far”, while a group of 162 Belgian paediatricians wrote: “We are today able to perfectly control physical pain, choking or anxiety at the approach of death.”

Prof Stefaan Van Gool, a child cancer specialist in Belgium, said: "There is, in fact, no objective tool today available that really can help you say 'this child has the full competence or capacity to give with full understanding informed consent'."

Wim Distelmans, head of the Belgian euthanasia commission countered: “Thankfully, there are very few children who fit the criteria, but that doesn’t mean that we should refuse (them) the right to die with dignity.”

The annual number of euthanasia cases across all age groups has multiplied almost five-fold in ten years in Belgium.

Of the 4,337 to opt for assisted dying in Belgium in 2016 and 2017, most were cancer patients.

However 710 were mainly elderly people who suffered from comparatively minor complaints such as blindness and incontinence. Some 77 chose to die because of unbearable psychiatric suffering. A further 19 young people between 18 and 29 decided to end their lives.

Last year, neurologist Dr Ludo Vanopdenbosch resigned from the CFCEE, in protest at the failure to prosecute when a dementia patient’s life was terminated without her prior consent.

Since then, 360 Belgian doctors, academics and others have signed a petition calling for tighter controls on euthanasia for psychiatric patients.

Despite the controversy, there is widespread backing for Belgium's euthanasia legislation, polls suggest.

As was the case in Germany in the 1920s through the end of World War II, the situation is going to get worse. The German mass killing program began in 1920 with the publication of a little book titled The Release of the Destruction of Life Devoid of Value by Dr. Alfred Hoche, a psychaiatrist, and Karl Binding, a jurist. Those who read it may be as surprised as I was to discover that the authors weren't advocating mass killing, but advocated a euthanasia program under strict controls.

Somehow, however, the the number of categories of people, and thus the number of people to be euthanized increased. When the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933, they didn't introduce euthanasia, but expanded a program that was already in existence. In Belgium now, as in the Netherlands, legalizing of euthanasia has "progressed" from adults to children; from physical to "psychological" suffering; from euthanasia with the consent of the patient to euthanasia without the consent of the patient (historically known as "murder").

The restrictions on euthanasia in Belgium as elsewhere, are increasingly disappearing, just as in Germany all those decades ago. We're already seeing it, with the dramatic recent increase in the number of people being killed in various countries practicing legal euthanasia. I find it hard to believe that the amount of actual suffering has increased in proportion to the number of people killed. The eventual result will be the same as that in Germany: mass slaughter.

Edmonton hosts Flat Earth International Conference

In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. II Peter 2:3a (NIV)

The Fantasyland Hotel is an appropriate venue for this conference. The reader will notice the outrageous admission fees, which sound like those a televangelist might charge. As reported by Kevin Maimann of StarMetro Edmonton, August 9, 2018:

EDMONTON—Faith took centre stage at Edmonton’s Fantasyland Hotel Thursday as 250 people packed in for the Flat Earth International Conference.

Flat-Earthers from around North America came to listen to speakers such as Indiana radio host Rick Hummer, who told them to pull their kids out of public schools and ignore the consensus of the scientific community.

“If I were you, I’d get them out of the schools, because they’re not learning the truth,” Hummer told the crowd.

“I believe there’s a movement by the Almighty and his hand is all over this (flat-Earth movement). Because things are being revealed in the last days.”

Presenter Matt Long, a YouTuber from Texas, said he has a “healthy obsession with the Bible and truth” and claimed the Bible is “unequivocally a flat-Earth book.”

Many flat-Earthers believe the Earth is a disc, despite overwhelming scientific and photographic evidence that it is spherical.

Most who subscribe to this idea believe humans have not stumbled over the edge of the Earth because it is encircled in a wall of ice, making ground travel impossible, and pilots are too scared to make the trek.

Many still believe the other planets in our galaxy are round.

YouTuber Mark Sargent, who spoke and took questions from the audience Thursday, thinks the universe is a planetarium with man-made projections of a fake moon and stars.

He spoke derisively of scientists, none of whom were among the presenters at the conference.

“We are the new scientists, and we’re heading straight for you,” Sargent said. “We’ll take the cities, we’ll take the suburbs, we’ll take the countryside.”

Many who attended the conference came to believe in a flat Earth through other conspiracy theories, and were convinced by YouTube videos and articles they read on the internet.

Several said their journey into skepticism started with the debunked theory that humans have never actually walked on the moon.

In most cases, it was an unwavering faith in God that seemed to make the flat-Earth theory fit their world view.

“If the shape of the Earth is flat, then that means that it’s been constructed. And if it’s been constructed, we didn’t just blow up out of nothing,” said attendee John Wahlstrom, who travelled from Chilliwack, B.C. for the conference.

“That means there’s a whole lot more relevance in the fabric of our lives, rather than just coming from mud to fish to monkey to human beings as the evolutionists put forward.”

Lindsey Clark from Saskatchewan said the flat-Earth concept seemed simple for her because she doesn’t believe that we “came from monkeys.”

As far as what scientists could stand to gain by imposing such a massive hoax on humanity, some suggested it goes much deeper, beyond even the government.

“I think it reaches right into secret societies that have been manipulating us for hundreds of years,” Lawrie McLeod, of Edmonton, said.

Attendees shelled out at least $150 for a two-day pass, and some paid $300 for VIP passes that include front-row seating in the ballroom and a special speakers’ dinner.

There was plenty of merchandise for sale in the foyer, including T-shirts, posters with flat-Earth maps, and stickers with slogans such as “Space is Fake.”

But not everyone was buying in.

Matthew Rolheiser, who has a science degree and an education degree, said he came to the conference out of curiosity to understand how flat-Earthers think.

He empathized with the other attendees on some level, and concluded that the scientific community needs to do a better job reaching out and explaining its expertise in ways the average person can understand.

He pointed out that many who attended the conference asked good questions — it was the answers they got that were problematic.

“I would strongly encourage subject-matter experts to talk to people who have some very good, valid scientific questions about gravity, about space travel, about how do we know what we know, about planetary motion, about atmospheric science, about satellites,” he said.

“I think that people here are very intelligent and they are very curious, but they’re reaching a dead end whenever they try to really find out how something works.”

Science Literacy Week founder Jesse Hildebrand also said scientists could be better at communicating their work, and he strives to facilitate that as a science literacy advocate.

He said it’s important to note that, while the flat-Earth community is growing and its conferences have proven to be popular, it still makes up a “very infinitesimal” portion of the population.

While Hildebrand agreed to speak with StarMetro for this article, he was hesitant to facilitate a bigger platform for flat-Earthers.

“The scientific consensus, since basically the dawn of people looking for knowledge, has been that the Earth is round. You have to strain credulity, reason, logic, sense to believe the opposite. So it’s not something that I think should even be given the time of day,” he said.

“It’s like climate change at this point. There’s no tenable position otherwise, and even giving credence to the other side is to legitimize it in a way that it does not deserve.”

The Flat Earth International Conference was founded by Edmontonian Robbie Davidson, who is a Christian and a creationist.

He launched the first conference last year in Raleigh, N.C., and brought it to Edmonton for the first time this year. Another conference is slated for Denver, Colo., in November.

The event runs through Friday at the Fantasyland Hotel.

Those who claim that the Bible supports the flat-Earth view don't speak for this blogger--although, of course, if they got their information from the Internet, it must be true. ; The Bible passage that comes to mind to refute the flat-Earth view is Isaiah 40:22:

It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:

Ancient Bethsaida's gate has been uncovered

Recently excavated gate at Bethsaida (Zer)

As reported by Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz of Breaking Israel News, July 13, 2018:

Professor Rami Arav has uncovered an enormous city gate, after digging at the Biblical city of Zer in the Golan Heights.

Arav, a professor at the University of Omaha, has been digging in the region for nearly 30 years and this season, his efforts were rewarded. Arav and his team speculate that King David probably passed through this gate seeking a bride.

The archaeological potential at Zer is enormous, justifying Arav’s efforts. The unexplored ruins dating back to the eighth century BCE cover 20 acres, setting it as one of the largest ancient cities in the region.

“So far, I have only found monumental remains: the palace, the fortifications, the storehouses,” Arav told Breaking Israel News. “I have only explored about four percent of the site. I am planning on leaving a challenge for the next generation.

This season, Arav and his team focused their digging on the city’s gate. It is massive, the largest and the best-preserved city gate found in the region. Arav believes the gate was in use from the 11th century BCE to 920 BCE, when the settlement was destroyed. After 50 years of lying vacant, the city was reinhabited after 875 BCE.

The site also displays a Jewish community in the Hasmonean and Herodian periods, occupation in the Early Roman period, settlement in the Mamluk period, and a village in the late Ottoman period.

In addition to the city gate, the excavation revealed a massive fortification system that included two parallel city walls and towers. This is the earliest appearance of towers in the military architecture of this region.

In addition to its enormous archaeological significance, the site has massive Biblical relevance.

“The city, under different names, was referred to in the Bible, in the New Testament, and even in the Talmud,” Arav said. “It was clearly important throughout many periods.”

The city was referred to as Zer until the First Temple period and is mentioned as such in the Bible.

Its fortified towns were Ziddim, Zer, Hammath, Rakkath, Chinnereth, Joshua 19:35

In the Second Temple period, the city was a major Aramean urban center of the kingdom of Geshur, also mentioned in the Bible.

But the Israelites failed to dispossess the Geshurites and the Maacathites, and Geshur and Maacath remain among Yisrael to this day. Joshua 13:13

The gate dates to 1000 and 550 BCE, the period of the biblical kings David and Solomon. Arav guesses that it is most probable that David entered this gate to meet Talmai, king of Geshur, prior to requesting the hand of his daughter.

His second was Chileab, by Avigail wife of Naval the Carmelite; the third was Avshalom son of Maacah, daughter of King Talmai of Geshur; II Samuel 3:3

The city of Bethsaida is mentioned several times in the New Testament as a place Jesus frequented and as such, the archaeological dig is a popular destination for Christian tourists.

“The New Testament places several stories about Jesus in Bethsaida but is not really a Christian archaeological site,” Arav told Breaking Israel News. “There are no Christian artifacts since there was never really a Christian population in Bethsaida. There are no churches or anything from the Byzantine period. From the Second Temple period, it was connected with the life of Jesus, but as most people know, Jesus was born, lived, and died a Jew. Everything around him was Jewish. Christianity as an independent religion only came several centuries after the death of Jesus. By the time the Christian population arose in the fourth century, Bethsaida was already abandoned due to a major earthquake.”

Hellenistic-era golden earring discovered at Jerusalem's City of David

Spectacular Hellenistic-era earring found at City of David National Park, Jerusalem

As reported by David Brummer of Breaking Israel News, August 8, 2018:

A spectacular Hellenistic-era golden earring, featuring ornamentation of a horned animal, was discovered in excavations in the City of David National Park.

Archaeologists announced that the gold earring shaped like a horned animal, dates back to the second or third century BCE – during the Hellenistic period. The discovery was made during archeological digs conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel Aviv University at the Givati Parking Lot in the City of David National Park – which encircles Jerusalem’s Old City walls.

It is considered an important find, as little is known about Jerusalem during the Hellenistic period, when the city was under Ptolemaic rule. According to the directors of the excavation, Professor Yuval Gadot of Tel Aviv University and Dr. Yiftah Shalev of the Antiquities Authority, ”The jewelry was found inside a building that was unearthed during the excavation, dating to the early Hellenistic period.

The hoop earring bears the head of a horned animal (possibly an antelope or deer) with large eyes, a mouth and other facial features. Nearby, excavators also found a gold bead with intricate embroidered ornamentation resembling a thin rope pattern, dividing the beads into two parts with six spirals on each side.

The researchers said it was unclear whether the jewelry was worn by a man or a woman, nor what their cultural or religious identity was. They could, however, ascertain that it belonged to a member of Jerusalem’s upper-class, based on its proximity to the Temple and the Temple Mount – functional at the time. “The residents of this area were not peasants who settled in empty areas on the periphery of the central area, but rather the opposite — they were well-off people. The discovery of familiar Hellenistic pieces of jewelry can teach us about how Hellenistic influences reached Jerusalem during this time.”

Ariel Polokoff and Dr. Adi Erlich, from the archaeological department at Haifa University, examined the earring and bead and estimated that the jewelry was crafted using a technique called filigree, in which threads and tiny metal beads are used to create delicate and complex patterns. According to them, this type of earring first appeared in Greece during the early Hellenistic period, while the earrings date back to approximately the Third or early second centuries BCE.

According to Professor Gadot, similar (though not identical) earrings have been found in the Mediterranean basin, particularly in Greece. He added that a few of this type of earring had been found close to the coastal plain (a key Mediterranean trade route), but it was the first time that such an object had been found in Jerusalem.

See also my post 9th century clay amulet praising Allah is found in Jerusalem's City of David (June 17, 2018).

Israel pursues [diplomatic] relations with U.S. Virgin [Islands]

I couldn't resist a provocative headline--as reported by the St. Thomas Source, July 23, 2018:

Ambassador Dani Dayan, consul general of Israel in New York, spoke briefly before the Legislature of the Virgin Islands led by Senate President Myron D. Jackson on Thursday, as part of a three-day visit to the territory to build diplomatic relations.

Jackson introduced him on the floor during a Committee of Finance meeting at the Capitol Building on St. Thomas. Ambassador Dayan officially assumed the post in August 2016 and represents the State of Israel to communities from throughout New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Delaware. His office recently became aware of being officially in charge of Israel’s diplomatic relations with the Virgin Islands of the United States.

“We appreciate the interest and look forward to your relations here,” President Jackson said.

Dayan’s visit to the Virgin Islands follows learning of the devastation of the territory resulting from last year’s hurricanes from Rabbi Michael Feshbach of the Synagogue in St. Thomas.

“Our desire was to assist and help the entire community of the Virgin Islands in its days of disaster,” Dayan said, adding that he planned to engage the Hebrew Congregation and make a small donation to My Brother’s Workshop during his stay.

President Jackson and other lawmakers touched on a range of topics with the Israeli diplomat to include agriculture, food security, health, tourism, education, renewable energy and the ongoing conflict in Gaza during informal conversation. Jackson spoke to the longstanding history of the Jewish population on St. Thomas, which developed in Savan along Jode Gade amidst the French and free Blacks. He encouraged Dayan to visit the island’s oldest Jewish cemetery in the neighborhood.

“The Jewish community of the Virgin Islands is an ancient one,” Dayan said. “We hope this is the starting of a relationship that will flourish.”

Senators Jean Forde, Kurt Vialet, Marvin Blyden, Brian Smith, Tregenza Roach, Nereida Rivera-O’Reilly and Dwayne DeGraff were among those greeting the ambassador.

60 years ago: Witchcraft ritual murders continue in Africa

There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch.
Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.
For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee. Deuteronomy 18:10-12

Witch doctors wouldn't proliferate unless people believed that they were deriving physical and/or spiritual benefits from them. The negative consequences, however, outweigh whatever benefits may result. As C.S. Lewis said, "The Devil will be happy to cure your chilblains if in return he can be permitted to give you cancer."

The article below was published on page 20 of The Edmonton Journal on August 7, 1958. Directly adjoining it was an article by John Barbour of Associated Press about U.S. plans to shoot a rocket to the Moon (in 1958, such an event was still in the future). It's unacceptable, according to modern standards of political correctness and multiculturalism, to say that a culture that produced Moon rockets was superior to a culture that produced witch doctors. Instead, the former must now import large numbers of the latter, because "diversity is our strength," with the various cultures regarded as being of equal merit. Basutoland is now known as Lesotho.

As reported by J.K. Chilwell of North American Newspaper Alliance (bold in original):

Johannesburg--A member of the Nigerian parliament, Vincent Awgu Nwankwo, has been charged with 111 ritual and other murders.

In Basutoland, at the other end of Africa, 22 natives recently were hanged for medicine murders.

In South Africa, portly, middle-aged Khotso Sethuntsa went to town with a suitcase of money and paid £2,400 in £10 and £100 notes for a 1958 car. Mr. Sethuntsa is a leading medicine man of the Transkei tribe--who may or may not use bits of human beings in his "cures."

Witchcraft--which has its devotees among plenty of white men in the black continent--has defied the "civilizers." Much of it is harmless.

The ritual murder side is not.

WITCH DOCTOR UNIVERSITY

In Johannesburg, the witch doctors have formed their own "university" to prevent charlatans, as they term them, from entering the honorable profession of the dingakas.

It is even possible for modern medicine to learn some lessons from this "University." The dingakas know the ages-old herbal remedies for various African complaints. There are scientific reasons why some of them work.

The theory has even been put forward that the presence of a witch doctor can aid his 20th-century brother, the medical practitioner. For a witch doctor can put an ignorant patient in a receptive psychological mood to make the best of a modern cure.

LEADS TO MURDER

Witch-doctorism, however, leads to murder.

Natives hold a strong belief in the medicine of witch doctors. Medicine from a lion's flesh is regarded as strong. The most powerful of all, however, is made from human flesh.

To obtain this flesh, a murder must be committed. The victim of an accident or of a disease is not suitable, say the medicine men.

Ritual murder is always planned, and the murder always is committed by more than one person.

The witch doctors arrange for the remains to be found and for it to appear as if death was accidental.

How to stamp out ritual murder is a matter engaging the attention of all governments from Ghana to South Africa, from Liberia to Abyssinia. The terrible practice brings death to hundreds of Africans every year.

It will be a long battle, as it is mainly one of education.

It took Europe and America long years to eradicate beliefs in black magic, and in vampires, wolfmen and other bogeymen. Such beliefs--and worse--still seize the minds of millions of Africans.

1,600-year-old art discovered in Galilean village's synagogue

As reported by Abbie Bennett of the Raleigh News & Observer, July 12, 2018 (bold, link in original):

A University of North Carolina archaeologist and her team have uncovered 1,600-year-old art in a monumental synagogue in Israel that could rewrite history about an ancient Jewish village.

The team, led by professor Jodi Magness, discovered mosaics in an ancient village in Israel that contradict widespread views about Jewish settlement in the region during the early fifth century.

“The size and rich decoration of the synagogue indicate that this Jewish village continued to flourish in the centuries after the Roman Empire became a Christian empire, and these Jews came under Christian rule, which many scholars today view as having been oppressive to the Jews,” said Magness, a Kenan distinguished professor of early Judaism in the department of religious studies at the UNC-Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences.

The large, elaborately decorated interior of the synagogue in Huqoq, a village in Galilee, points to a “previously unexpected level of prosperity,” Magness said.

And the content of the mosaics themselves seems to contradict previous historical perceptions.

“The mosaics decorating the floor of the Huqoq synagogue revolutionize our understanding of Judaism in this period,” Magness said. “Ancient Jewish art is often thought to be aniconic, or lacking images. But these mosaics, colorful and filled with figured scenes, attest to a rich visual culture as well as to the dynamism and diversity of Judaism in the Late Roman and Byzantine periods.”

The mosaics provide information about the ancient Jewish understanding of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and show that Judaism during the 4th through 6th centuries “was dynamic and diverse,” Magness said.

Magness and her team have been uncovering the mosaics since 2012. Since then, more have been discovered each summer.

This summer, they made their most significant discovery to date — part of the richest, most diverse collection of mosaics ever found in an ancient synagogue.

The mosaics

Fish swallowing Pharaoh's soldier in the Parting of the Red Sea

Pair of donkeys in Noah's Ark scene

The Spies panel

Month of Teveth with the sign of Capricorn

The mosaics show scenes from several biblical stories and depict the zodiac, including:

▪ Noah’s Ark.

▪ The parting of the Red Sea, showing Pharaoh’s soldiers being swallowed by giant fish.

▪ Jonah being swallowed by three successive fish.

▪ The building of the Tower of Babel.

▪ A panel depicting two spies sent by Moses to explore Canaan, carrying a pole with a cluster of grapes (Numbers 13:23).

▪ A panel referencing Isaiah 11:6 (“a small child shall lead them”), which shows a youth leading an animal by a rope.

▪ Samson and the foxes.

▪ Samson carrying the gate of Gaza on his shoulders.

▪ A Helios-zodiac cycle.

The ‘most surprising find

The mosaics don’t only show biblical stories, Magness said.

On one, a Hebrew inscription is surrounded by human figures, animals and mythological creatures, including cupids, along with the first non-biblical story ever found decorating an ancient synagogue.

That mosaic shows perhaps, the legendary meeting between Alexander the Great and the Jewish high priest.

The team uncovered a rare discovery in ancient synagogues — columns covered in colorful painted plaster still intact after nearly 1,600 years.

Huqoq in the Hebrew Bible

The village of Huqoq appears in the Old Testament in connection with the settlement of the Israelite tribes of Asher and Naftali, Magness said.

“In the Roman and Byzantine periods, it was a Jewish village. But until our discoveries, Huqoq was considered only to be an unimportant ancient village,” Magness said. “Now we can see that it was more prosperous than we previously thought.”

Huqoq is not mentioned in the New Testament, but the village did exist during the time of Jesus of Nazareth, Magness said.

Huqoq is only a few miles from Capernaum, the base of Jesus’ Galilean ministry and from Migdal/Magdala, the home of Mary Magdalene.

“It is in the heart of the area that was the focus of Jesus’s Galilean ministry – so its possible (even likely) that Jesus was familiar with the village and maybe even visited it,” Magness said.

But the mosaics Magness and her team have uncovered were created about 400 years after the time of Jesus.

The mosaics have been removed from the synagogue for conservation and the excavated areas have been backfilled, according to the university. Excavations are scheduled to continue in the summer of 2019. For more information on the project, go to www.huqoq.org.

Magness and her team were assisted by Shua Kisilevitz of the Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel Aviv University.

Sponsors of the project include UNC-Chapel Hill, Baylor University, Brigham Young University and the University of Toronto. Students and staff from Carolina and the consortium schools participated in the dig, with financial support for 2018 from the Friends of Heritage Preservation, the National Geographic Society, the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust and the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies.

Go here for video.

Poor Anglican churches in northern England complain that their richer southern brethren aren't sharing the wealth

For it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem. Romans 15:26

Liberal churches tend to be very vocal in advocating "sharing the wealth" of others by means of compulsory state socialism, but they seem to be a lot less enthusiastic about sharing their own wealth within their own ranks. As reported by Hayley Dixon of the London Daily Telegraph, August 5, 2018 (link in original):

The Church of England has become embroiled in a row over a "postcode lottery" as northern churches are facing a financial black hole.

As Leeds, the newest and geographically the largest diocese, announced that it would have to lay off 14 staff and close its pension scheme to try and plug a £3million deficit, some blamed it on a north-south divide.

They called on the church to share the wealth more evenly.

Diocese with historic wealth have assets to draw on in tough times and therefore do not have to ask for so much money from their parishes. Congregations in poorer areas are also less likely to be able to contribute financially.

Andy Delmege, vicar at St Bede’s Brandwood in Birmingham and chair the National Estates Churches Network, which promotes inner city churches, said: "Why should ministry be harder in Birmingham or Newcastle or Manchester because they are newer diocese formed without historic assets? This inequality makes life harder for the parishes and clergy which are at the sharp end of it.

"We might want to ask what the gospel says on this. Well it certainly doesn't advocate a postcode lottery."

He told BBC Radio 4's Sunday programme that they need to "urgently work out ways of justly sharing our historic wealth".

Of the ten diocese with the largest income in England, eight are in the south.

His comments follow those of the Rt Rev Philip North, the Bishop of Burnley, who said there was a "'shocking disparity" between diocese and that the situation in Leeds was "a symptom of a much deeper financial and spiritual institutional sickness."

Nick Baines, Bishop of Leeds, yesterday described his fellow Bishop's comments as "nonsense".

The Reverend Canon Sam Corley, the Rector of Leeds, said that a "cheque from the south would be nice" but would not solve the issues facing the future of inner city churches and those in deprived areas.

See also my post Anglican churches in England are selling stained glass windows and organs to make ends meet (July 5, 2018)

Large church in Edinburgh votes to leave Scottish Episcopal Church over sodomite/lesbian "marriage"

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?
And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?
And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. II Corinthians 6:14-17

As reported by Harry Farley of the London Daily Telegraph, August 4, 2018:

One of the largest churches in Edinburgh has voted to split from the Scottish Episcopal Church amid tensions over its decision to become the first Anglican body in the UK to endorse gay marriage.

St Thomas’ is the latest evangelical parish to quit the official Anglican church in Scotland and back a rival splinter movement in reaction to the vote supporting gay marriage in June last year.

A number of other churches have either left or are considering leaving in the wake of the decision to change the Scottish Episcopal Church's (SEC) definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman.

St Thomas' is one of the largest Anglican churches in the capital and the move to split from the SEC will be seen as a major blow to Scottish bishops trying to hold together the deeply opposed factions over same-sex marriage.

The Rev David McCarthy, Rector at St Thomas' told The Sunday Telegraph the decision had been a “very painful” one.

“We have not done it easily. We have had many tears and many sleepless nights. It is a tragic necessity,” he said.

“But it is the Episcopal Church who are leaving us. They are leaving orthodoxy.”

The church's decision to permit gay marriage has put it at odds with the majority of Anglicans around the world. Last October sanctions were imposed on the SEC by leaders of the global Anglican Communion, restricting Scottish bishops from representing the group at interfaith meetings and from voting on decisions about policy or teaching.

The Most Reverend Mark Strange, Primus of the SEC, defiantly defended the decision although he admitted it was “one that has caused some hurt and anger in parts of the Anglican communion”.

He said at the time: "I will do all I can to rebuild relationships, but that will be done from the position our church has now reached in accordance with its synodical processes and in the belief that love means love.”

Even within the evangelical congregation at St Thomas' the decision was a controversial one and around a fifth have walked out since a vote confirmed the decision in May.

“I expected if we got to this stage we would lose people. But I suspect if we had gone the other way [and stayed in the SEC] we would have lost a lot more people,” Mr McCarthy said.

“I would have walked,” he added.

“If it was one person who left that would have been bad enough. It is not great. I am not happy about it. But we have not pushed anyone out. We have not said to anyone who disagreed ‘you have got to leave’.”

Mr McCarthy suggested that when the Church of England finally considers any potential changes to its teaching on marriage in 2020, “alternative oversight” will be offered for conservatives who oppose the changes.

“That was not offered here,” he said. “The bishops are not willing to surrender any of their power.

“With new people come through for ordinations they will make a big thing about obedience. It is all very controlling from the bishops.”

A spokesman for the SEC told The Sunday Telegraph that the numbers choosing to leave were small.

"We understand that the decision to allow gay marriage in church is difficult for some. It is always regrettable when people chose to leave.

"We have been working very hard to try and maintain unity."

St. Thomas is well rid of the one-fifth who left after the vote took place; it's what Branch Rickey referred to as "addition by subtraction."

U.S. Air Force base in Wyoming replaces the Bible with "Book of Faith" on POW/MIA table

Francis E. Warren Air Force Base is located several miles west of Cheyenne, Wyoming. As reported by Kristine Galloway of the Cheyenne Wyoming Tribune Eagle, August 1, 2018:

CHEYENNE – A new effort at inclusion recently came to F.E. Warren Air Force Base, but not everyone is happy about it.

Col. Stacy Huser, commander of the 90th Missile Wing, recently replaced the Bible on the POW/MIA memorial tables with the “POW/MIA Book of Faith.”

Nikita Thorpe, public affairs officer at F.E. Warren, said in an email that, “The prisoner of war/missing in action table is a reserved table setting to honor the missing loved ones in each service, including civilians, no matter the event or war,” Thorpe said.

She added that the table, also known as the “Missing Man Table,” is displayed at several locations on base, including the Chadwell dining facility, and that F.E. Warren airmen use the table in many official ceremonies.

“We are focused on ensuring all our airmen, religious or non-religious, feel included and cared for as they protect and defend the Constitution,” Thorpe said.

But some local residents are upset about the change.

Mike Archer, a local U.S. Navy veteran, said the Bible stands for all religions, making a generic book of faith unnecessary.

“The Bible designates all things in there for all people. It doesn’t make any difference if you’re Muslim or whatever. The Bible is part of what should be there,” he said.

“They’re taking away what the POW/MIA ceremony stands for.”

He said the ceremony, which began with the Vietnam War, honors military members who are missing in action and includes references to the Bible.

“It’s a traditional ceremony. All services use it, and the Bible is specifically mentioned in there,” Archer said.

Thorpe said U.S. Air Force regulations allow base commanders to decide whether to place a book of faith on the POW/MIA memorial tables.

She added that Air Force Pamphlet 34-1202 contains information the public can access about the POW/MIA table.

According to the pamphlet, published Jan. 10, 2013, the required items for the ceremony are: “A round table, a white tablecloth, six chairs, book of faith (optional), red rose displayed in vase, red ribbon, slice of lemon on a bread plate with a pinch of salt, place setting at an open table and (6) wine glasses.”

The pamphlet also contains the script for the POW/MIA ceremony. It contains an optional line that states, “The bound text is a book of faith to represent the strength gained through devotion to sustain those lost from our country.”

Archer said he believes the Air Force and F.E. Warren buckled under pressure from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

That organization states its mission is “dedicated to ensuring that all members of the United States Armed Forces fully receive the constitutional guarantees of religious freedom to which they and all Americans are entitled by virtue of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.”

But Archer said tradition is important in the military, and changes like these are detrimental.

“They’ve changed it so much now that the military is weak as it is. We don’t need any more stuff taken out of it,” he said. “When you start selling out the traditions of the service, then you’re degrading the service.”

Local resident Kenneth Wells made similar statements in a letter to the editor sent to the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

“How can we expect our military to protect us from real threats when they take action like this after a marginalized group claims the presence of a Bible is oppressive?” he asked.

Archer said many retired military members are upset about the change.

“It does nothing but degrade what we did and what our fathers did before. I served my country in battle and in peace time, and so did my dad,” Archer said.

“That Bible represents that this is for God and country. I think the military needs to get back to that.”

Perceptive readers will notice yet another Orwellian use of language, as the word "inclusion" is used to describe what is actually an act of censorship in removing the Bible. It's also an act of historical revisionism in trying to convey the impression that various faiths have been equally influential in the United States and the armed forces, which is simply not true. Go here to cast your vote on whether or not you approve of the change; as of the time of this post, the tally is 87.5% opposed to the replacement of the Bible.

Colorado Springs Christian School refuses to support tennis coach's freedom of speech

As always seems to be the case these days, you're a bigot for noticing. The reader will notice that the article (and the headline in the original) refers to "racist tweets." The low IQs who inhabit the mainstream media seem incapable of understanding that Islam is not a race. As reported by Conrad Swanson of the Colorado Springs Gazette, August 3, 2018 (links in original):

Colorado Springs Christian School officials reprimanded a coach Friday for a pair of racist tweets about the gunman who's accused of shooting and critically wounding a police officer.

Karrar Noaman Al Khammasi, 31, was arrested Thursday on suspicion of attempted murder in the shootout early Thursday east of the Olympic Training Center in which officer Cem Duzel was shot in the head. Al Khammasi is being held in the El Paso County jail without bond.

“Oddly Muslim reading name there. ... I’m sure it’s nothing,” Bob McCall, the school's boys' tennis coach, tweeted Thursday in response to the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office releasing the suspect's name and photograph.

Oddly Muslim reading name there.... I’m sure it’s nothing.

— Coach McCall (@Coach4Tennis) August 2, 2018

“My point was to note the Muslim connection to so many acts of terror/shooting at cops,” McCall continued after another Twitter user urged him to focus on the wounded officer. He then called that user a “terrorist lover” and added “#IslamIsTheProblem.”

MY point was to note the Muslim connection to so many acts of terror / shooting at cops. Ah! I see you’re a terrorist lover. (There is no state of Palestine.)#BackTheBlue#IslamIsTheProblem

— Coach McCall (@Coach4Tennis) August 3, 2018

While no motive for the shooting has been released, investigators have not said they believe it is terrorist-related or connected to Islamic extremism.

Christian Schools Superintendent and CEO Roland DeRenzo quickly distanced the school’s official lines of communications from McCall’s.

“These are his personal opinions, but he is being contacted by the athletic director this morning to let him know that we disavow the statements he has made,” DeRenzo said. “That does not represent our position at CSCS. We do not represent anything of the kind towards Islam or Muslims or anything. He is going to be told that he better cease and desist because it is bringing a bad reproach on CSCS and if that continues we will have to take the appropriate action.”

The Colorado Springs Christian Schools network of campuses has about 1,100 preschool through high school students, DeRenzo said.

McCall spoke briefly to The Gazette Friday afternoon, defending his comments as protected First Amendment speech and circled back to Al Khammasi’s name.

“I do not know if he’s a practicing member of Islam,” McCall said. “I thought there might be a connection.”

Asked to further clarify his tweets, McCall declined and ultimately hung up the phone. He later tweeted that he did not believe his employer disavowed his comments.

Assumptions like McCall’s, connecting certain names to Islam, are an unfortunate fact of life for Muslims in Colorado Springs, said Arshad Yousufi, spokesman for the Islamic Society of Colorado Springs. While some members of the mosque are harassed in school, at work or on the street, most Americans don’t jump to such conclusions, he said.

Yousufi said he hadn’t ever seen Al Khammasi at the mosque and his criminal activities would suggest he is not a practicing member of the religion. He equated assumptions connecting Al Khammasi’s name with Islam to concluding that someone with a Christian name represented all of Christianity.

“We would be on the side of the police, not on the side of the criminal,” he said.

When crimes are committed by someone with a Middle Eastern-sounding name, the local Islamic community fears blowback, Yousufi said. But as of Friday afternoon, there had been no incidents, he said.

The best option is to combat prejudicial assumptions through education and compassion, Yousufi said.

McCall and others are entitled to their opinion, said Scott Liven, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, an international organization that advocates for civil rights.

“But I would hope that people in a position of trust, like a coach or a teacher, would certainly hold themselves to a higher standard than jumping to a conclusion,” Liven said. “And it’s important for us to exercise our own First Amendment rights to counter prejudice and bias.”

Rhetoric like McCall’s has been on the rise in America in recent years, Liven said.

“It’s been against immigrants, people with foreign-sounding names, people of color, Jewish people and other disaffected groups in our communities,” he said.

He used anti-Semitic incidents as a bellwether for the trend.

“Those have gone up in alarming rates,” he said of the numbers in Colorado. “In 2015 I think we had 15. In 2016 we had 45 and last year we had 54. Those range from an actual hate crime, act of violence or physical damage to … verbal incidents of harassment.”

The statistics show that Islamic extremists are nearly matched in acts of domestic terrorism by right-wing extremists in the United States, Levin said.

Since 2002, 98 domestic plots or attacks were motivated by Islamist extremism, Levin said. In that same time period, 94 plots or attacks were motivated by right-wing extremism.

In all, 127 people were involved in the 98 plots or attacks motivated by Islamic extremism and 90 percent of them were U.S. citizens or living in the country lawfully, Levin said. Six percent were in the country without documentation and 4 percent were foreign citizens. By contrast, all of the 161 right-wing extremists involved in the 94 plots or attacks were U.S. citizens, he said.

DeRenzo took the appropriate action, Levin said, and should follow up with an internal investigation to see if further steps are needed.

“One of the most important things to be done is that our leaders need to speak out and say this is unacceptable behavior," he said. "It doesn’t matter whether you’re the dog catcher, the mayor, the superintendent of the school or the president. When these things happen, they need to speak out against it so all of us know we live in safe and secure communities where we’re not going to be under threats based on our religion, the color of our skin, our sexual orientation or anything else.”

Duzel remains in critical condition with traumatic head injuries, a police spokeswoman said Friday. He and the Police Department have received an outpouring of support from the local and national community.

Could the increase in reports of anti-Semitic incidents be the result of an increase in the Islamic population? Or is it just an amazing coincidence? Here in Edmonton in the last year or so, we've had the case of a Syrian Muslim refugee claimant charged with groping girls at the West Edmonton Mall Waterpark, and a foreign Muslim running people over with his car as they were on their way to a football game at Commonwealth Stadium. School boards in various cities across Canada have files on cases of foreign Muslim students assaulting Canadian students. The mainstream media refuse to report on the situation in the schools, because it doesn't fit their politically correct agenda; only The Rebel (the only real opposition in the country) has covered it. Of course, it's just a coincidence that the perpetrators are Muslims--and it's just a coincidence that we never had such incidents like this until large numbers of Muslims arrived. As for Muslim whining about "blowback" that never seems to occur, it's about time that there was some blowback.

If "rhetoric like McCall's has been on the rise in America in recent years"--and I don't trust the Anti-Gentile League Anti-Defamation League or its statistics--maybe it's because people groups are being forced together who shouldn't be. As blogger Vox Day says, "Diversity plus proximity equals war." It doesn't help matters when we hear nonsense from Evangelical pulpits such as "God is bringing the world here." If that's true, He's doing it as punishment, because the Bible never speaks of mass migration--which is what we have now, not traditional immigration--or the world coming together as one as anything good. I can think of three places in the Bible where the world comes together as one: the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9); at the end of the Tribulation (Revelation 19:19-21); and at the end of the Millennium (Revelation 20:7-10). In all three cases, it's the world coming together against God. At the Tower of Babel, God confused their language and scattered them over the whole Earth. The first part of Acts 17:26--"And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth"--is often quoted in opposition to racism--but the last part of the verse--"and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation"--is seldom quoted. God isn't the one bringing the world together; those who are are politicians and others who are pursuing an agenda in opposition to the Lord Jesus Christ.

If "God is bringing the world here"--supposedly so they can come to Christ--then He must also be "bringing the world" to other Western countries, and the resulting crime and other social ills must, by that logic, also be the work of God. The man charged with shooting the policeman in Colorado Springs is an example of the kind of person whom God is supposedly bringing to the West; as reported by Tom Roeder, Jakob Rodgers, and Lance Benzel of the Colorado Springs Gazette, August 3, 2018:

A man accused of shooting a Colorado Springs police officer in the head in a shootout early Thursday while free on bond was known to immigration enforcement officials, yet evaded deportation despite a string of crimes, court records show.

Why Karrar Al Khammasi wasn’t deported was among the questions left unanswered Friday as his bond was revoked. Cem Duzel, the officer he is accused of shooting, remained hospitalized in critical condition.

The 31-year-old Iraqi immigrant appears to have lived in the Pikes Peak region for at least five years, and he had at least nine contacts with police in that time, according to court records.

On the day he pleaded guilty in 2014 to felony trespassing, Al Khammasi was on an immigration hold, court records show.

Whether his guilty plea should have triggered deportation depends on a variety of factors. But his conviction raised the question as to why he was allowed to remain in the United States, said David Simmons, a Denver immigration attorney of more than 30 years and a former adjunct professor at the University of Denver.

Some forms of trespass are considered crimes of moral turpitude — which can lead to deportation — and others are not, Simmons said.

The consequences of such a conviction also could vary, depending on how long he had been in the country, or the nature of the circumstances that brought him here. Some Iraqis living in the U.S. came as refugees who assisted the government or who fled persecution. But those refugees sometimes evade deportation because of chaos in their home country, or threats to their lives upon their return.

It is unknown whether those things factored into Al Khammasi’s immigration here, and the type of visa Al Khammasi used to enter the United States wasn’t clear.

El Paso County sheriff’s spokesman Jacqueline Kirby said Al Khammasi was an Iraqi citizen who was born in Iraq. She had previously said Al Khammasi was a refugee, but she later said she was mistaken, and that she wasn’t certain of his immigration status.

The last five years of Al Khammasi’s life have been marked by several run-ins with the law.

He picked up his first charge for drunken driving in 2013.

A month later, he was charged with criminal extortion in a case that police say was tied to a dispute over a business debt of $25,000, according to court papers. Investigators suspect Al Khammasi threatened a man and his family, and also set a car on fire.

The man told police that Al Khammasi’s “behavior began to change when he came into money and was drinking and possibly using drugs,” according to an arrest affidavit.

Al Khammasi pleaded guilty to a lesser felony, first-degree trespassing of a dwelling, and was sentenced to two years of probation, court records show.

“It sounds like he had a criminal defense lawyer who was aware of possible immigration consequences and negotiated that plea,” Simmons said. “It’s also possible that he’s a permanent resident and as permanent resident long enough that a single conviction for crime of moral turpitude wouldn’t trigger (deportation).”

An official clerk’s account of court proceedings on Feb. 19, 2014, says “(defendant) has immigration hold,” a court document obtained by The Gazette shows.

Kirby, the sheriff’s spokeswoman, said she could not find any mention of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials requesting that he be held.

After Al Khammasi violated the terms of probation, a judge sentenced him to a year and a half in prison. He received credit for time served for almost half of it, court records show.

After Al Khammasi got out, he didn’t stay out of trouble. He picked up a traffic ticket and was arrested in June 2017 for allegedly punching a person “in the face approximately three times,” court documents show.

In January, Al Khammasi wound up back in handcuffs with an arrest on a weapons charge, possession by a previous offender. A tipster phoned police that his vehicle was outside of a North Nevada Avenue motel, and officers later found a stolen .38 Special revolver in his room.

In February, he entered a guilty plea on the 2017 assault case and put up $1,000 cash bail on the weapons case.

Al Khammasi was free to go. Until early Thursday.

Al Khammasi remains hospitalized, causing him to miss a court appearance Friday, his attorney, public defender Jennifer Chu, said at the hearing related to the stolen revolver.

Fourth Judicial District Chief Judge William Bain revoked his bail, citing the new allegations, and appointed the Colorado Public Defender’s Office to represent him. He was ordered to return to court Aug. 8 on the weapons charge.

Remember, politically correct people--some of whom inhabit Evangelical and other supposedly Christian pulpits--regard U.S. President Donald Trump as a meanie for wanting to keep people like this out of the United States.

Banker and Baptist church deacon in Kentucky faces prison sentence for bank fraud

...and be sure your sin will find you out. Numbers 32:23b

Likewise must the deacons be grave, not doubletongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre: I Timothy 3:8

As reported by Will Wright of the Lexington Herald-Leader, August 1, 2018 (links in original):

PIKEVILLE -- The dozens of letters sent to U.S. District Judge Karen Caldwell paint an image of one of Pikeville’s most respected sons.

The letters gush over Brent Lee’s leadership role at First Baptist Church of Pikeville, his professionalism as a banker, and his reputation as a loving father and husband.

But on Wednesday, Lee was sentenced to 18 months in prison for conspiracy to commit bank fraud. His sentence also includes paying $248,000 in restitution to the bank he defrauded, and serving a supervised release for five years after his prison sentence.

Lee was convicted in February in federal court of nine charges, including conspiracy and aiding bank fraud, for crimes committed in 2014 and 2015. At that time, Lee used his senior position at Branch Banking & Trust to make fraudulent loans that cost BB&T nearly $250,000.

Friends of Lee said the charges shocked the community. As his sentencing date approached, dozens of people sent letters asking Caldwell for leniency.

“His stature in the community, in my opinion, was as strong as anyone’s,” said Mike Francisco, president of the engineering firm Pike Technical Services, Inc., and a friend of Lee’s. “If the judge has any leniency within her powers, I think everyone would like to see her use that.”

The guideline sentencing range for Lee’s crimes was 30 to 37 months, according to court records.

Lee, a market president for BB&T at the time of the crimes, was charged in the case with Paul Fannin, a residential developer from Floyd County, and Chelsea Stone, Fannin’s 25-year-old daughter.

Fannin was sentenced to one day of time served. Stone was granted a pretrial diversion, which allows her to avoid prison time.

According to a news release from U.S. Attorney Robert M. Duncan Jr., Fannin had an outstanding $950,000 loan with BB&T to develop a townhouse project called Stone Crest Properties.

BB&T officials became concerned with the progress of the loan and the project, and downgraded Fannin so that he could not borrow more money from the bank.

Lee then suggested to Fannin that they use Stone to get a new loan from the bank. Eventually, Lee conspired to create multiple fraudulent loans in Stone’s name totaling nearly $250,000. Nearly all of that money ended up in Fannin’s pocket, according to court records.

Fannin spent at least $120,000 of that money at casinos, according to the news release.

Lee grew up in Pike County, graduated from Morehead State University, and, after a couple years working outside Kentucky, moved back to Pike County with his wife, according to the letters.

After his return to Pikeville, Lee held many leadership positions in the community. He was the president of the Rotary Club, a deacon and Sunday school teacher at First Baptist Church, and president of the local American Red Cross chapter, among other things, according to the letters.

He regularly donated blood to the Kentucky Blood Center and coached girls softball and basketball.

Letters from Lee’s family suggest he was simply trying to help Fannin with his business, and never knew his actions were illegal.

“I know that he never received any money from Fannin,” Lee’s wife, Kristi Lee, wrote in a letter to the judge. “I think this was proven in court. I know our finances and I’ve seen his earnings. But most importantly, I know him and I know that he would never do that.”

Other letters from family and community members relayed the same message, saying that good people sometimes do bad things, and that Lee was likely unaware of the severity of his actions.

A motion filed in May by prosecutors requesting more severe sentencing guidelines for Lee paints a different picture.

The motion sought a tougher sentence for Lee because he played a leadership role in the scheme, saying that Lee “was the insider, who initiated the scheme and performed the necessary acts to carry it out.”

“Lee transformed BB&T’s commercial lending operation into an ATM for Fannin, literally bankrolling his gambling addiction,” the motion reads.

Caldwell did not apply the leadership role standard, which would have added time to Lee’s sentence, during the hearing Wednesday.

Fannin used $100,000 of the $250,000 to pay off a loan at BB&T, but lost $100,000 of the money in a single night while gambling at a West Virginia casino, according to a sentencing memorandum filed by Lee.

David Hefner, who has known Lee for 14 years through First Baptist, said he has prayed and spoken with Lee since the conviction.

“He’s never denied or tried to pass the buck,” Hefner said. “The thing that breaks my heart for him is that anytime I tried to reach out, he immediately refers to his family.”

Lee is the father of three daughters, who also wrote letters on his behalf.

One letter, from William J. Baird III of the law firm Baird & Baird, P.S.C., said that despite the conviction “(Lee) is still held in high esteem among those who know him best” for his service to the community and his role at First Baptist.

Another, from J.R. Blackburn II, the manager and senior wealth adviser at the local Merrill Lynch branch, told the judge that Lee has already “lost it all,” including his career and business status, and asked the judge to “show mercy on Brent and his family.”

During the sentencing hearing Wednesday, Caldwell said the court has received “too many letters to name” on Lee’s behalf.

“You are well loved and regarded by many in your community,” Caldwell said to Lee during the hearing.

Lee must report to the Bureau of Prisons on Oct. 1 to begin his sentence.

Attendance at Noah's Ark theme park in Kentucky seems to be below expectations

I don't know how accurate the figures are, but this blogger believes that people would be better off to stay home and read their Bibles than to patronize Christian theme parks. As reported by Thomas Novelly of the Louisville Courier-Journal, August 2, 2018 (link in original):

Visitors to the life-sized Noah's Ark attraction near Northern Kentucky are sinking below the number of projected visitors advertised by the owners of the religious-themed park.

The Ark Encounter sold a little more than 860,000 tickets between July 2017 and June 2018, according to open records obtained by The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes the separation of church and state.

When the park opened in 2016, park officials anticipated 1.4 million to 2.4 million yearly visitors.

A spokesman for the park said the foundation's figures for ticket sales are accurate but noted that it doesn't represent how many people actually visited the park.

Ark Encounter spokesman Mark Looy estimated that 1 million guests came to the Ark Encounter last year, and on busy days, between 7,000 and 8,000 people visit the park. He said attendance has been growing since the park opened two years ago.

"We are like most attractions in that we don’t release annual attendance figures," Looy said in an email. "Furthermore, one can’t look at ticket sales to come up with the grand total."

Looy said he couldn't specify the total annual guests because, in part, children under 5 years old attend the park for free.

"Thousands and thousands of young children under 5 who have visited the ark in the past two years have attended free with their families, and they will not show up in the 862,471 amount," Looy said.

Ark members with lifetime passes or annual memberships do not come up in the final ticket sales, either, Looy said.

For attendance to be 1 million visitors at the ark park, 14 percent of all its attendance needs to be free or non-ticketed, according to The Freedom From Religion Foundation.

The Ark Encounter showcases the biblical narrative of the great flood in Genesis by displaying a life-sized replica of Noah's Ark that spans 510 feet long, 85 feet wide and 51 feet high.

On the ark there are various exhibits and animal statues, including robotic dinosaurs. Answers in Genesis, the group behind the park, argues that humans and dinosaurs co-existed, though dinosaurs went extinct nearly 65 million years before people appeared on Earth, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

When the park was being built, it won more than $18 million in tax incentives from the state, which outraged numerous groups, including The Freedom From Religion Foundation, because of the prospect of the state government interacting with a religious project.

The state tried to take away the tax credits because it contended the park was being used for religious indoctrination instead of a tourist attraction. But a federal judge ruled in favor of the Ark Encounter in July 2016, granting the park the right to the tax incentives.

After its first year, the Kentucky government cut the Ark Encounter a rebate check for $1.8 million.

“It is a shame that Matt Bevin and the Commonwealth of Kentucky continues to pay for this Christian ministry,” said Edwin Hensley, a co-organizer of Kentucky's Freedom From Religion Foundation. “Last year Kentucky wrote a check to Ark Encounter for $1.8 million, refunding almost 80 percent of the $2.28 million sales tax revenue."

The Ark Encounter is on an 800-acre site in Grant County and about 45 miles south of the Creation Museum, a sister attraction by the same Christian group, Answers in Genesis, founded by Ken Ham.

Looy said numerous other expansions are planned at the park in the coming years.

"... We think the third year at the Ark will be just as strong as our excellent second year," Looy said.

Admission to the Ark Encounter ranges from $15 for children to $48 for adults. Children 4 and younger are free, according to the website.