Answers - and a remembrance.

Thanks to my dear wife for reminding me that I had not provided the correct answer to the quiz I posted, ten days ago (in spite of my good intention to post them on Resurrection day)!!!! So, with my apology to anyone who has been waiting, here they are:

1. (a); 2. (b); 3. (c); 4. (c); 5. (a); 6. (c); 7. (c); 8. (b); 9. (c).

How did you do? If you scored from 0-3, it would appear that you have never looked at the hard evidence that Jesus, the Christ, rose from the dead.  If you scored 4-7, then you would appear to know something about the resurrection. If you scored 8-9, then you certainly know the facts. However, question 10 would be: "Do you know Him as your own Saviour and Lord, alive today?!

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On a different note, sunset today in Israel sees the beginning of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day). All over the nation, places of public entertainment will close, and a state ceremony will be held in the Warsaw Ghetto Square in Jerusalem to honour the Jewish people who perished in Nazi Germany.

The flag will be lowered to half-mast, prayers will be recited, and six Holocaust survivors will light the six torches that symbolize the Six Million Jews who perished in the Holocaust (half the world's Jewish population at the time) under Hitler's "Final Solution".

Multiple railway tracks led from all over Europe to concentration camps like Auschwitz. Jewish people were crammed into cattle cars and shipped to these death camps. Very few survived. Of course, the Nazis intended that no one survive. Many were gassed immediately upon arrival and their bodies burned in ovens.  Those who were healthy enough to work when they arrived were literally worked to death.

This horrible, unfathomable number—six million murdered—does not include the many Jewish children who will never be born because of this genocide. Whole families were destroyed.  Some Jewish people who came out of the Holocaust were the sole survivor of their family.  They were left completely alone. 

May We Never Forget.

If you are a praying person, please take a moment to pray for the survivors and families of survivors, and the emotional scars they carry.

Hope!

Continuing from the previous post, may I suggest that the first anchor should be hope?  The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, speaking of the impossibility of God ever proving to be false, says, "We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner shrine behind the curtain." (6:19).  As long as we have hope, sunk deed down in our inmost being, then life cannot ever destroy us.  It may, and often will, hurt us, but it cannot break us.  As long as hope holds out, we may weather the fiercest storm.

Most will be familiar with the old adage: "Where there's life, there's hope."  I would suggest that it is equally true (if not more so!) to say that "Where there's hope, there's life."!  Many of the survivors of the Holocaust have spoken of the hope that kept them going in the midst of the most terrible of conditions.  In many countries, today, there are those who are persecuted - predominantly those who profess a Christian faith - but who live in hope.  I can never forget the commercial traveller who, during a particularly bad snowfall in the N.E. of Scotland survived being buried for some days, in his car - when others had succumbed to the cold, and to the difficulty in breathing.  His comment, when rescued, was: "I never gave up hope!"

Of course, the hope that is an anchor for the soul is not just a vague optimism that 'things will turn out alright; that, as Dickens' character, Mr Micawber, would have said, "Something will turn up!"  Rather, it is the hope of which Paul writes to the early disciples of Jesus in Colossae: "Christ in you, the hope of glory." (Col.1:27).  It is, in fact, more than hope, in the popular sense of the word.  It is an assurance that is based on the unchangeable character of Almighty God.

One of the old hymns states:
"My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly trust in Jesus’ Name." (Edward Mote)

Do you have the anchor of hope on board, today?  Is that hope grounded in the Lord, Jesus the Christ?  I encourage you to hope in Him.  It will be for your good, and to His glory.

Paliwood ('Palestinian' Hollywood) at its best!

 

This shocking picture is being used, for obvious propaganda purposes, by terrorist organisation Hamas and/or their supporters. As you can read, it purports to be "... what the medical personnel saw after the Israeli army left this house in Gaza."

If that were true, then Israel would rightly be the object of much, well-deserved, criticism.  However, please look carefully at the bottom one of the three pictures.  Notice, if you will, the object on the door-post at the top right-hand corner.  That object is, most definitely, a mezuzah.

Now, as anyone who has even limited knowledge of Judaism will be all too aware, a mezuzah is an object of great importance - to Jews!  It is part of their physical response to the command, given in Deuteronomy 11:20, concerning the words of YHWH (Ha'shem to a Jew who would not use the sacred Name as someone such as I would do): "... you shall write them upon the doorposts of your house and upon your gates, ..."   A mezuzah might be found in a Christian home (I have one, gifted by a dear Christian friend from Australia that is normally kept on the doorpost of my study), but never - absolutely never - in an Arab home.   The mezuzah traditionally contains a small scroll with the words of the Shema written thereon (see Deut.6:4ff).   Whatever this home, we may be assured that it is not the home of a 'Palestinian' family in Gaza!

However, we do have knowledge of the origin of the photographs.  Revealing this to be an act of the most obscene deceit, they have been confirmed as photographs of the home of the Jewish Fogel family - slaughtered in their home by Islamist terrorists who cut the baby's throat!   I asked, recently, when Hamas would start using pictures from the Holocaust to promote their own agenda - this suggests that such a possibility is not as remote as some may have thought!

You are unlikely to see any of this in the mainstream media, but please disseminate among your own friends and contacts.  The truth must be known!

The first casualty.

"In war, truth is the first casualty", is a well-known saying - attributed to a number of people, with the earliest record apparently being from a Greek tragic dramatist named Aeschylus (525-546 BC).  However, regardless of its author, the concept described is demonstratively true!

The modern State of Israel is fighting battles on a number of fronts - not least of which is the media machine. Thankfully, there are those with eyes that are sharp enough to point out the deceit that is being practised. The picture above is just one example. The child on the left is a victim of the ongoing civil war in Syria, from two years ago. The child on the right is quite obviously - even to the untrained eye - the same little girl but, this time portrayed as a victim of Israeli 'aggression' against Palestinians.

One wonder just how long it will be until pictures of victims of the Holocaust will be portrayed as victims of Israeli rockets!

Let us remember that, even a cease-fire recently offered by Israel, was breached by the terrorist organisation, Hamas, with 47 rockets being fired, indiscriminately, at Israeli targets, within a couple of hours!

When will the media begin to understand that they are the unwitting (but gullible?!) tools of Hamas, and start reporting "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth"?

A German take on the Holocaust!

Some posts are longer than others; and so are some video clips.  However, this is well worth watching - all the way through.

"History", I recall having been informed, "repeats itself."  However, there are certain historical events that I would not wish to see repeated.  This clip refers to one of them.  Yet, in order to avoid the repetition of some of history, we need to be ever vigilant.  Do watch, and share.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/B084EmNeNDk?feature=player_embedded

Personal Testimony.

"God is working His purpose out, as year succeeds to year."  So wrote A.C.Ainger, in 1894.  I have no doubt at all that his words were, and are, completely true.  One of the 'bench-marks' of God's plans and purposes is the nation of Israel.  They are still the Chosen People, and the inheritors of the covenants with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (inter al).  Those of us who are under the new covenant of grace need to remember that, as Paul states in his letter to the first believers in the city of Rome, we are but wild shoots grafted on to the branch. (11:17-24).


I find it interesting, indeed more than interesting, that my Inbox is currently receiving an unusually large amount of information about Israel, and the Jewish nation. The latest arrived earlier today.  It's longer than my usual posts as it is the personal testimony of Simon Deng, once a Sudanese slave. He is addressing the Durban III Conference, held in New York, under the auspices of the United Nations. 
This marked the 10th anniversary of Durban I at the same time and place as the 10^th anniversary of September 11, 2001. Durban I, the platform for violent, pro-terrorist, and anti-Semitic rhetoric that included such speakers as Yasser Arafat and Fidel Castro, ended just three days before 9/11, and produced the infamous Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA), which charged Israel with racism but named no other state in the world! Durban II, held in Geneva in April 2009, was headlined by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who saw the occasion as ideal for issuing another denial of the Holocaust and an endorsement of genocide against the Jewish state. Timing Durban III for the annual opening of the General Assembly of the U.N. was meant to guarantee the extensive involvement of presidents and prime ministers, most of whom eluded the  organisers of Durban I and II.

And so, Mr Deng's speech (I urge you to persevere to the end):

"I want to thank the organizers of this conference, The Perils of Global Intolerance. It is a great honour for me and it is a privilege really to be among today's distinguished speakers.

I came here as a friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. I came to protest this Durban conference which is based on a set of lies. It is organized by nations who are themselves are guilty of the worst kind of oppression.

It will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel .

The UN has itself become a tool against Israel . For over 50 years, 82 percent of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state - Israel . Hitler couldn't have been made happier!

The Durban Conference is an outrage. All decent people will know that.

But friends, I come here today with a radical idea. I come to tell you that there are peoples who suffer from the UN's anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of those people.

Please hear me out. By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale.

 For over fifty years the indigenous black population of Sudan -- Christians and Muslims alike --- have been the victims of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim regimes in Khartoum .

In South Sudan , my homeland, about 4 million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005.  Seven million were ethnically cleansed and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.

The UN is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees. They dedicated a separate agency for them, and they are treated with a special privilege.

Meanwhile, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored. The UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the real causes of Sudan's conflicts. Who knows really what is happening in Darfur? It is not a "tribal conflict."

It is a conflict rooted in Arab colonialism well known in north Africa. In Darfur, a region in the Western Sudan , everybody is Muslim. Everybody is Muslim because the Arabs invaded the North of Africa and converted the indigenous people to Islam. In the eyes of the Islamists in Khartoum, the Darfuris are not Muslim enough. And the Darfuris do not want to be Arabised.

They love their own African languages and dress and customs. The Arab response is genocide! But nobody at the UN tells the truth about Darfur .

In the Nuba Mountains, another region of Sudan, genocide is taking place as I speak. The Islamist regime in Khartoum is targeting the black Africans - Muslims and Christians. Nobody at the UN has told the truth about the Nuba Mountains .

Do you hear the UN condemn Arab racism against blacks?

What you find on the pages of the New York Times, or in the record of the UN condemnations is about Israeli crimes and Palestinian suffering.

My people have been driven off the front pages because of the exaggerations about Palestinian suffering. What Israel does is portrayed as a Western sin. But the truth is that the real sin happens when the West abandons us: the victims of Arab/Islamic apartheid.

Chattel slavery was practised for centuries in Sudan . It was revived as a tool of war in the early 90s.

Khartoum declared jihad against my people and this legitimised taking slaves as war booty. Arab militias were sent to destroy Southern villages and were encouraged to take African women and children as slaves. We believe that up to 200,000 were kidnapped, brought to the North and sold into slavery. I am a living proof of this crime against humanity!

I don't like talking about my experience as a slave, but I do it because it is important for the world to know that slavery exists even today.

I was only nine years old when an Arab neighbour named Abdullahi tricked me into following him to a boat. The boat wound up in Northern Sudan where he gave me as a gift to his family. For three and a half years I was their slave going through something that no child should ever go through: brutal beatings and humiliations; working around the clock; sleeping on the ground with animals; eating the family's left-overs. During those three years I was unable to say the word "no". All I could say was “yes,” “yes,” “yes.”

The United Nations knew about the enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs. Their own staff reported it. It took UNICEF – under pressure from the Jewish-led American Anti-Slavery Group -- sixteen years to acknowledge what was happening. I want to publicly thank my friend Dr. Charles Jacobs for leading the anti-slavery fight.

But the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, and UNICEF backtracked, and started to criticize those who worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned in protest of the UN's actions.

My friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their masters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League. As a former slave and a victim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why I think calling Israel a racist state is absolutely absurd and immoral.

I have been to Israel five times visiting the Sudanese refugees. Let me tell you how they ended up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hoping to find shelter in Egypt . They were wrong. When Egyptian security forces slaughtered twenty six black refugees in Cairo who were protesting Egyptian racism, the Sudanese realized that the Arab racism is the same in Khartoum or Cairo . They needed shelter and they found it in Israel. Dodging the bullets of the Egyptian border patrols and walking for very long distances, the refugees' only hope was to reach Israel's side of the fence, where they knew they would be safe.

Black Muslims from Darfur chose Israel above all the other Arab-Muslim states of the area. Do you know what this means!!!?? And the Arabs say Israel is racist!!!?

In Israel, black Sudanese, Christian and Muslim were welcomed and treated like human beings. Just go and ask them, like I have done. They told me that compared to the situation in Egypt, Israel is "heaven."

Is Israel a racist state? To my people - the people who know racism - the answer is absolutely not. Israel is a state of people who are the colours of the rainbow. Jews themselves come in all colours, even black. I met with Ethiopian Jews in Israel . Beautiful black Jews.

So, yes … I came here today to tell you that the people who suffer most from the UN anti-Israel policy are not the Israelis but all those people who the UN ignores in order to tell its big lie against Israel: we, the victims of Arab/Muslim abuse; women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, homosexuals, in the Arab/Muslim world. These are the biggest victims of UN Israel hatred.

Look at the situation of the Copts in Egypt, the Christians in Iraq, and Nigeria, and Iran, the Hindus and Bahais who suffer from Islamic oppression. The Sikhs. We -- a rainbow coalition of victims and targets of Jihadis -- all suffer. We are ignored, we are abandoned; so that the big lie against the Jews can go forward.

In 2005, I visited one of the refugee camps in South Sudan. I met a twelve year old girl who told me about her dream. In a dream she wanted to go to school to become a doctor. And then, she wanted to visit Israel. I was shocked. How could this refugee girl who spent most of her life in the North know about Israel ? When I asked why she wanted to visit Israel she said: "This is our people."  I was never able to find an answer to my question.

On January 9 of 2011 South Sudan became an independent state. For South Sudanese, that means continuation of oppression, brutalization, demonisation, Islamisation, Arabisation and enslavement.

In a similar manner, the Arabs continue denying Jews their right for sovereignty in their homeland and the Durban III conference continues denying Israel's legitimacy.

As a friend of Israel, I bring you the news that my President, the President of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir -- publicly stated that the South Sudan Embassy in Israel will be built--- not in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people. I also want to assure you that my own new nation, and all of its peoples, will oppose racist forums like the Durban III. We will oppose it by simply continuing to tell the truth! Our truth!

My Jewish friends taught me something that I now want to say with you.

AM YISROEL CHAI !

The people of Israel lives!

Thank you."

"God is working His purpose out, and the time is drawing near."

Please feel free to share this on social media sites, or to your own e-mail contacts.
sh’alu shalom yerushalayim.   (Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.)