Israel and Sudan agree to normalize relations

As reported by Ron Kampeas of Jewish Telegraphic Agency, October 23, 2020 (link in original):

WASHINGTON — Sudan will become the third Arab country in the past two months to normalize ties with Israel, continuing the trend of Arab states’ willingness to advance ties with the Jewish state even without a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

President Donald Trump announced the agreement on Friday. According to a joint statement released by Israel, Sudan and the U.S., the two countries will “end the state of belligerence between their nations.”

The statement also noted that the countries will “begin economic and trade relations, with an initial focus on agriculture.” In the coming weeks, the statement says, they will meet to discuss “agriculture technology, aviation, migration issues and other areas.”

“The Arab-Israeli conflict is moving towards an end,” said Brian Hook, the top State Department official who helped broker the deal, on Friday at an Oval Office presentation.

Sudan has been ruled by a Sovereignty Council, led by military leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and prime minister Abdalla Hamdok, since a military coup last year deposed longtime Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who was subsequently convicted of corruption. He presided over the country during the Darfur ethnic conflict, which involved what the International Criminal Court has deemed war crimes by the Sudanese government.

Earlier in the day, Trump informed Congress of his intent to remove Sudan’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, which reportedly is part of the agreement.

Sudan will get new leadership in 2022, when the state’s agreed-upon transition period ends. The north African country’s state religion was Islam until earlier this year.

The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have in recent weeks launched fast tracks to open up diplomatic affairs, trade and tourism with Israel, but Sudan is especially significant because it is by far the largest of the three countries, in land mass and in population. It is also symbolically significant because its capital, Khartoum, is where the Arab League met in 1967 after the Six-Day War and issued its “three no’s” to reject any engagement with Israel whatsoever and to continue the state of war.

Like the UAE and Bahrain, Sudan has not been in a war with Israel and has over the years enjoyed a degree of secret ties with the country. In 1984, the Sudanese authorities assisted in an airlift of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Sudan’s leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in February met openly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Uganda.

There are also thousands of refugees from Sudan’s military conflicts living in Israel.

Trump also said at the Oval Office event on Friday that the process of solidifying the deals with the UAE and Bahrain “is moving along.” He said he is in talks with the United Arab Emirates to sell the country advanced F-35 stealth combat jets.

Israel objects to the sale, as do Democrats in Congress.

Bahrain signed a number of cooperative agreements with Israel this week and the UAE and Israel agreeing to travel between the countries without a pre-arranged visa. A government-linked Bahraini institute on Thursday signed an agreement with the U.S. State Department to combat anti-Semitism and delegitimization of Israel.

Go here for the statement issued by U.S. President Donald Trump.

40 years ago: Queen Elizabeth II visits Pope John Paul II

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith... I Timothy 4:1a

On October 16, 1555, erstwhile Church of England Bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley became two of the most Protestant martyrs of the Reformation in England when they were burned at the stake in Oxford, England as heretics for refusing to accept Roman Catholic doctrine, particularly transubstantiation. As the flames rose around them, Mr. Latimer reportedly said, "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as shall never be put out." That candle has been put out, evidence of which was an event that occurred the day after the 425th anniversary of the martyrdom of Messrs. Latimer and Ridley.

On October 17, 1980, another step was taken along the road to uniting all denominations under the banner of a false Christianity, as Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch to make a state visit to the Vatican, where she and Prince Philip were received by Pope John Paul II. As reported by BBC News, October 17, 1980:

The Queen has made history after becoming the first British monarch to make a state visit to the Vatican.

Pope welcomed Her Majesty and the Duke of Edinburgh, for what was described as a "warm and relaxed" encounter.

The Queen, dressed in a long black taffeta gown in line with Vatican protocol, arrived with the Duke at the Vatican in the rain at 1100 local time and took the lift up to the second floor.

Trumpets sounded and the royal procession moved slowly along the corridor into the Clementine Hall.

The Queen and the Duke were welcomed by John Paul II at the door of his private library.

The Queen then opened her speech with assurances of sincere friendship and good will.

She invited the Pope to her country in two years' time, but made clear this would not be a state visit but one "to the Roman Catholic community in Great Britain where some four million of my people are members of the Roman Catholic Church.

"We support the growing movement of unity between the Christian Churches throughout the world and we pray that your Holiness's visit to Britain may enable us all to see more clearly those truths which both unite and divide us in a new and constructive light."

In reply the Pope welcomed the opportunity of the forthcoming pastoral visit to the UK.

He said: "I render homage to the Christian history of your people, as well as to their cultural achievements.

"The ideals of freedom and democracy, anchored in your past remain challenges for every generation of upright citizens in your land."

They then held private talks and the Pope presented the Queen with a facsimile of the manuscript of Dante's Divine Comedy with its illustration of the Order of the Garter in the time of Edward IV.

In return she offered a book about Windsor Castle by St John Hope and two signed photographs.

After the talks, the Queen and Prince Philip walked out into the Clementine Hall and they went on to meet the Pope's Secretary of State, Cardinal Casaroli, at the home of the British Minister to the Holy See, Mark Heath.

As reported by BBC News:

The Queen's visit was seen as a big step towards forging relations with the Church Of England and the Roman Catholics.

In 1982 John Paul II was welcomed by Her Majesty two years later at Buckingham Palace during a historic visit to Great Britain.

The Queen visited the Vatican again in 2000 to mark the 20th anniversary of their first meeting.

The Pope reinforced their close ties over the years when he said: "Relations between the United Kingdom and the Holy See have not always been untroubled; long years of common inheritance were followed by the sad years of division.

"But in recent years there has emerged between us a cordiality more in keeping with the harmony of earlier times and more genuinely expressive of our common spiritual roots."

The Pope died at 2137 (1937 GMT) on Saturday 2 April 2005 after he failed to recover from a throat operation.

Black sodomite becomes United Church of Canada leader

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. II Timothy 3:5

Politically correct racial category? Check. Alphabet pervert? Check. Social gospel? Check. Well, then, this person meets the qualifications to lead the United Church of Canada in its continuing march into oblivion. As reported by John Longhurst of the Winnipeg Free Press, October 10, 2020:

As the first Black and openly LGBTTQ+ person to be appointed general secretary of the United Church of Canada, Michael Blair knows he is travelling a new path.

"My appointment sends a message," he said, noting he is not the first Black person to hold a leadership role in the church.

That message goes out to members of the church who are persons of colour, showing they are welcome as leaders and giving them "something to celebrate," he said.

At the same time, his appointment challenges all members of the church to "think through what it means to be an anti-racist institution" at this important moment in history, and "how to live into that reality," he said.

As a gay man, it tells all Canadians "the United Church is a unique kind of faith community," one where "sexual identity is not a barrier to ministry and leadership," he added.

Being the only Black and LGBTTQ+ person to lead a major Christian denomination may also "create spaces where conversation can happen" with other church groups, he said.

He acknowledges there is a bit of loneliness in that space, and there will be a focus on him as only leader of a major denomination in Canada who is Black and gay. At the same time, he hopes "it can be a prophetic call to others."

Blair, 64, was born in Jamaica. A father of two adult sons, he was ordained as a minister in Toronto in 1986 by the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec. When he came out as gay in 2001, he was asked to leave that denomination and began working for various United Church-supported organizations in the city.

Through those experiences, he became more intrigued by the United Church and, in 2008, took his first staff position with the denomination.

Over his time as a staff member, he was asked to lead number of different national programs. As a result, "I come into role with a strong understanding of the church," he said.

As he begins his new role, Blair is excited about the future of the 95-year-old denomination.

"We are on the cusp of repositioning ourselves to engage people of faith and society as a whole," he said, noting the denomination made a number of structural changes two years ago that "puts us in a framework to experiment and try new things."

This included setting up a separate corporation to help congregations deal with issues related to the management and sale of churches.

Called the United Property Resource Corporation and backed with a $20 million line of credit from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, it will provide local churches with professional real estate development and management expertise as they seek to convert their buildings for other community uses such as affordable housing.

While some have viewed all the buildings owned by the United Church as a liability, Blair sees them "as a gift. But we need the expertise and skills to utilize them."

Noting the United Church has committed to building 600 affordable housing units by 2025 and 5,000 affordable units by 2035, his dream is to see under-utilized church buildings being used to meet important needs in cities and towns across the country.

"We can engage communities through our property," he said, noting "we have many buildings that are bigger than we need. We need to re-imagine how we can use those spaces."

Another exciting program, he said, is The Edge, which aims to support innovation, pilot new programs, fund new initiatives and create a learning network for faith communities across the church.

"It was set up to think through new mission opportunities," Blair said of how it will support new ideas that "are outside the box. We want to find new ways of doing mission and ministry."

All of this is being done at a time when the denomination is getting smaller—it has just under 400,000 members now, down from over one million in the 1960s.

"The reality is we are declining in numbers," Blair said. "We can’t fudge that."

But, he quickly added, "numbers are not the only thing to measure. It’s harder to measure things like community connectivity, faithfulness, relationships, and nurturing faith formation. There is lots of energy in the church for that."

His goal is to "turn around the narrative of decline," telling stories that show how the church is making a difference in Canada and around the world through things like helping refugees, responding to the Beirut explosion disaster, addressing global hunger through its membership in the Winnipeg-based Canadian Foodgrains Bank, and playing a leadership role in advocating for a guaranteed basic income in Canada.

"We need Canadians to understand we are making a difference," he said. "But we need to do better at telling that story, sharing those stories of impact. We can’t just have stories of decline, decline, decline."

He hopes the new initiatives and ongoing programs will capture the interest of Canadians who will want to become part of the church.

"The United Church of Canada shares the values of Canadians in so many ways," he said. "It’s just a matter of figuring out how to tell stories of those values and invite Canadians to be part of our work."

That’s a challenge, he admits, given the declining state of religiosity in Canada. "Time will tell if we are successful," he said.

I have to chuckle at Mr. Blair's desire to "reimagine" how to use the church's buildings. The United Church is in a death spiral where the number of empty buildings is increasing because the number of people in the buildings is decreasing along with the amount of money coming in to pay for the buildings.

Mr. Blair is unusual in admitting that the United Church has been numerically declining, but this blogger predicts that continuing to promote the same "values of Canadians" that the United Church supposedly shares will be about as effective in reversing its decline as the promotion of "wokeness" has been for professional sports.

See also my posts:

Calgary Herald blasts United Church of Canada for advocating a boycott of Israel (May 15, 2012)

Canadian Senators warn United Church of Canada over proposed boycott of Israeli goods (July 6, 2012)

A secular columnist accurately assesses Canada's declining liberal churches (July 30, 2012)

United Church of Canada elects its first openly sodomite moderator (August 16, 2012)

50 years ago: United Church of Canada unveils Sunday School curriculum denying the truth of the Bible (August 1, 2014)

80 years ago: United Church of Canada ordains Canada's first female minister (November 7, 2016)

Amalgamation of congregations in Edmonton provides more evidence of the continuing decline of the United Church of Canada (January 31, 2017)

30 years ago: New Ager Matthew Fox delivers keynote lecture at Queen's Theological School (October 11, 2017)

50 years ago: United Church in Calgary experiments with modern music (June 15, 2018)

Mainline church leaders 50 years ago advocated methods used by "evangelical" churches today (November 6, 2018)

Atheist minister with United Church of Canada keeps her job after an agreement in lieu of a heresy trial (November 16, 2018)

50 years ago: Canadian Anglican traditionalists oppose union with United Church of Canada (June 21, 2019)

40 years ago: Pope John Paul II meets the Dalai Lama

On October 9, 1980, Pope John Paul II held a private audience with the Dalai Lama at the Vatican. While this blogger is unaware of what was said, it can be reasonably inferred that the audience was one of the events leading up to the World Day of Prayer for Peace, which took place in Assisi, Italy on October 27, 1986, under the leadership of Pope John Paul II, with the Dalai Lama as his right-hand man.

See my post 25 years ago: Representatives of 12 religions join Pope John Paul II at World Day of Prayer for Peace (October 26, 2011).

2,000-year-old ritual bath discovered in Lower Galilee

As reported by Israel365 News, September 30, 2020:

Prior to the construction of a major interchange at the Hamovil junction in Lower Galilee, an archaeological salvage dig carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority revealed the remains of a Jewish agricultural farmstead from the Second Temple period (2000 years ago), including a magnificent mikveh. The excavations were conducted with the help of workers from the village of Kfar Manda, students of pre-military preparatory programs and volunteers from the vicinity, including residents of the nearby Kibbutz Hannaton.

According to Abd Elghani Ibrahim and Dr. Walid Atrash, Directors of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “The existence of a mikveh, a purification facility, unequivocally indicates that the residents of the ancient farm were Jewish, who led a religious and traditional way of life, and maintained purity as a Torah commandment. Ritual baths have been used in daily life by Jews since the Second Temple period and until today.

According to Ibrahim and Dr Atrash, “the discovery of the mikveh in the farmstead changes what we knew about the lifestyle of the Jews in the Second Temple period. Until now we hadn’t discovered Jewish farms in the Galilee. It was considered that the Jews in the Roman period didn’t live in farms outside the villages or towns. The discovery of the farmstead at some distance from the village of the Shikhin and the large Jewish town of Sepphoris, showed that Jews also settled in farmsteads that perhaps functioned as the rural hinterland of Sepphoris”.

About seventeen hundred years have passed since the farm was destroyed in an earthquake, and about fourteen hundred years since the site was finally abandoned.

Recently, a huge highway interchange is being constructed over the valley. The need to anchor one of the supporting bridge columns, necessitated the constructing deep foundation trenches in the bedrock. As the archaeologists excavated next to the construction works, the mikveh was uncovered. Since it was not possible to preserve the mikveh on the site, the idea arose to detach the installation from the rock and to transplant it to a protected site for display, for the benefit of the public.

The Israel Antiquities Authority, together with members of Kibbutz Hannaton cooperated, and the kibbutz residents launched a crowd-funding campaign for the project, with the aim of placing the ancient mikveh next to the functioning mikveh on the kibbutz. In cooperation with the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage, Netivei Israel, the Jezreel Valley Regional Council and the residents, the necessary funding was obtained to move the ancient mikveh.

In the past week, preparatory work for the transfer was carried out. The mikveh, whose weight is approximately 57 tons, was first sawed off on all sides, detached from bedrock and surrounded by a steel cage in order to protect it and allow it to be hoisted. Today, to the cheers of the residents, it was hoisted in the air and placed in its new location.

The farm with the ritual bath (lower right). (Abd Ibrahim/Israel Antiquities Authority)

New evidence reveals widespread literacy in ancient Judah

As reported by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich of Israel365 News, September 9, 2020:

Jews around the world today are known to be more educated – and even more likely to vote in elections – than their counterparts. But was this high level of literacy true thousands of years ago? Researchers at Tel Aviv University (TAU), together with a retired superintendent and senior handwriting examiner from the Israel Police Division of Identification and Forensic Science, have found that contrary to popular belief, many people in the ancient Kingdom of Judah could read and write.

The first-ever, special interdisciplinary study, just published in the Public Library of Science (PLoS One) was conducted by Dr. Arie Shaus, Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin and Dr. Barak Sober of TAU’s applied mathematics department; Prof. Eli Piasetzky of the Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy; and Prof. Israel Finkelstein of the department of archeology and ancient Near Eastern civilizations. The forensic handwriting specialist was Yana Gerber, a senior expert who served for 27 years in the Israel Police.

The researchers examined the writings found in Tel Arad – ostraca (fragments of pottery vessels containing ink inscriptions) that were discovered at the Tel Arad archaeological site in the 1960s. Tel Arad is one of Israel’s most important archaeological sites, where remains were found of a fortified Canaanite city and fortresses from the time of the kings of Judah, when it was a small military post on the southern border of the kingdom. Its built-up area covered about two dunams, and it housed between 20 and 30 soldiers. The fortresses include the remains of a unique Judean temple.

Literacy was not the exclusive domain of a handful of royal scribes, the team concluded after examining ink-inscribed pottery shards and identifying 12 different handwritings with varying degrees of certainty.

A high rate of literacy indicates the ability to compile biblical texts, such as the books from Joshua to Kings, before the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians.

Forensic handwriting examination of the Arad inscriptions had never before been conducted. In fact, to the best of the team’s knowledge, such an examination had never been performed on any ancient inscription for forensic chemical analysis in the context of historical texts. The researchers used state-of-the-art image processing and machine learning technologies to analyze 18 ancient texts from the Tel Arad military post dating back to around 600 BCE. They concluded that they were written by no fewer than 12 authors, a finding suggesting that many of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah during that period were able to read and write, and that literacy not reserved as an exclusive domain in the hands of a few royal scribes...

...According to the researchers, the findings shed new light on Judahite society on the eve of the destruction of the First Temple and on the setting of the compilation of biblical texts.

“It should be remembered that this was a small outpost, one of a series of outposts on the southern border of the kingdom of Judah,” said Sober. “Since we found at least 12 different authors out of 18 texts in total, we can conclude that there was a high level of literacy throughout the entire kingdom. The commanding ranks and liaison officers at the outpost, and even the quartermaster Eliashib and his deputy, Nahum, were literate.” Someone had to teach them how to read and write, said Sober, “so we must assume the existence of an appropriate educational system in Judah at the end of the First Temple period. This, of course, does not mean that there was almost universal literacy as there is today, but it seems that significant portions of the residents of the Kingdom of Judah were literate. This is important to the discussion on the composition of biblical texts. If there were only two or three people in the whole kingdom who could read and write, then it is unlikely that complex texts would have been composed.”

“Whoever wrote the biblical works did not do so for us, so that we could read them after 2,600 years, they did so in order to promote the ideological messages of the time,” concluded Finkelstein. “There are different opinions regarding the date of the composition of biblical texts. Some scholars suggest that many of the historical texts in the Bible – from Joshua to II Kings – were written at the end of the 7th century BCE, that is, very close to the period of the Arad ostraca. It is important to ask for whom these texts were written. According to one view, there were events in which the few people who could read and write stood before the illiterate public and read texts out to them. A high literacy rate in Judah puts things into a different light.”

“Until now, the discussion of literacy in the Kingdom of Judah has been based on circular arguments, that is, on what is written within the Bible itself, for example on scribes in the kingdom,” he said. “We have shifted the discussion to an empirical perspective. If in a remote place like Tel Arad there was, over a short period of time, a minimum of 12 authors of 18 inscriptions, out of the population of Judah – estimated to have been no more than 120,000 people – it means that literacy was not the exclusive domain of a handful of royal scribes in Jerusalem. The quartermaster from the Tel Arad outpost also had the ability to read and appreciate them.”

Examples of two Hebrew ostraca from Arad (Yana Gerber, Israel Antiquities Authority)

Hebrew ostraca from Arad ( Michael Cordonsky, Tel Aviv University and the Israel Antiquities Authority)

Examples of Hebrew ostraca from Arad (Michael Cordonsky, Tel Aviv University, Israel Antiquities Authority)

Click on the link to see the original article Forensic document examination and algorithmic handwriting analysis of Judahite biblical period inscriptions reveal significant literacy level by Arie Shaus, Yana Gerber, Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin et al., PLoS One, September 9, 2020.

1,950 years ago: Titus sacks Jerusalem

And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours.
And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it.
And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. Leviticus 26:31-33

And as he went out of the temple, one of his disciples saith unto him, Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!
And Jesus answering said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. Mark 13:1-2

On September 8, 70, the siege of Jerusalem, which had begun almost five months earlier, ended when Roman legions commanded by future Emperor Titus completed their conquest of the city, which included the capture of the Second Temple, aka Herod's Temple. The sacking of Jerusalem fulfilled the prophecies of Moses and the Lord Jesus Christ; the latter prophecy must have seemed most unlikely at the time, but it was fulfilled less than 40 years later.

The Temple has yet to be rebuilt, but it will be (see, e.g., Ezekiel 40-44, II Thessalonians 2:4). The Temple Mount Faithful and the Temple Institute have been preparing for years for the building of the Third Temple. The book Ready to Rebuild by Thomas Ice & Randall Price (1992) and the companion video, hosted by Jimmy DeYoung, are no longer recent, but are still relevant and useful sources of information on this subject. Dr. DeYoung hosted a revised version of his video in 2011:

Remains of a royal structure from the time of the Kings of Judah have been discovered in Jerusalem

As reported by Israel National News, September 3, 2020:

Who was privileged to live in the monumental structure possessing a breathtaking view of the City of David and the Temple, which was uncovered in an archeological excavation on the Armon Hanatziv (Commissioner's Palace, also known as Governor's House) Promenade? Was it one of the Kings of Judah, or was it perhaps a Jerusalemite family of nobility and wealth during the First Temple period?

A rare, impressive, and very special collection of several dozen adorned architectural stone artifacts, which together were part of a magnificent structure, was discovered in the Antiquities Authority's excavations in preparation for the establishment of a visitor center on the promenade, at the site where the home of artist Shaul Schatz once stood. The excavations were funded by the Ministry of Tourism, Jerusalem Municipality and the Ir David Foundation (Elad).

The findings were unveiled to the public today, Thursday, at a festive event in the City of David in the Jerusalem Walls National Park, attended by Minister of Culture, Hili Tropper, Archaeologist from the Jerusalem region of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Dr. Yuval Baruch, and Chairman of the Ir David Foundation, David Be’eri. The findings will be on display in an exhibition at the City of David over the next few days, and an account of their significance will be given online at the Megalim Conference, to be held this coming Tuesday on the City of David website.

These stone artifacts are made of soft limestone, with decorative carvings, and among them are capitals of various sizes in the architectural style known as 'Proto-Aeolian' - one of the most significant royal building features of the First Temple period, and one of the visual symbols of the period. The importance of this artistic motif as a symbol representing the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel led the Bank of Israel to choose it as the image that adorns the five shekel coin of the State of Israel.

The unveiled collection includes, among other things, three complete medium-sized stone capitals and items from lavish window frames, incorporating balustrades composed of stylish columns on which a series of Proto-Aeolian style capitals of a tiny size were affixed.

According to Yaakov Billig, Director of the Israel Antiquities Authority’s excavation: “This is a very exciting discovery. This is a first-time discovery of scaled-down models of the giant Proto-Aeolian capitals, of the kind found thus far in the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel, where they were incorporated above the royal palace gates. The level of workmanship on these capitals is the best seen to date, and the degree of preservation of the items is rare."

It was with great surprise that two of the three column capitals were found neatly buried, one on top of the other. "At this point it is still difficult to say who hid the capitals in the way they were discovered, and why he did so, but there is no doubt that this is one of the mysteries at this unique site, to which we will try to offer a solution," Billig adds. Unlike the capitals, which were discovered preserved in excellent condition, the rest of the building was destroyed, probably in the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE or thereabout. The remains of the building were demolished and dismantled for the purpose of making secondary use of the valuable items.

In Billig's estimation, the magnificent structure -built in the period between the days of King Hezekiah and King Josiah- indicates the restoration of Jerusalem after the Assyrian siege of the city in 701 BCE, during the reign of King Hezekiah – a siege which the city barely survived.

"This discovery, along with the palace previously uncovered in Ramat Rachel and the administrative center recently uncovered by the Israel Antiquities Authority on the slopes of Arnona, attests to a new revival in the city and a somewhat 'exit from the walls' of the First Temple period, after the Assyrian siege. We reveal villas, mansions and government buildings in the area outside the walls of the city. This testifies to the relief felt by the city's residents and the recovery of Jerusalem's development after the Assyrian threat was over," says Billig.

The Minister of Culture and Sport, Hili Tropper said: “I am happy and excited with the revelation of the remains from the period of the Kings of Judah. The uncovering of the remains of the building reflects the glorious roots of the Jewish people and our rich past here in the capital city Jerusalem. I see great importance in the work of the Israel Antiquities Authority and in the work of the City of David in their discoveries over the years, which reveal parts of the illustrious Jewish past. This is an opportunity to thank the Ir David Foundation (Elad) that funded this important excavation. The past is the cornerstone of a nation, and the cornerstone of culture, and its discovery also affects the present as well as the future. The Ministry of Culture and Sports will continue to support this important enterprise of heritage, history, and culture.”

Recognition of the strategic and panoramic nature of the area was also expressed some 2,600 years later, when the British Mandatory administration built its central seat of government, known as the "Commissioner's Palace" (Armon Hanatziv) there. A few decades later, one of the most famous promenades in the State of Israel was established on the site, the Armon Hanatziv Promenade, from which the spectacular view of the City of David and the Temple Mount can be seen to this day.

One of the baluster columns of the ancient window (Shai Halevi, Israel Antiquities Authority)

The uncovering of the capitals (Shai Halevi, Israel Antiquities Authority)

70 years ago: Church of England modernists deny the virgin birth of Christ

But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. II Peter 2:1

On August 28, 1950, the Modern Churchmen's Union challenged the assertion of Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher that the virgin birth of Jesus Christ was "a fact of history." The Modern Churchmen's Union, founded in 1898 as the Churchmen's Union for the Advancement of Liberal Religious Thought, is now known as Modern Church, denying every scriptural truth and supporting every worthless, anti-Christian cause you can imagine. This organization and everyone in it should have been given the left boot of disfellowship from the beginning.

It comes as no surprise to this blogger that the Modern Churchmen's Union, as it was then known, denied the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, but it is surprising that as late as 1950 there was an Archbishop of Canterbury who believed the biblical account.

The virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ is an essential Christian doctrine. I haven't the inclination to go into detail on the subject; I recommend Seven Reasons Why I Believe in the Virgin Birth of Christ by Ian Paisley, available for free download.

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Isaiah 7:14

Religious Council of Tel Aviv-Jaffa to name its first lesbian member

Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
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;
Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. Romans 1:24-32

Tel Aviv continues to live down to its reputation, as reported by Itay Blumenthal of Ynet News, August 6, 2020:

The Religious Council of Tel Aviv-Jaffa is set to appoint a lesbian religious woman as a member for the first time, Ynet has learned on Thursday.

Avigail Sperber is a cinematographer and film and television director. She is the founder and owner of Pardes Film Productions. Sperber is also a social activist and the founder of Bat Kol - Religious Lesbian Organization.

"I will be happy to be there, and I believe they approached me because I am religious and feel the need to represent the religious needs of LGBT people," said Sperber. "I am sure that the religious council will understand that LGBT people also have religious needs and not all of them are anti[-religious], the exact opposite."

"One of my goals is to link between the LGBT identity and the religious identity because non-religious LGBT people have religious needs, such as the conversion of children born in surrogacy or adoption abroad."
Tel Aviv-Jaffa City Council member and adviser to the mayor on LGBT affairs Etai Pinkas-Arad, who also nominated Sperber, praised the move.

"The LGBT community is an integral part of the religious public. There are thousands of religious people who are also LGBT and religious services belong to them too," said Pinkas-Arad.

"Avigail Is part of the Orthodox community in Israel and her joining the council is very exciting for us. The LGBT religious community has a voice and it's an integral part of the religious public. I am sure she will have a good influence on Tel Aviv's religious services regardless of the LGBT issue.

Sperber is the daughter of Israel Prize laureate Rabbi Prof. Daniel Sperber who announced lately his opposition to gay conversion therapy, claiming they ineffective and damaging.

See also my posts:

Tel Aviv voted "best gay city" (May 15, 2012)

Thousands of Israelis protest passage of surrogacy law that excludes sodomite/lesbian couples (July 23, 2018)

Ancient cremated remains found in Israel

As reported by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich of Breaking Israel News, August 12, 2020:

Burying the dead was the conventional way of disposing of the bodies of the departed in ancient times. Now, archaeologists and anthropologists have uncovered the oldest-known case of intentional cremation of human bodies in the Near East – dating back 9,000 years to the Neolithic Period.

Excavations at the Neolithic site of Beisamoun in the Hula Valley in northern Israel have uncovered an ancient cremation pit containing the remains of a corpse that appears to have been intentionally incinerated as part of a funerary practice.

Picture of bones in situ: A. Segment of axial skeleton: ribs and vertebrae exposed in the middle of the structure. B. Right coxal in situ; preserved almost complete by a piece of collapsed mud wall (see Fig 2D). C. Four right pedal proximal phalanges found directly under the right coxal. (Photo credit: Bocquentin et al, 2020)

The findings have just been published in the open-access journal PLoS (Public Library of Science) from a team led by Dr. Fanny Bocquentin, a leading bioanthropologist at the the French National Center for Scientific Research and colleagues at the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s National Natural History Collections and others in the US, Canada and France.

The remains comprise most of one skeleton of a young adult whose bones show evidence of having been heated to temperatures of over 500°C shortly after death. They were found inside a pit that appears to have been constructed with an open top and strong insulating walls. Microscopic plant remains found inside the pyre-pit are likely leftover from the fuel for the fire. This evidence led the authors to identify this as an intentional cremation of a fresh corpse, as opposed to the burning of dry remains or a tragic fire accident.

These remains were directly dated to between 7013 to 6700 BCE, making them the oldest known example of cremation in the Near East.

In the autumn of 2007, a major salvage excavation took place on the western margins of Beisamoun in the Hula Valley as part of the development of the Rosh Pina-Kiryat Shmona highway. Excavation in the western part of the greater area of the Beisamoun site, formerly known for its Pre-Pottery Neolithic finds, revealed a wealth of a archaeological objects attributed to an early phase of the Pottery Neolithic period.

This early cremation comes at an important period of transition in funerary practices in this region of the world, the researchers noted. “Old traditions such as the removal of the cranium of the dead and the burial of the dead within the settlement, were on the way out, while practices like cremation were new. This change in funeral procedure might also signify a transition in rituals surrounding death and the significance of the deceased within society. Further examination of other possible cremation sites in the region will help elucidate this important cultural shift.”

Bocquentin wrote in the 44-page article that the funerary treatment involved on site cremation within a pyre-pit of a young adult individual who previously survived from a flint projectile injury. The inventory of bones and their relative position strongly supports the deposit of an articulated corpse and not dislocated bones.” She added that “this is a redefinition of the place of the dead in the village and in society.”

The researchers used a multidisciplinary approach that integrated archaeothanatology, spatial analysis, bioanthropology, zooarchaeology, soil micromorphological analysis to reconstruct the different stages and techniques involved in this ritual. The origins and development of cremation practices in the region are explored as well as their significance in terms of Northern-Southern Levantine connections during the transition between the 8th and 7th millennia BCE, she continued.

“The treatment of the dead during the Neolithization process in the Near East was a complex process, embedded in a cognitive and symbolic world that underpinned the economic and dietary shift from hunting and gathering to agro-pastoralism,” wrote the researchers.

“Burial location and funerary gestures varied from one community to another as well as between one individual and another within the same site. Thus, several operational sequences in burial practice coexisted resulting in primary, secondary, plural, single, staging, manipulations and/or skeletal element removal that were carried out, sometimes side by side. Occasional defleshing and/or dismemberment, and temporary mummification are also suspected to have been practiced.”

The bones were distributed throughout the bottom of the pit, partly superimposed one on the other to a thickness of 40 centimeters. “However, the density of remains was not very marked except at the center of the pit. If there was an apparent anatomical disorder at first glance, by looking at the details some interesting patterning could be observed. Cranial and mandibular fragments were found only in the southern half of the structure,” the authors continued.

“Next to the south wall on the upper level, we found the base of the skull; the rest of the cranial vault and face were found slightly lower down at the center of the pit. Conversely, the cervical vertebrae were dispersed out from the center to the northern half of the pit. The thoracic column and some of the ribs were concentrated in the center, roughly following a west-east direction. The lumbar vertebrae were found in the middle and against the southwestern wall.”

Beisamoun pyre fields (Photo courtesy Beisamoun project)

Click on the link to see the original article Emergence of corpse cremation during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Southern Levant: A multidisciplinary study of a pyre-pit burial by Fanny Bocquentin, Marie Anton,Francesco Berna, Arlene Rosen, Hamoudi Khalaily, Harris Greenberg, Thomas C. Hart, Omri Lernau, and Liora Kolska Horwitz in PLoS One, August 12, 2020.

Women now comprise the majority of priests in the Church of Sweden

As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths. Isaiah 3:12

Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. I Corinthians 14:34-35

But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. I Timothy 2:12

More evidence of increasing apostasy, as reported by Agence France-Presse, July 22, 2020:

Stockholm - For the first time in history, Swedish female priests outnumber their male counterparts, sixty years after they were first allowed to don the clerical collar, the Church of Sweden said Wednesday.

Of the 3,060 priests currently serving in Sweden, 1,533 are female, or 50.1 percent, according to Cristina Grenholm, secretary for the Church of Sweden.

"From a historical perspective, this parity happened faster than we earlier imagined. A report from 1990 estimated that women would be half of the total clergy in 2090. And it took thirty years," Grenholm told AFP.

Unlike the Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church of Sweden has allowed female priests since 1958 and first ordained three women in 1960.

In 1982 the Swedish parliament also scrapped a "conscience clause" that allowed members of the clergy to refuse to cooperate with a female colleague.

Women have been over-represented on theological courses, especially since the separation of church and state in 2000, and accounted for 70 percent of those training for ordination in a study in 2013.

"Many parishes during the Sunday service try to have both a man and a woman at the altar," Grenholm said.

"Since we believe that God created human beings, both men and women, in God's image, it is essential that we do not only speak about it, but that it is also shown," she added.

However, there is a wage gap between male and female pastors -- averaging 2,200 Swedish kronor ($248 or 215 euros) per month according to the church's newspaper Kyrkans Tidning.

Grenholm said this was due to more men being in higher positions of authority.

In Sweden, ministers in the Church of Sweden have the title of priest, while those serving in parishes outside the former State Church are referred to as pastors.

Physician-assisted suicide in Canada doubled from 2017-2019

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

I find it difficult to understand why today's residents of what were the Allied nations in World War II still regard the Nazis as villains when those nations are increasingly adopting the Nazis' policies. To regurgitate what I said in a previous post: It comes as no surprise to this blogger to see the rabidly antichrist Trudeaupian Canadian government of the Manchurian Pothead, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fulfilling my prediction that the slippery slope argument will prove correct in Trudeaupia Canada as it did in Germany from the 1920s through the 1940s, with the legalization of euthanasia eventually leading to widespread killing. Doctor-assisted death is rapidly morphing into doctor-initiated death.

As reported by Christine Rousselle of Catholic News Agency, July 30, 2020 (link in original):

Washington, D.C. Newsroom - The number of Canadians killed by physician-assisted suicide nearly doubled between 2017 and 2019, according to a report released by the Canadian government. More than a third of those who opted for “medical assistance in dying” cited concerns of being a burden to family or carers.

The “First Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada 2019” was published in July. It follows a series of interim reports that were published over the last year.

In 2019, a total of 5,631 Canadians ended their lives through the country’s “Medical Assistance in Dying,” or “MAID” protocols. This amounts for 2% of the total deaths in Canada, an increase from 2018’s percentage. In 2018, the number of MAID deaths accounted for 1.12% of the total number of deaths in Canada.

The report found that cancer was the most common condition among those who ended their lives with MAID, followed by respiratory conditions and neurological ailments. Slightly over two thirds of those who used MAID had cancer as an underlying condition.

Along with having a “reasonably foreseeable” natural death, a person who wished to receive MAID also had to show that their condition was causing them “enduring physical or psychological suffering that is intolerable to them and cannot be relieved in a manner that they find acceptable.”

In just over a third of 2019’s MAID deaths, a “perceived burden on family, friends or caregivers” was one of the reasons cited, and in 13.7% of cases, “isolation or loneliness” was a factor.

“When asked to describe the nature of the suffering prompting their request, patients most often reported ‘a loss of ability to engage in meaningful life activities’ followed by ‘loss of ability to perform activities of daily living’ reported in 82.1% and 78.1% of cases, respectively,” says the report.

“Inadequate control of pain” was cited in 53.9% of cases, followed by “loss of dignity” in 53.3% of cases.

In U.S. states with legal physician-assisted suicide, less than one half of one percent of deaths are due to euthanasia, the lowest rate in the world. If Canada’s numbers were extrapolated to the United States, approximately 50,000 people each year would end their lives with MAID. This would put euthanasia in the top 10 causes of death for the United States, just above “intentional self-harm (suicide)” and just below kidney disease.

Countries that permit physicians to administer euthanasia and do not mandate self-administration have higher percentages of deaths from euthanasia. Similar to countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands, Canadian law permits doctors to administer the lethal dose of medication to the patients. In the United States, the drugs must be self-administered.

While Canadians have the option to self-administer the drugs, the number of people who chose to do so last year was “fewer than seven.”

In 2019, the average age of a person who received MAID in Canada was 75.2 years, but 103 people between the ages of 18 and 45 received MAID.

Last year, 92.2% of requests for MAID were approved, out of a total of 7,336 applications.

Only 3.6% of people who were deemed eligible for MAID withdrew their request.

Of those who were deemed ineligible for MAID in 2019, about a quarter were denied because death was “reasonably foreseeable,” and an additional quarter were denied due to not being “in an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability.” Those requirements are likely to change for future years.

In September 2019, the Superior Court of Quebec found that the requirement that a person who receives MAID have a “reasonably foreseeable natural death” was unconstitutional. The Canadian government later announced that they do not intend on appealing this decision, and a piece of legislation titled Bill C-7 was introduced in February 2020 to further expand MAID criteria.

In addition to removing the requirement of a reasonably foreseeable death, Bill C-7 would also allow for advanced directives.

Cardinal Thomas Collins, the Archbishop of Toronto, released a statement in February criticizing Bill C-7 for expanding the criteria for MAID without expanding the availability of palliative care.

“Where is the political will to push forward on palliative care for all Canadians? Only 30% of Canadians have access to quality palliative care even though we know that pain and loneliness are among the biggest fears of those who are suffering. Palliative care can address these issues,” said Collins.

“If all Canadians had access to quality palliative care, fewer would seek lethal injection. But instead of developing an overall culture of care, we are rushing towards death on demand,” adding that doctors will be forced to comply with requests for euthanasia as Canada does not have conscience rights protections for medical professionals.

“We should take time to be truly present to those who may feel that they are on the margins in our community,” said Collins.

“Those who feel that their life no longer has value must be assured by all of us that this is absolutely not the case — there is dignity within each human life, not just when we are young, healthy and able, but even more so, when we are fragile and vulnerable.”

See also my previous posts:

Supreme Court of Canada strikes down ban on assisted suicide (February 6, 2015)

Canada's largest children's hospital drafts policy that could allow for the euthanasia of children (October 11, 2018)

Canada's antichrist Liberal government plans to study reports on expanding euthanasia (December 23, 2018)

200 years ago: The birth of Sir Oliver Mowat

On July 22, 1820, Sir Oliver Mowat, the son of Scottish Presbyterian immigrants, was born in Kingston, Upper Canada. He was a lawyer who articled under future Canadian Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, but the two eventually became political rivals. Sir Oliver had a long career in local (Toronto), provincial, and federal politics, but was best known for his time as Premier and Attorney General of Ontario. He governed the province from 1872-1896, the longest tenure in the province's history.

Sir Oliver's time in office was characterized by his consistently successful defense of the constitutional rights of the provinces, in opposition to the strong federal government preferred by Sir John A. Macdonald's Conservative Party and government. He was lauded for his ability to manage differences between Roman Catholics and Protestants in Ontario at a time when such differences mattered.

Sir Oliver resigned as Premier in order to enter federal politics; when Wilfrid Laurier led the Liberals to victory in the 1896 federal election, he appointed Sir Oliver to the Senate, serving as Government Leader in the Senate, while also holding the offices of Minister of Justice and Attorney General in Mr. Laurier's cabinet (1896-1897). Sir Oliver left politics in November 1897 to accept the office of Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario; he died in office on April 19, 1903 at the age of 82.

For the purposes of this blog, it's worth noting--and hard to believe in the multicultural self-immolating monstrosity that still officially uses the name "Canada" in 2020--but a Premier of Ontario--and a Liberal, at that--was also a public defender of the Christian faith. Submitted for your approval, links to free downloads of the texts of two of his addresses:

Christianity and Some of Its Evidences: An Address (1890)

Christianity and Its Influence (1898)

On a related note, July 22, 2020 marked the 70th anniversary of the death of William Lyon Mackenzie King, whose 22 years as Prime Minister of Canada (1921-1926, 1926-1930, 1935-1948) remain a Canadian and Commonwealth record. He was also a Liberal, but with the Communists, anarchists, and nihilists currently destroying any aspect of Canadian and Western civilization they can get their hands on, it won't be long until he's removed from the Canadian $50 bill. Hypersensitive Trudeaupian Canadian readers who can't stand the sight of such an obviously politically-incorrect individual on the currency are welcome to ease their consciences by sending any $50 bills in their possession to this blogger, who isn't afflicted with such hypersensitivity.

See also my posts:

70 years ago: Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King invokes God and speaks in favour of a new world order (September 4, 2011)

75 years ago: Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King calls World War II a "crusade" to "save our Christian civilization" (December 31, 2014)

150 years ago: First Vatican Council issues decree proclaiming papal infallibility

On July 18, 1870, the First Vatican Council, which had been convened by Pope Pius IX on June 29, 1868, issued Pastor aeternus (First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ). Pastor aeternus defined four Roman Catholic doctrines regarding the papacy: I. Of the Institution of the Apostolic Primacy in blessed Peter; II. On the Perpetuity of the Primacy of blessed Peter in the Roman Pontiffs; III. On the Power and Nature of the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff; IV. Concerning the Infallible Teaching of the Roman Pontiff. The doctrine that attracted the most controversy was Chapter IV, the text of which reads:

First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ.

Published in the Fourth Session of the holy Œcumenical Council of the Vatican.

PIUS BISHOP, SERVANT OF THE SERVANTS OF GOD, WITH THE APPROVAL OF THE SACRED COUNCIL, FOR AN EVERLASTING REMEMBRANCE...

...Chapter IV.
Concerning the Infallible Teaching of the Roman Pontiff.

Moreover, that the supreme power of teaching is also included in the Apostolic primacy, which the Roman Pontiff, as the successor of Peter, Prince of the Apostles, possesses over the whole Church, this Holy See has always held, the perpetual practice of the Church confirms, and œcumenical Councils also have declared, especially those in which the East with the West met in the union of faith and charity. For the Fathers of the Fourth Council of Constantinople, following in the footsteps of their predecessors, gave forth this solemn profession: The first condition of salvation is to keep the rule of the true faith. And because the sentence of our Lord Jesus Christ can not be passed by, who said: 'Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church,'301 these things which have been said are approved by events, because in the Apostolic See the Catholic religion and her holy and well-known doctrine has always been kept undefiled. Desiring therefore, not to be in the least degree separated from the faith and doctrine of that See, we hope that we may deserve to be in the one communion, which the Apostolic See preaches, in which is the entire and true solidity of the Christian religion.302

And, with the approval of the Second Council of Lyons, the Greeks professed that the holy Roman Church enjoys supreme and full primacy and preeminence over the whole Catholic Church, which it truly and humbly acknowledges that it has received with the plenitude of power from our Lord himself in the person of blessed Peter, Prince or Head of the Apostles, whose successor the Roman Pontiff is; and as the Apostolic See is bound before all others to defend the truth of faith, so also, if any questions regarding faith shall arise, they must be defined by its judgment.303

Finally, the Council of Florence defined:304 That the Roman Pontiff is the true vicar of Christ, and the head of the whole Church, and the father and teacher of all Christians; and that to him in blessed Peter was delivered by our Lord Jesus Christ the full power of feeding, ruling, and governing the whole Church.305

To satisfy this pastoral duty, our predecessors ever made unwearied efforts that the salutary doctrine of Christ might be propagated among all the nations of the earth, and with equal care watched that it might be preserved genuine and pure where it had been received. Therefore the Bishops of the whole world, now singly, now assembled in Synod, following the long-established custom of churches,306 and the form of the ancient rule,307 sent word to this Apostolic See of those dangers especially which sprang up in matters of faith, that there the losses of faith might be most effectually repaired where the faith can not fail.308 And the Roman Pontiffs, according to the exigencies of times and circumstances, sometimes assembling œcumenical Councils, or asking for the mind of the Church scattered throughout the world, sometimes by particular Synods, sometimes using other helps which Divine Providence supplied, defined as to be held those things which with the help of God they had recognized as conformable with the sacred Scriptures and Apostolic traditions. For the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter, that by his revelation they might make known new doctrine; but that by his assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith delivered through the Apostles. And, indeed, all the venerable Fathers have embraced, and the holy orthodox doctors have venerated and followed, their Apostolic doctrine; knowing most fully that this See of holy Peter remains ever free from all blemish of error according to the divine promise of the Lord our Saviour made to the Prince of his disciples: 'I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not, and, when thou art converted, confirm thy brethren.'309

This gift, then, of truth and never-failing faith was conferred by heaven upon Peter and his successors in this chair, that they might perform their high office for the salvation of all; that the whole flock of Christ, kept away by them from the poisonous food of error, might be nourished with the pasture of heavenly doctrine; that the occasion of schism being removed, the whole Church might be kept one, and, resting on its foundation, might stand firm against the gates of hell.
But since in this very age, in which the salutary efficacy of the Apostolic office is most of all required, not a few are found who take away from its authority, we judge it altogether necessary solemnly to assert the prerogative which the only-begotten Son of God vouchsafed to join with the supreme pastoral office.

Therefore faithfully adhering to the tradition received from the beginning of the Christian faith, for the glory of God our Saviour, the exaltation of the Catholic religion, and the salvation of Christian people, the sacred Council approving, we teach and define that it is a dogma divinely revealed: that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith or morals; and that therefore such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable310 of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church.
But if any one—which may God avert—presume to contradict this our definition: let him be anathema.

Given at Rome in public Session solemnly held in the Vatican Basilica in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy, on the eighteenth day of July, in the twenty-fifth year of our Pontificate.

301 Matt. xvi. 18.

302 From the Formula of St. Hormisdas, subscribed by the Fathers of the Eighth General Council (Fourth of Constantinople), A.D. 869 (Labbe's Councils, Vol. V. pp. 583, 622).

303 From the Acts of the Fourteenth General Council (Second of Lyons), A.D. 1274 (Labbe, Vol. XIV. p. 512).

304 From the Acts of the Seventeenth General Council of Florence, A.D. 1438 (Labbe, Vol. XVIII. p. 526).

305 John xxi. 15-17.

306 From a letter of St. Cyril of Alexandria to Pope St. Celestine I., A.D. 422 (Vol. VI. Part II. p. 36, Paris edition of 1638).

307 From a Rescript of St. Innocent I. to the Council of Milevis, A.D. 402 (Labbe, Vol. III. p. 47).

308 From a letter of St. Bernard to Pope Innocent II. A.D. 1130 (Epist. 191, Vol. IV. p. 433, Paris edition of 1742).

309 Luke xxii. 32. See also the Acts of the Sixth General Council, A.D. 680 (Labbe, Vol. VII. p. 659).

310 That is, in the words used by Pope Nicholas I., note 13, and in the Synod of Quedlinburg, A.D. 1085, 'It is allowed to none to revise its judgment, and to sit in judgment upon what it has judged' (Labbe, Vol. XII. p. 679).

The way the doctrine is defined by the Roman Catholic Church, papal infallibility only once (so far): On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII exercised his official infallibility in the apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus, which includes:

...3. Actually God, who from all eternity regards Mary with a most favorable and unique affection, has "when the fullness of time came"(2) put the plan of his providence into effect in such a way that all the privileges and prerogatives he had granted to her in his sovereign generosity were to shine forth in her in a kind of perfect harmony. And, although the Church has always recognized this supreme generosity and the perfect harmony of graces and has daily studied them more and more throughout the course of the centuries, still it is in our own age that the privilege of the bodily Assumption into heaven of Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, has certainly shone forth more clearly.

4. That privilege has shone forth in new radiance since our predecessor of immortal memory, Pius IX, solemnly proclaimed the dogma of the loving Mother of God's Immaculate Conception. These two privileges are most closely bound to one another. Christ overcame sin and death by his own death, and one who through Baptism has been born again in a supernatural way has conquered sin and death through the same Christ. Yet, according to the general rule, God does not will to grant to the just the full effect of the victory over death until the end of time has come. And so it is that the bodies of even the just are corrupted after death, and only on the last day will they be joined, each to its own glorious soul.

5. Now God has willed that the Blessed Virgin Mary should be exempted from this general rule. She, by an entirely unique privilege, completely overcame sin by her Immaculate Conception, and as a result she was not subject to the law of remaining in the corruption of the grave, and she did not have to wait until the end of time for the redemption of her body.

6. Thus, when it was solemnly proclaimed that Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, was from the very beginning free from the taint of original sin, the minds of the faithful were filled with a stronger hope that the day might soon come when the dogma of the Virgin Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven would also be defined by the Church's supreme teaching authority...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Gal 4:4.

This reiteration of the Roman Catholic doctrine that Mary was "from the very beginning free from the taint of original sin" is anything but infallible, as it contradicts the plain words of the Bible:

And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. Luke 1:46-47

Mary wouldn't have rejoiced in God as her Saviour if she had been "free from the taint of original sin," because she wouldn't have needed a saviour. So much for papal infallibility.

70 years ago: Israeli Knesset passes Law of Return

That then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations, whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee.
If any of thine be driven out unto the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will the Lord thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee:
And the Lord thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and he will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers. Deuteronomy 30:3-5

On July 5, 1950, the Israeli Knesset passed the Law of Return:

The Law of Return 5710 (1950)*

1. Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh**.

2. (a) Aliyah shall be by oleh's visa.

(b) An oleh's visa shall be granted to every Jew who has expressed his desire to settle in Israel, unless the Minister of Immigration is satisfied that the applicant

(1) is engaged in an activity directed against the Jewish people; or

(2) is likely to endanger public health or the security of the State.

3. (a) A Jew who has come to Israel and subsequent to his arrival has expressed his desire to settle in Israel may, while still in Israel, receive an oleh's certificate.

(b) The restrictions specified in section 2(b) shall apply also to the grant of an oleh's certificate, but a person shall not be regarded as endangering public health on account of an illness contracted after his arrival in Israel.

4. Every Jew who has immigrated into this country before the coming into force of this Law, and every Jew who was born in this country, whether before or after the coming into force of this Law, shall be deemed to be a person who has come to this country as an oleh under this Law.

5. The Minister of Immigration is charged with the implementation of this Law and may make regulations as to any matter relating to such implementation and also as to the grant of oleh's visas and oleh's certificates to minors up to the age of 18 years.

* Passed by the Knesset on the 20th Tammuz, 5710 (5th July, 1950) and published in Sefer Ha-Chukkim No. 51 of the 21st Tammuz, 5710 (5th July. 1950), p. 159; the Bill and an Explanatory Note were published in Hatza'ot Chok No. 48 of the 12th Tammuz, 5710 (27th June, 1950), p. 189.

** Translator's Note: Aliyah means immigration of Jews, and oleh (plural: olim) means a Jew immigrating, into Israel.

The law has been amended twice (1954 and 1970), and has served as a step in the fulfillment of the prophecy in Deuteronomy 30.

Southern Masonic Baptist Convention experiences record decline in membership

The following article comes as no surprise to this blogger, although I'm not a member of the SBC and live nowhere near any SBC churches. Some in the SBC have claimed that membership figures have long been inflated, with people still being recorded as members long after ceasing to be active, so it's possible that at least part of the numerical decline may be due to removing inactive people from membership. However, I suspect that the decline is a real trend. In his last book, The Great Evangelical Disaster (1984), Francis Schaeffer warned that the Southern Baptist Convention was in the same shape now (now being 1984) that the mainline churches were in in the 1920s and '30s when they were in the process of being taken over by liberals, then generally referred to as "modernists." We're now 36 years past Rev. Schaeffer's warning, and evidence of the SBC's further decline into apostasy can be found at sites such as Tom Littleton's blog Thirty Pieces of Silver.

As reported by Sarah Pulliam Bailey of The Washington Post, June 4, 2020:

Total membership in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination fell at a historic rate between 2018 and 2019, according to an annual report released Thursday.

The Southern Baptist Convention said it had 14.5 million members in 2019, down about 287,655 from the previous year. Membership dropped 2 percent, the largest single-year drop in more than 100 years, according to a survey from LifeWay Christian Resources, the denomination’s publishing and research arm.

The decline reflects a larger trend of Americans leaving Christianity at a rapid pace. According to the Pew Research Center, 65 percent of Americans describe themselves as Christians, down 12 percentage points during the past decade.

Southern Baptist baptisms fell by more than 4 percent, a key metric in measuring new members of the faith. Average weekly worship service and Sunday school or small-group attendance each dropped by less than 1 percent. Giving was down, and total church receipts fell 1.44 percent to $11.6 billion.

“The Southern Baptist Convention is not immune to the increasing secularization among Americans that is seen in more of our children and our neighbors not having interest in coming to Jesus,” Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research, said in a statement.

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has been in a steady decline for nearly 15 years, hitting its peak in 2006 at 16.3 million. The convention has been in turmoil in recent years, spending the bulk of its annual meeting in 2019 on the issue of sex abuse after the Houston Chronicle published reports on the issue in Southern Baptist churches. The convention has also hosted controversies over an invitation for Vice President Pence to speak at its meeting, faced difficulty in passing a resolution to decry the alt-right and held theological debates over the role of God’s sovereignty.

The denomination’s current president, J.D. Greear, a 47-year-old megachurch pastor from North Carolina, has brought a younger face to the convention, adding more people of color to committees than had been more predominantly white. In a forthcoming piece for the Baptist Press shared with the Washington Post, Greear wrote that he was grieved by the news that the denomination was on the decline.

“Too many of us care more about whether our side is winning in the news cycle than we do the souls of our neighbors, sow division on secondary issues more than we point people to Jesus, and focus more on preserving our traditions than reaching our grandchildren,” he wrote.

Southern Baptists place a heavy emphasis on church planting, and the number of churches grew slightly during the same period. The SBC has 47,530 churches in total, and 74 were added between 2018 and 2019.

The survey released Thursday was compiled by LifeWay Christian Resources based on self-reported data from SBC churches. Ronnie Floyd, who leads the SBC’s executive committee, said in a statement that 75 percent of churches participate in the survey, and that “clearly it is imperative for our future that evangelism remains the priority of our churches and convention.”

The convention was supposed to hold its annual meeting next week in Orlando but canceled due to the novel coronavirus.

As fewer Americans identify as Christian, researchers see a growing number of people identifying as nonreligious; 17 percent of Americans now describe their religion as “nothing in particular,” up from 12 percent in 2009, according to Pew.

This story has been updated to include comments from J.D. Greear and Ronnie Floyd. The peak number has been updated with corrected information from LifeWay.

Costa Rica becomes the first Central American country to legalize same-sex "marriage"

Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
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;
Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. Romans 1:24-32

As reported by Oscar Lopez of Reuters, May 26, 2020:

MEXICO CITY (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Costa Rica gave the go-ahead to same-sex marriages on Tuesday, making it the first country in Central America to do so after a landmark court ruling came into effect at midnight.

The nation’s constitutional court ruled in August 2018 that a ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and gave parliament 18 months to legislate or the provision would be automatically nullified.

Earlier this month, more than 20 lawmakers tried to delay the marriage ruling by 18 months but the measure failed and the ban was lifted at midnight - although couples will have to opt for online weddings due to the coronavirus restrictions.

“Costa Rica is celebrating today: marriage equality has become a reality in the country - the first one in Central America!” said the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) in a tweet.

“We rejoice with you: congratulations to all those who worked so hard to make it happen!”

Costa Rica becomes the sixth country in Latin America to allow gay marriage - after Ecuador legalised it last year - and the 28th U.N. member state to recognize same-sex marriage.

Despite considerable opposition from religious groups, gay marriage has become increasingly accepted in Latin America, with gay couples now allowed to marry in Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay and parts of Mexico.

Enrique Sanchez, Costa Rica’s first openly gay congressman with the center-left Citizens’ Action Party, said this represented the culmination of a fight over many years by many people, some through activism and others anonymously.

“With their experience, their struggles ... they have helped build a society where there are no second-class families or second-rate people,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In a region marked by religious conservatism and widespread violence towards LGBT+ people, Costa Rica’s gay marriage ruling was welcomed by many local rights activists.

“This offers us peace of mind,” said Margarita Salas, an LGBT+ rights campaigner in Costa Rica and president of the VAMOS political party. “This measure gives us the ability to protect and provide security to our family.”

Legalizing gay marriage was a major campaign promise by President Carlos Alvarado Quesada, who took office in May 2018.

“This change will cause a significant social and cultural transformation of the country,” Alvarado Quesada said in a video posted on Twitter late on Monday.

“(Gay and lesbian people) will have the rights and the same rights as any other person, couple or family in this country.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggests microchipping children

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Revelation 13:16-17

Reading Biblical prophecies about the end times helped bring me to Christ in 1975; the prophecies seemed to be describing many things that were true at the time, and there was a lot of preaching and writing about the end times. In those days and the years immediately following, I tried to imagine how the prophecies would be fulfilled. It's one thing to imagine how prophecies will be fulfilled in the future, and it's another to live long enough to see them being fulfilled in the present. End times prophecies are more true now than they were in 1975, yet there's a lot less preaching on these scriptures than there was then, despite the fact that the prophecies are increasingly being fulfilled before our eyes--no doubt because it doesn't fit the Church Growth Movement paradigm of Peter Drucker, Rick Warren and company.

It would be ironic if the mark of the Beast were to originate in Israel. With everything else going on these days, you might have missed this item from a few weeks ago, as reported by Leon Sverdlov in The Jerusalem Post, May 8, 2020 (link in original):

Cyber experts slammed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his proposal to "microchip" children who return to schools and kindergartens as the coronavirus lockdown is lifted, Ynet reported on Friday.

While speaking at a press conference on Monday, Netanyahu suggested the Health Ministry use new technology to help Israel adjust to its new routine as the state is lifting the coronavirus lockdown. "That is, technology that has not been used before and is allowed under the legislation we shall enact," he clarified.

"I spoke with our heads of technology in order to find measures Israel is good at, such as sensors. For instance, every person, every kid – I want it on kids first – would have a sensor that would sound an alarm when you get too close, like the ones on cars," the prime minister said.

"It will be hard to do it to more than a million schoolchildren who return to their educational institutions in order to ensure one student sits at the distance of two meters from another. It is fictional and dangerous," cyber resilience expert Einat Meron told Ynet.

"Theoretically, I get the idea behind it," she said. "But although such distance-sensitive microchips exist in vehicles, it is different in humans." According to Meron, "a beeping sound telling me I got close to someone is not enough. Who says it will change anything? I would have gotten closer either way."

The expert added that "the actual issue is the enforcement, and here everything changes." Meron told Ynet that "microchipping children will not pass any test – both practically and legally." Similar to Meron's notion that notifying citizens on their distance will not affect their actions, many fear the state would make use of the information available from the sensors.

"If the information with the kids' location is uploaded to the internet, a pedophile with some cyber knowledge may invade the system and stalk them outside their schools, follow them and distribute the information on other platforms," Meron said. "Can the state take responsibility for that?"

The Prime Minister's Office responded to the report, telling Ynet Netanyahu's suggestion "is not to be implemented through databases, but through simple technology notifying [the citizens] about their distance. It is a voluntary option that is designed to help children keep their distance, like Mobileye with vehicles."

The office added that the prime minister's suggestion is "an idea that may help maintain social distancing, and there will not be any violation of privacy."

On Wednesday, Walla reported the movements of all vehicles in Israel were tracked by police and stored in an unregulated database named Eagle Eye. A source cited by the media site said the information "may be kept for years on end."

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) reportedly submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act that police disclose the extent of the operations of Eagle Eye, as well as the time the information on citizens' movements is stored in the system.

Israel Police responded to ACRI, saying the system's activity was not standardized internally despite several years of operations. "Either way, once finalized, the procedure will not be disclosed to the public," police added.

In late March, Yediot Aharonot reported a classified Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) database stored information on all Israeli citizens and most Palestinians from the West Bank. The data tracked by the security agency included movements, phone calls and text messages.

Israeli communications minister promises investigation after GOD TV subsidiary begins broadcasting in Israel

As reported by Malkah Fleisher of Jewish News Syndicate, May 5, 2020:

A new evangelical Christian channel whose mission is to “take the message of Yeshua our Messiah to all of Israel 24/7, 365 days a year” began broadcasting in Israel in Hebrew last week, after signing a seven-year contract with Israeli cable provider HOT.

The Shelanu (Hebrew for “Ours”) TV channel is a branch of GOD TV, which broadcasts missionary programming in 200 countries around the world. The new deal will give the channel access to over 700,000 Israeli households.

GOD TV CEO Ward Simpson said in a video announcing the launch that his network had received permission from the Israeli government to “broadcast the gospel of Jesus Christ—Yeshua the Messiah—in Israel on cable TV in the Hebrew language. Never before, as far as we know in the history of the world, has this ever been done.”

Permission for the new station was granted by Israel’s Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Council, whose chairman, Asher Biton, told Israel’s Haaretz daily that his organization did not know the station would engage in missionary activity, which he said is prohibited under the terms of the license.

“According to our regulations, it is fine to broadcast religious programming,” he said, “but it is forbidden to broadcast content that has the potential to influence viewers in an undue fashion, and most certainly young and impressionable viewers.”

Under Israeli law, it is forbidden to entice converts by means of material benefits, and also to attempt to convince minors to change their religion.

If Shelanu is permitted to continue broadcasting in Israel, it will not be the first channel to carry Christian content. Daystar and Middle East Television also provide Christian programming. However, Shelanu would be the first to do so in Hebrew, and to openly push a missionary agenda.

Kehila.org, an organization working to promote Christianity as “Messianic Judaism” in Israel, quoted Simpson praising the new network as a “historic and unprecedented media opportunity” enabling missionaries to “take the message of Yeshua our Messiah to all of Israel 24/7, 365 days a year.”

Quoted by GOD TV in an article posted to its website in January, Asher Intrater of Revive Israel Ministries—an organization which runs Christian activities geared toward Hebrew speakers in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—said, “As Messianic believers in the Land, we want to see all Israel saved. The media is one of the most powerful methods to achieve this. We’ve tried for years to make this happen. Now that a major media platform has opened to us, this is a special opportunity to reach our people.”

“When they realise Yeshua is one of us, that He is a native Israeli, all of a sudden the opposition goes away,” Intrater added. “Shelanu is not an import coming from outside. It’s us speaking from the inside, sharing to our people, heart to heart.”

On April 29, GOD TV posted an additional article to its website, quoting an unnamed station manager as saying, “We received the platform of HOT as a gift from GOD TV but now it is our obligation as believers to produce relevant and dynamic content that will grab the attention of the Israeli people and open their eyes to the truth of their Messiah, Yeshua.”

However, anti-missionary groups and government officials tracking the story have expressed outrage that the Israeli government allowed Shelanu to broadcast in the Jewish state, and have vowed to work to shut it down.

“It is the very nature of Christian missionaries to be deceptive in their tactics. I would assume this to be the case in their obtaining a license for such a channel,” said Shannon Nuszen, a former evangelical missionary who subsequently left the movement and converted to Judaism and pro-Israel work. “How this received government approval is beyond me, and hopefully [it was] a mistake that will be rectified immediately.”

Israeli Communications Minister David Amsalem issued a response and tweet in which he assured the public that “we will not allow any missionary channel to operate in Israel, at no time, and not under any circumstances.”

Though the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Council is under his ministry’s authority, he said that “from the moment that I learned about this case, I turned immediately to the director of the commission, requesting a thorough investigation of the issue, and asked to make sure that no channel will break the parameters of its license, and that if indeed this channel does missionary work, it be removed immediately.”

Amsalem vowed not to allow “unfair influence” on Israeli viewers.

“On the face of it, this is a bungle, and as communications minister of the State of Israel, I will not allow an unfair influence of religious broadcasting on viewers in Israel,” he said.

Attempts to visit the Shelanu website Tuesday afternoon appeared to indicate that the site had been taken down or hidden. Videos of Simpson discussing Shelanu which had been uploaded to YouTube had been set to private.

I'm not a fan of "Christian" television; it's dominated by charismaniacs, dominionists, heretics, and charlatans. I've never watched GOD TV, but it comes as no surprise to this blogger that a quick glance at their website shows me that I haven't missed anything worthwhile. The network's programming includes the usual suspects, such as ear-splitting noise masquerading as "worship"; promotion of New Apostolic Reformation "prophets"; Sid Roth; Hillsong Church; and "anointed" Bishop John Francis of Ruach City Church in England conducting a fawning interview with false teacher Bishop T.D. Jakes. As someone who wants true Christian doctrine to be proclaimed in Israel, I won't protest if Shelanu ends up being banned in that country.

May 31, 2020 update: Jewish leaders in Israel and leaders of "Christian" ministries have responded to the beginning of GOD TV's broadcasting in Israel; as reported by Rivkah Lambert Adler of Breaking Israel News, May 10, 2020 (bold, links in original):

In the midst of the controversy over God TV’s plan to broadcast evangelical messages in Hebrew on Israeli cable television, Breaking Israel News asked a number of Christian and Jewish leaders to weigh in.

Their comments have been edited for clarity and brevity.

Christian Leaders

Pastor Mark Biltz, El Shaddai Ministries

I am a firm believer in the Bible and in the God of Israel as revealed in the Scriptures. It was to the Jewish people that Hashem gave all the covenants.

Christianity is full of replacement theology – replacing the Biblical feasts and Sabbaths with pagan holidays, replacing the Levitical priesthood, replacing the seat of the throne of the Lord from Jerusalem to Rome, replacing the Biblical Hebrew names with English names, [thus] losing their meanings. It can’t get much more replacement than that.

Christianity has much to learn from the Jewish people about the God of Israel and the Biblical narrative. The agreement between God TV and whoever it was in Israel that made the contract, was that there would be no programming that would wield “undo influence” over the viewers. The sole purpose of the programming is to have a very strong influence over the viewers, to alter their belief system.

I can see how strong Jews who are strongly Zionist as well would be very upset by a TV station supported by Christion Zionists in order to proselytize the Jewish people who are less knowledgeable, or less religious, and how they would feel betrayed.

In every alliance, there are always boundaries or redlines that have to be drawn, and the depth of the relationship is based on the value placed on not crossing those boundaries. For Christianity to build a bridge requires great humility and a deep spirit of repentance and acknowledgement of the harm done. How much trust and value you place on those who are on the other side of the bridge will determine if the bridge is two-lane or a six-lane highway. Christianity, historically, has blown up every bridge built over the last 2,000 years and I hope that any bridge that is built between Christians and Jews will be built on baseless love.

Nathalie Blackham, Broadcaster, Israel First TV

The theology I was taught was that the Jews were wrong. See how God dealt harshly with them? We have Jesus now. We are the good guys. These are deep-seated views of many Christians, more or less.

Today I see things very differently.

Missionizing Jews is like replacing their Jewish belief with a Christian belief. It is saying that the covenant that God has with the Jewish people is not good enough. It is erasing their belief and saying that ours is better. It is degrading the Jews and taking away who they are.

So many Christians are totally ignorant. On my first trip to Israel, I realized that I thought I knew the Bible, but I knew nothing. We have the Bible in our hands because the Jews shared it with us. That’s why it’s so important for Christians to visit Israel.

The God TV move is detrimental for Jewish- Christian relationships. This is like the Crusaders, but with a smile!

We should build relationships between Christians and Jews based on the principles of mutual respect, learning from each other, leaving space for each other to grow and develop and sharing from the Torah.

John Enarson, Christian Relations Director Cry for Zion

Jewish-Christian relations should, above all, be based on mutual respect and openness.

My fellow Bible-believing Christian friends should know I am not speaking as a proponent of dual-covenant theology when I say: God TV’s new initiative is disrespectful, unwise, and I have strong disagreements with their theology and actions here. While folks at God TV might mean well, they are both harming the Jewish people as well as damaging Jewish-Christian relations. I honestly cringed when I first saw some adverts for the new channel, before it even made the news. God TV should reconsider their actions forthwith.

Lars Enarson, Author, Founder and President of The Watchman International

I came to Israel 23 years ago with a similar attitude. Thank God I have learned a few things since then.

I remember the very first week when I came here and I had taken my family for a vacation in Eilat to rest. A homeless person approached me on the beach. He was drunk and asked me very angrily, “What are you doing here?” I was surprised and answered him that I am a Christian who loves Israel and I have come here to pray for the country.

He said, “Do you think we Jews don’t know how to pray? We don’t need you here. Do you know the names of the first five books in the Bible in Hebrew?” I said, “No I don’t.” “You don’t even know this? We don’t want you here. Please go back where you came from!” No doubt this drunkard scored a point.

Since then I have learned so much from the Jewish people here in Israel that I am so extremely thankful for and I now try to educate Christians around the world about what I have learned. Today I read the Bible in a very different way.

My view is that people who do not speak with respect for Judaism have no business being on Israeli television.

Bob O’Dell, Co-founder of Root Source

I wonder how many donors consider that when they fund some of these Christian efforts towards Israel, they are unwittingly funding a combative posturing that disrespects millions of God-fearing Jews at the same time? This posturing, turning “the roots of our faith,” into “the enemies of our faith” is acceptable to some Christians, but not to me.

I thank God that there are many emerging efforts by Christians to turn the hearts of more Christians to Israel and the Jewish people with just respect, love and honor, and to experience the life and joy of sharing the passages Hebrew Bible together, only for the sake of learning, love and joy.

Never before have so many Christians interacted directly with Orthodox Jews in Israel to study the Bible, and never before have this many Christians, inside and outside of Israel, begun to speak out that they find the evangelistic posturing of some of their Christian brethren towards Israel distasteful.

Tommy Waller, Founder and President HaYovel

Missionizing or converting others to Christianity, whose majority identifies with a supersessionist [replacement theology] belief, has been historically devastating to one people – the Jews. The problem with replacement theology is that it empowered the Christian to “save the Jew from hell,” but then after Jewish rejection placed themselves as God and created a hell on earth. This disturbing history, unfortunately, is not taught in our churches today. As a Christian myself, the revelation of this treatment of Jews has brought great shame.

For the Jews, the Torah has marked and kept their identity for well over 3,000 years. It sets them apart from the other peoples and nations of the world. The idea of bringing the “Gospel to the Jews” in their own language is actually an all-out assault against the Jew’s God-given identity.

It will be difficult for most Christian organizations, especially in Israel, to stand against those who seek to steal Jewish identity, in this case, God TV. The fact that a Christian television network would actually try to prove Jewish persecution of Christians is deplorable. One visit to Yad Vashem should greatly offend any right-minded person.

Christianity needs to support the miracle God is doing with the people He chose in the land He chose. As a Christian, I believe strongly that the Apostles and Prophets and Jesus himself would be horrified at the actions done by those who claim to follow him. Honestly, I believe there should be a cable Christian channel in Israel with 24/7 programming where one Christian after another repents for all that has been done to the Jews over the last 2,000 years at the hands of Christians.

Steve Wearp, Founder Blessed Buy Israel

I’m really sorry that there’s a group out there that is trying to preach to the Jewish people with an agenda that was just exposed – the God TV channel. I’m just ashamed to have my name affiliated with that, or have any affiliation with it.

I wanted to say I’m really sorry there are people that are still out there that do not understand that coming to the Jewish people with hidden agendas and to try to tear them away from what God has set before them to accomplish. I want you to know that not all of us are like that.

I pray one day there will be a great distinction or a great awakening in the Christian community as to Israel’s place, and this anti-Semitic replacement theology will be destroyed once and for all. It’s a scourge and I will not stand for it. And I’m not going to let anything like this destroy what what Hashem is building between our two communities

I’m really proud of walking with you guys. And the offense, it just hurts us. It’s why we’re doing what we’re doing, why we’re trying to rebuild trust, honesty, integrity, and remove this scourge of anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic teachings, doctrines, philosophies in the church and expose it for what it is.

Jewish Leaders

Rabbi Ari Abramowitz Host The Land of Israel Network

Many Jews would understandably seek to dodge this issue altogether in order not to put our Christian friends in an uncomfortable position of needing to take a public stand on this, but this is when we find out who our friends really are.

This impulse to missionize, which may or may not be well-intentioned, is arrogance and an act of hostility. Watching that video, I felt a mixture of anger and compassion. Anger that this haughty man who is preying on Jewish souls believes that he knows more than generations of the sages of Israel who have dedicated their lives to immersing themselves in the words of the Bible in its original Hebrew, and compassion that he is depriving himself of the uniquely uplifting experience of growth and revelation because he is so focused on removing the scales over everyone else’s eyes, that he will be stuck with the veils over his own.

Countless Jews have been burned at the stake rather than accept missionizing for generations. And now he comes into our homes in our own land with the same sinister plot?

There is so much beauty and friendship being nurtured between the Jewish and Christian worlds. Why tear it all down by reverting to this toxic replacement theology?

Sondra Baras, Founder and Director Christian Friends of Israeli Communities

From the very beginning, when I first started Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, my relationships with Christians were based on mutual respect and on a clear understanding that we, as Jews, would not try to convert Christians to Judaism and our Christian friends would not evangelize Jews. My Christian colleagues in leadership at CFOIC Heartland are committed to this understanding as well. It is fundamental to our ability to work together.

One of the things we’ve been doing is trying to get Christians to understand how offensive evangelizing is to us, because many of them have been taught since childhood that Jews have just been waiting to be saved. They have no idea that we are very comfortable with who we are.

Unfortunately, there are still some people who don’t understand this or don’t want to understand this. I will have nothing to do with people or organizations who insist on evangelizing Jews. That is our red line.

Yishai Fleisher, International Spokesperson for The Jewish Community of Hebron

Yishai Fleisher 🕎 ישי פליישר
✔
@YishaiFleisher
The folks at @GODTV keep putting their foot in their mouth because they are simply say the truth - they want to convert Jews! (But the real question is why the Israeli regulator missed this effort to have a missionary channel, and why other ones already exist, on Israeli cable?) https://twitter.com/haaretzcom/status/1259455913770889217 …

Haaretz.com
✔
@haaretzcom
God TV responds to critics: ‘We’re not trying to convert Jews; we just want them to accept Jesus as the messiah’ https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-god-tv-to-critics-not-trying-to-convert-jews-just-want-them-to-accept-jesus-1.8834815?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter …

31
7:31 AM - May 10, 2020
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I believe in the Christian-Jewish alliance. I am grateful for friends who share a love of the Bible and allies who stand up for Israel from Balfour to Mike Pence. But alliances need clear boundaries. Missionizing Jews is wrong. God TV in Israel is wrong and will be stopped.

David Ha’Ivri, Religious Zionist leader, writer, and speaker

I don’t approve of proselytizing Jews. Christians who want to turn Jews into Christians are not, I repeat, are not friends of Israel.
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Convincing #Jews to accept Jesus as the messiah is the very core goal of missionary proselytizing. We strongly object to this type of activity, and that is how and why Jews have survived as a nation and preserved our ancient faith. https://twitter.com/FleurHassanN/status/1259456317997154305 …

פלר חסן נחום Fleur Hassan-Nahoum
@FleurHassanN
God TV responds to critics: We’re not trying to convert Jews; we just want them to accept Jesus as the messiah: reminds me of when people say we don’t hate Jews we just don’t believe they should have the right to self determination like everyone else https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-god-tv-to-critics-not-trying-to-convert-jews-just-want-them-to-accept-jesus-1.8834815 …

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9:14 AM - May 10, 2020

Yisrael Medad, Author, Blogger and Activist

The point is that Jews, especially due to our history, view attempts at conversion as a total attempt to erase us, our history, our values, our teachings and our ethics as if they are worth literally nothing.

This station assumes, as its base, a Jews-for-Jesus type approach and we suspect it fooled the Cable Broadcast Council in its application for a license. Over-the-air programming allows them to circumvent the prohibition [against] proselytizing minors.

In relations between Jews and Christians, I would prefer it be based on simple mutual respect. ‘I like and appreciate you for who you are and you do the same.’

Rabbi Yehuda Glick, President Shalom Jerusalem Foundation

What God TV did is actually declaring war against the Jewish people – nothing less! We are different, we hold diverse perspectives and we have to respect this. Pulling the carpet from under our feet is something we cannot and will not accept and totally refuse to even consider.

At the same time we believe that working together is part of our faith as well as the faith of anyone faithful to the Bible.

As reported by Breaking Israel News, May 12, 2020 (links inserted by blogger):

TENNESSEE (5/11/2020) – Laurie Cardoza-Moore has called on the Israeli government to ban GOD TV from broadcasting programs focused on converting Jews to Christianity. Cardoza-Moore is the founder of Proclaiming Justice to The Nations and host of the award-winning Evangelical Christian television program Focus On Israel which formerly aired globally on GOD TV and is currently syndicated on tens of other Christian channels reaching a weekly audience of billions. The statement comes after GOD TV announced that they have received special permission from the Israeli government to proselytize Jews in Hebrew on Israeli cable TV.

“I have written to the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Communications Minister David Amsalem and the Director of the Government Press Office Nitzan Chen calling on them to ban GOD TV from airing missionary content focused at converting Jews to Christianity. At a time when global antisemitism is engulfing the world, GOD TV should be using its platform to teach Christians about their biblical responsibility to stand with our Jewish brethren and the State of Israel. Instead, they have chosen to stand on the wrong side of history, empowering the anti-Semites,” said Laurie Cardoza-Moore, founder of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations.

Cardoza-Moore continued: “Unfortunately, because of biblical illiteracy, we are seeing a rise of antisemitism again in Christianity. Christians have adopted false doctrines and traditions known as “Replacement Theology” and “Supersessionism” that has mobilized the Amaleks of history. These false doctrines are what fuel the desire to force unbiblical principles on our Jewish brethren. God TV should be encouraging Christians to repent of the history of Christian arrogance and ignorance that has incited some of the worst antisemitic incidents in history, including the pogroms, the Inquisition, and more recently, the Holocaust. Instead, they should ask their Jewish brethren to teach them the Torah as was stated by the prophets.”

Putting things into a historical perspective Cardoza-Moore said: “Unfortunately, Christian history is replete with examples of Christians forcing their doctrinal views on Jews; either through torture, or, with a disingenuous smile. As a descendant of Sephardic Jewish ancestry, I have studied the implications of where this type of ideology can lead. My ancestors were forced to convert to Catholicism during the period of the Spanish Inquisition. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella blamed corruption in the Catholic Church on the Jews. In order to survive that dark period in history, they were forced to convert. For 500 years since they hid their identity from generation to generation only to disclose the hidden truth upon the matriarch’s or the patriarch’s passing. They were known as Conversos. Conversos were blamed for plagues, accused of poisoning wells and kidnapping Christian boys for their blood. Many of the Conversos were tortured or burned at the stake to test the authenticity of their conversion.”

Cardoza-Moore concluded: “In recent decades, millions of Christians have felt the call to stand with the State of Israel and the Jewish people with no hidden agenda. Our only mandate to the Jewish people is to love and support them because they are God’s chosen people. Any attempts to convert Jews or downgrade their religion will only sow undue hatred at a time when we should unite in the face of darkness.”

The common thread running through these objections to GOD TV isn't so much that GOD TV is evangelizing with false teachings as that GOD TV seeks to evangelize Jews at all. I recommend that the reader click the links to the ministries mentioned above, especially those that claim to be Christian. They all advocate for the state of Israel--and I generally support their pro-Israel positions--but they don't advocate the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. They're opposed to evangelizing Jews, but they seem to be in favour of Judaizing Gentile Christians.

It's heresy for "Christians" to talk about our "Jewish brethren" when they're talking about Jews who don't have saving faith in Jesus Christ. The only basis on which Gentiles and Jews can be brothers is that of faith in the work of Jesus on the cross to break down the barrier between Jews and Gentiles:

For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.
Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God;
And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone;
In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord:
In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit. Ephesians 2:18-22

I take great offense at the idea that Gentiles who have a relationship with God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (see, e.g., Galatians 3:26) have to learn about God from Jews who don't know Jesus. Such a view contradicts the teaching of the apostle Paul, who had impeccable Jewish credentials at the time he was persecuting the early Christians:

I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as ye all are this day. Acts 22:3

And profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers. Galatians 1:14

Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. Philippians 3:6

Here's what Paul, as an apostle, had to say to Gentile Christians about the religious attitude of his fellow Jews:

Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.
For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. Romans 10:1-2

They zealously affect you, but not well; yea, they would exclude you, that ye might affect them. Galatians 4:17

Some of the leaders of these ministries have redefined "replacement theology," which is properly understood as the unbiblical teaching that the church has replaced the nation of Israel. Some of the ministry leaders quoted above now define "replacement theology" as the replacement of Judaism by Christianity. In fact, the New Testament has replaced the Old Testament, and is better (see, e.g., Jeremiah 31:31-34).

Lars Enarson says that "people who do not speak with respect for Judaism have no business being on Israeli television." I don't know if the Lord Jesus Christ would want to appear on Israel television, but Mr. Enarson would bar him from Israeli television, because He had nothing good to say to or about the Jewish leaders and the Judaism that was practiced in His day. Among other negative comments, He quoted Isaiah 29:13 to them:

Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Mark 7:7

Not only do I warn against GOD TV and its false teachers and doctrines, but I warn against "Christian" ministries that advocate for the state of Israel but don't proclaim Christ. If you support them, you're supporting organizations that are denying the divinely-inspired words of the apostle Paul:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. Romans 1:16

June 29, 2020 update: As reported by Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz of Breaking Israel News, June 30, 2020:

ShelanuTV is the branch of the global evangelical Christian media network GodTV focused on proselytizing to Jewish Israelis. It began broadcasting on the HOT cable network at the end of April after it received a license from the Council for Cable and Satellite Broadcasting earlier this year. This move was decried by many Israelis.

Proselytizing, seeking to convert people to another religion, is not illegal in Israel, although the law prevents proselytizing to minors without their parents’ presence or consent, and promising any monetary or material compensation for converting to another religion.

The Israeli broadcasting council informed HOT last week that the license had been suspended because GodTV’s programming targeted Jews and not Christians in Israel, as the license request had specified.

“A channel which seeks to address the Jewish people which dwell in Israel [and present it with] the gospels of Jesus will never be broadcast on Hot and this was known to the senior officials of the channel, as was stated in the hearing,” Council chairman Asher Biton wrote to HOT.

Proselytizing, seeking to convert people to another religion, is not illegal in Israel, although the law prevents proselytizing to minors without their parents’ presence or consent, and promising any monetary or material compensation for converting to another religion.

The Israeli broadcasting council informed HOT last week that the license had been suspended because GodTV’s programming targeted Jews and not Christians in Israel, as the license request had specified.

“A channel which seeks to address the Jewish people which dwell in Israel [and present it with] the gospels of Jesus will never be broadcast on Hot and this was known to the senior officials of the channel, as was stated in the hearing,” Council chairman Asher Biton wrote to HOT.

“The directors of the channel hope that the Council will approve the new request to broadcast the channel, and thereby avoid a severe diplomatic incident with hundreds of millions of Evangelical Christians who love and support Israel around the world,” Cantor said.

Mr. Berkowitz then offers his comments on the situation; it's interesting to note his shocked reaction to the opposition of professing Christians to evangelizing Jews:

I am very hesitant to comment on the GodTV issue. On one hand, I always advocate free speech. On the other hand, Christian proselytizing is one of the final, if not the final obstacle that stands between true brotherhood between Jews and Christians.

In the wake of GodTV beginning its broadcasts in Israel, I wrote an opinion article speaking out against Christian proselytizing Jews. The response shocked me. So many of my dear Christian friends came out against what GodTV is doing. I did not expect that at all. It represents the first time in the 2,000 year history of Jewish-Christian relations that Christians did not support efforts to convert Jews.

I did not ask how my friends were coping with the clear theological issues. My understanding is that Jesus told his followers to spread the word. When a Christian preaches to a Jew, it is an act of love (albeit an entirely unwanted and even harmful act of love). For Jews, preaching to non-Jews is essentially forbidden. Nonetheless, in the wake of GodTv’s efforts to target Israeli Jews, so many Christians rejected and even outrightly opposed this effort. I was stunned. Almost exclusively, my Christian friends have never proselytized to me even without my asking. When I was curious about a certain aspect of Christian theology, I have had to pressure them into providing information. The few who do proselytize, I have asked, though never demanded, to stop proselytizing to Jews. I compared it to offering candy to a diabetic: it is an unwanted act of love. Even if they persisted, I treasured their friendship.

I can only hope and pray that this is the beginning of a trend. It must come from inside Christianity and not as a demand by the Jews. It will require a paradigm shift and I hope that Jews can respond with a corresponding paradigm shift that will bring us to be a Light Unto the Nations and the caretakers of the House of Prayer for All Nations.

The true "final obstacle that stands between true brotherhood between Jews and Christians" is the refusal of most Jews, since the 1st century, to acknowledge Jesus as the Christ:

But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; I Corinthians 1:23

The Lord Jesus Christ Himself is the only one who can break down the barrier between Jews and Gentiles, and He has:

Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands;
That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world:
But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.
For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us;
Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace;
And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby:
And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh.
For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Ephesians 2:11-18

I pray that Mr. Berkowitz will put his trust in the One who has fulfilled all the Messianic prophecies.