Jesus – who is He?

 

A new podcast ready for you on:

JesusPodkast / GodCasts

Elisabeth Arnet Sandvik is a Elder in Houseministry Agape in Trondheim, Norway. In this podcast she reflects on the subject: who is Jesus?

 

 

 

Godspeed

Webpastor B

www.podkast.org

God – who is He?

 

Podcast
Elder Elisabeth Arnet Sandvik
Houseministry Agape
Elisabeth reflects on the subject: wo IS God? and
how can we know Him?
Worshipleader Hanne Grethe Hansen sings: Above all

Listen here: GodCast  (English)

Godspeed

Webpastor B

www.jesuspodkast.org

The table cloth

Beautiful story…. makes you understand that things happen for a reason

The brand new pastor and his wife, newly assigned to their first ministry, to reopen a church in suburban Brooklyn , arrived in early October excited about their opportunities When they saw their church, it was very run down and needed much work. They set a goal to have everything done in time to have their first service on Christmas Eve.

They worked hard, repairing pews, plastering walls, painting, etc, and on December 18 were ahead of schedule and just about finished. On December 19 a terrible tempest – a driving rainstorm hit the area and lasted for two days.

On the 21st, the pastor went over to the church. His heart sank when he saw that the roof had leaked, causing a large area of plaster about 20 feet by 8 feet to fall off the front wall of the sanctuary just behind the pulpit, beginning about head high.

The pastor cleaned up the mess on the floor, and not knowing what else to do but postpone the Christmas Eve service, headed home.  On the way he noticed that a local business was having a flea market type sale for charity so he stopped in. One of the items was a beautiful, handmade, ivory coloured, crocheted tablecloth with exquisite work, fine colours and a Cross embroidered right in the centre. It was just the right size to cover up the hole in the front wall. He bought it and headed back to the church.

By this time it had started to snow. An older woman running from the opposite direction was trying to catch the bus.. She missed it. The pastor invited her to wait in the warm church for the next bus 45 minutes later. She sat in a pew and paid no attention to the pastor while he got a ladder, hangers, etc., to put up the tablecloth as a wall tapestry. The pastor could hardly believe how beautiful it looked and it covered up the entire problem area.

Then he noticed the woman walking down the centre aisle. Her face was like a sheet.. “Pastor,” she asked, “where did you get that tablecloth?”  The pastor explained. The woman asked him to check the lower right corner to see if the initials, EBG were crocheted into it there. They were. These were the initials of the woman, and she had made this tablecloth 35 years before, in Austria.

T he woman could hardly believe it as the pastor told how he had just gotten the Tablecloth. The woman explained that before the war she and her husband were well-to-do people in Austria . When the Nazis came, she was forced to leave. Her husband was going to follow her the next week. He was captured, sent to prison and never saw her husband or her home again.

The pastor wanted to give her the tablecloth; but she made the pastor keep it for the church. The pastor insisted on driving her home, that was the least he could do.. She lived on the other side of Staten Island and was only in Brooklyn for the day for a housecleaning job.

What a wonderful service they had on Christmas Eve. The church was almost full. The music and the spirit were great. At the end of the service, the pastor and his wife greeted everyone at the door and many said that they would return. One older man, whom the pastor recognized from the neighbourhood continued to sit in one of the pews and stare, and the pastor wondered why he wasn’t leaving.

The man asked him where he got the tablecloth on the front wall because it was identical to one that his wife had made years ago when they lived in Austria before the war and how could there be two tablecloths so much alike.

He told the pastor how the Nazis came, how he forced his wife to flee for her safety and he was supposed to follow her, but he was arrested and put in a prison.. He never saw his wife or his home again all the 35 years in between.

The pastor asked him if he would allow him to take him for a little ride. They drove to Staten Island and to the same house where the pastor had taken the woman three days earlier.

He helped the man climb the three flights of stairs to the woman’s apartment, knocked on the door and he saw the greatest Christmas reunion he could ever imagine.

 
True Story – submitted by Pastor Rob Reid.  Who says God does not work in mysterious ways..

 

Godspeed

Webpastor B

www.jesuspodkast.org

Palestinians – who are they?

Hadrian’s Curse
By: Tsafrir Renon
The following article was written by a friend of mine, Tsafrir Ronen, who has been working tirelessly to bring the truth about the Jewish claim to the Land of Israel to both Israeli and international audiences.  The information contained in this article is critical for an understanding of the Arab claims against Israel and their ultimate goal in creating the fiction of Palestinian nationalism.
Sondra Baras
Director, Israel Office
CFOIC Heartland

Summary 
Almost 2,000 years ago, the Roman Emperor Hadrian cursed the Jewish People and decreed that Judea should be henceforth called  “Palestine” after the Philistines, an ancient enemy of Israel that had disappeared from the world’s stage more than 600 years earlier.  It was his final twist of the knife and legacy after wars, massacres, persecutions, and exiles that had largely extinguished the Jewish presence from Judea. Today, the modern enemies of a resurrected Jewish Nation have dusted off Hadrian’s curse and are attempting to pull off a monumental theft: the Arab world have reincarnated “Palestine” to steal Israel’s heritage and the Land of the Jewish People.  “Hadrian’s Curse” will expose the BIG lie of the “Palestinian cause” in a full-length 120-minute documentary.

The film will document that there never was a “Palestinian” people, The world has become so accustomed to the “truth” of the “Palestinian” perversion of history and work backwards, exposing recent claims and acts whose absurdity and villainy shock uninformed observers. When Arafat declared: “Our nation is the Arabic nation that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea and beyond it”, it turns out that Arafat’s nation already stretches over an area larger than all of Europe.

This is the twisted story of one of the biggest, most remarkable fraud in history. It is such a successful fabrication that many otherwise informed people have been duped and mislead. This propaganda has become a powerful weapon used Israel’s enemies, the Arabs, to try to conquer Eretz Yisrael without firing a shot, without an army, tanks or jets.

The Jewish People eventually bested Hadrian.  They returned to their land and reestablished sovereignty over it.  They rebuilt Jerusalem as their capital, and resettled desolate Judea.  They did all this only to now confront the reincarnated curse of Hadrian in the guise of Arabs renaming themselves “Palestinians” and claiming all the ancient Land as their own.  As explained in the Film, many Israelis and lovers of Zion have accepted this misnaming and misidentification. Hadrian’s ancient curse now threatens Israel’s very existence.

Israel’s success and endurance and the world’s hope for peace in the 21st century, demands that the deceit and danger of a Palestinian state must be exposed and avoided.  It is our fervent hope that “Hadrian’s Curse” will expose the historical truth.

Part I -  The Secret All the Arabs Know
At the Annapolis Conference, George Bush spoke about his vision regarding the virtues of two nations for two peoples.
One of those peoples has a clear identity – the Jewish People. Yet it would be interesting to know the identity of that second people: Already in 1977, one of the central spokesman of that “second people”, a member of P.L.O. leadership, Zahir Muhsein, the leader of the al-Sa’iqa Organization, revealed the truth in an interview to the Dutch newspaper Trouw:

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit  the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism for tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa. While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will  not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.”

Are you in shock? If the Palestinian People does not exist, what does exist? Arabs who live in Eretz Yisrael and who have disguised themselves as “Palestinians” for fraudulent purposes. “Only a means for continuing our struggle against the State of Israel,” in Muhsein’s words. A fraud so successful that even George Bush can be found seeking a state for that fraud!

Do you think Zahir Muhsein is alone? This transparent fraud about the so-called existence of Palestine is revealed to us by all the Arabs’ leaders:

In 1974, the late Syrian President, Hafez al-Assad, declared: “It would be fitting for us to mention to the responsible Israeli authorities that we view Palestine not just as an inseparable part of the Arab nation, but as a part of Southern Syria.” In 1987, he reiterated himself at a conference in Amman, “A country named ‘Palestine’ has never existed.” Jordanian King Hussein responded, “The appearance of the national Palestinian persona serves as a response to Israel’s claim that Palestine is Jewish.”
Yet the prize goes to Arafat who in 1970, with candid simplicity, told the reporter Arianna Palazzi: “The question of borders doesn’t interest us…From the Arab standpoint, we mustn’t talk about borders. Palestine is nothing but a drop in an enormous ocean. Our nation is the Arabic nation that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea and beyond it…..The P.L.O. is fighting Israel in the name of Pan-Arabism. What you call “Jordan” is nothing more than Palestine.”

Such revelations are an eye-opener for anyone who has not understood until today the masked-ball being run by the Arabs: The true meaning of Arafat’s words, that “Palestine is Jordan,” is that for the Arabic people, living under the “Pan-Arab” umbrella, in addition to over twenty Arabic countries, there is already a country called Jordan that was established by the British for the Arabs on 77% of the Land of Israel, promised to the Jewish People by the League of Nations in 1922.

Anywhere else on earth, could an additional country would be established for a people that already has twenty-one countries?
All the same, there is nothing like the testimony of the founder of the P.L.O. himself, Ahmed Shukari. Already in 1956 he proclaimed from the podium of the U.N., as the Arab League’s ambassador there, that “such a creature as Palestine does not exist at all. This land is nothing but the southern portion of Greater Syria…”

And if Ahmed Shukari says that Palestine does not exist at all, the logical inference is that “Palestinians” do not exist at all either. That same Shukari was born of a Turkish mother in Lebanon, was himself a Jordanian lawyer, served as the ambassador of Syria to the U.N., the ambassador of the Arab League to the U.N., and the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the U.N. In 1964, after this talented actor who changed loyalties like a chameleon was fired by the Saudis, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser hired him to found the “Palestine Liberation Organization”, the P.L.O., an organization dedicated to the liberation of a country that in his own words did not exist at all.

All the prominent spokesman of that poor, homeless “people” say openly: The Arabs who live in Eretz Yisrael are precisely the same Arabs who live in Syria, Jordan or Lebanon. They are not a separate country, but a fragment of the enormous Arab nation divided amongst many Arab countries. In their identity they are Arabs and the invention of Palestine is just a transparent bluff: “a means for continuing our struggle against the State of Israel for our Arab unity”.

Can any testimony be better than that of the Arabs themselves, exposing the lies and deception involved in Palestine’s creation?
Yet the most compelling argument for the idea that the “Palestinian People” is a fraudulent invention, and that the Arabs are all one people, was expounded by none other than Mr. Husseini, head of the Supreme Arab Committee, to the U.N. special committee that was deliberating on Eretz Yisrael in 1947:

“An additional consideration of great importance for the Arab world is racial uniformity. The Arabs lived in a broad expanse stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean. They spoke one language, and shared a common history, tradition and aspirations. Their unity was the solid foundation for peace in one of the most central and sensitive regions in the world. For that reason, it does not make sense that the United Nations should facilitate the establishment of a foreign entity within that well-rooted unity.”

Indeed, Mr. Husseini is correct. His declaration before the investigative committee of the United Nations exposes the simple fact that there is no “Palestinian” language and no unique “Palestinian” culture. The Palestinians are Arabs, and they cannot be set apart from the Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc.

Remove from the argument the lies and untruths and you reveal that the conflict is taking place between the Arabic, Muslim empire of twenty-one states and the Jewish People, claiming their right to their one and only historic homeland, consisting of less than one fifth of a percent of the lands under Arab control.
This is the twisted story of the biggest, most unprecedented fraud in history. It involves such a successful bluff that many people have no doubt about its veracity. This propaganda has become a powerful weapon by which means Israel’s enemies, the Arabs, are trying to conquer Eretz Yisrael without firing a shot, without an army, tanks or jets.

Part II -  The Arabs’ Ultimate Goal
Following the Six Day War, the Arab countries, defeated by a small county determined to survive, understood that Israel would be impossible to beat militarily. They understood that the Israeli Samson would be possible to beat only by way of the cunning of the Philistine Delilah. And that’s what happened…. No longer would there be cries firing up the masses to genocide, but rather, sophistication… A melody carefully aimed at the delicate western ear. The Arabs discovered that from a propaganda standpoint, it was easier to convince world public opinion of the rights of the poor, small, deprived “Palestinian People” to its own state, than to justify the demand of the enormous Arab empire for an addition of territory from a tiny country fighting for its life.

 

 

The Palestinian People is a fabrication invented with aforethought as a psychological weapon of Arab countries defeated in battle, a “Trojan Horse” for conquering Eretz Yisrael, as Feisel Husseini said after the Oslo Accords.

So was born the worldwide propaganda campaign that turned matters on their head. The Israeli “David” against the Arab “Goliath” was transformed, by way of sophisticated propaganda, into the Israeli “Goliath” oppressing the Palestinian “David”. The object of this propaganda is to blot out and forge the name and identity of the ancient, Biblical Eretz Yisrael, and to transform it into the land of “the Palestinian People” fabricated by Arab propaganda.

By such means did their false propaganda gain such a strong foothold in the media and the bastions of liberalism that no one has paid any attention to the simple truths spoken openly by Zahir Muhsein, Assad, Shukari, King Hussein or Arafat.

By means of brainwashing, fabrications, lies, falsification, and taking advantage of the world’s ignorance and the international media’s superficiality, a process has been taking place in broad daylight, for several dozen years already, of counterfeiting and blotting out history. And just as Goebbels and Hitler, the arch propagandists of the 20th century said derisively, the bigger the lie, the more people will believe in it.

Fulfilling the demands of the Palestinian lie, will put an end to the identity of Eretz Yisrael.  Following the loss of the Land’s identity, will come the loss of our right to the land.  For, if there are “Palestinians”, that implies that there is also a land called Palestine, and if there is a Palestine… then there is no Eretz Yisrael.

The most terrible part is that large sectors of Israel, itself, have already fallen into the Arab propaganda trap. It is they who are opening the door to the Trojan horse that will destroy the identity of Eretz Yisrael. This is a war that is not being waged by means of weapons and armies, or over physical territory.  It is being waged on the battlefields of awareness of the Land’s identity. The Roman name “Philistia” was a fiction invented by the Roman emperor Hadrian after the Bar Kochba Revolt in 135 C.E., a fiction of Hadrian then, and a fiction of the Arabs today, to the same degree.

It is a fabrication that represents no people, not then and not today. It is a sophisticated fiction invented for one purpose and one purpose alone, to wipe out a land’s identity. If the land is called Palestine, then the Jewish people are occupiers.  If the land is called Eretz Yisrael, then the Arabs are occupiers.

This is the essence of the Arab propaganda war, which is intended to steal the identity of Eretz Yisrael and to transform it into Palestine, and by such means to turn the Jewish people into occupiers of Eretz Yisrael.  That’s the whole story.

Now it’s already clear.  The Palestinian identity is tactical, artificial and temporary.  It is just a tool in the pan-Arab struggle against Israel.  The amazing thing is that it’s all out in the open. Section 12 of the Palestinian charter summarizes the idea of this temporary identity, by stating that:
“The Palestinian people believes in Arab unification.  It believes that in order to fulfill its task towards achieving this goal, it must, at this stage of its national struggle, preserve all the components of its Palestinian personality, and it must increase awareness of its existence, and reject all plans liable to weaken it or make it disappear.”

Is there another people in the world that writes in its charter of self-definition the expression “at this stage”? And what will be in the next stage?  Obviously, after conquering Israel, the territory will be divided up between Arab countries, and those Arab countries themselves will throw Palestine into the wastebasket of history.

As Arafat said, the Palestinian people are a fiction.  The same is true regarding the Jordanian people, and all the other Arabic speaking peoples in the Middle East.  These are not peoples with separate identities, but part of the great Arab nation.  Only that has a true identity. By their self-definition, they cannot be divided up into a number of peoples with individual identities.  Rather, they constitute one nation consisting of many states, as Arafat himself said to Arianna Palazzi in an incautious moment.

For the sophisticated Saudis, with their Saudi Peace Plan, it is clear that its purpose is not to actualize the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, for no such people exists. They conceal the truth that the great Arab nation has already actualized its right to self-determination by establishing a large number of countries, one of which extends over about 78% of the area of mandatory Eretz Yisrael.  For the Arabs, exploding with laughter over the foolishness of the West, it is clear that if an additional Arab state arises in the western portion of Eretz Yisrael, that will not serve the right of self-determination, but the demand of imperial conquest of all Eretz Yisrael by the Arab nation.  Is George Bush dragging Israel to its destruction?

The Palestinian fabrication is exposed precisely when we listen to authentic Arab voices.  The prominent Arab historian, Dr. Philip Hitti, who expressed himself at the Anglo-American commission of inquiry in the State Department building in 1947, said as follows:
“Sir, Palestine never existed throughout history. Absolutely not!”
Moreover, Professor Juhan Hazam, in his testimony before that same commission, added:

“Before 1917, when Balfour made his declaration, there had never been a Palestinian question, and there was no Palestine as a political or geographic unit.”

Also a local Arab leader, Abd al-Mahdi, testified before the Peal Commission in 1937 as follows:

“There is no such land. Palestine is a term invented by the Zionists. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our land was for hundreds of years a part of Syria.”
Indeed, this is a pi

cture of the real situation in 1918 and at the start of the British conquest of Eretz Yisrael…

Were there any trace of truth to the claim regarding the historicity of a Palestinian People, we should certainly have expected to find mention of it in the history books and encyclopedias, as well as in archaeological research.

Part III-   Will Israel finish Hadrian’s Work?
Thus, the way to Palestinian Hell was paved with the good intentions of Christian Zionists like Lord Balfour, the British foreign secretary. In the Balfour declaration, and by the decree of the Mandate, they decided, based on historic rights, to grant Eretz Yisrael to the Jewish people. Yet they called it Hadrian’s Roman name, Palestine, which had originally had the precise intention of blotting it off the map.

From that moment on, the way was prepared for the birth of the Palestinian fiction.

The name Palestine, by which the British accidentally called the land, bore the seeds of destruction of the Palestinian bluff, as if the entire Land was the stolen property of the Palestinian people, an ancient, rooted people, thousands of years old. This was such an incredible but successful fabrication that large portions of Israeli society fell into its snare. In the report presented in 1938 to the League of Nations, the British made it very clear: “The name ‘Palestine’ is not a country but a geographic region.’”

No one could have imagined in 1917, at the time of the Balfour declaration during WWI, that anyone would use the name Palestine to  create a monstrous, hostile, false identity, for propaganda purposes, and would engrave on their flag the destruction of Israel.

The reporter and writer Joan Peters, in her book From Time Immemorial, writes, “The one and only identity never adopted [by the inhabitants of Eretz Yisrael] before 1967 was that of ‘Palestinian Arab’.”
The Palestinian lie was not hatched by any land or any people, but by a map, a map drawn by two European colonial ministers, an Englishman, Herman Sykes, and a Frenchman, George Picot, and on the map was written… “Palestine”. It was clear to the British that Palestine as a sovereign political unit had never existed. No nation had ever borne its name. No people had ever prayed for its welfare. It was a name that hadn’t existed at all for 1300 years, ironically, precisely when Muslim empires were dominant. “Palestine” was a Roman political fabrication that had faded and disappeared together with the empire that had created it.

The Land regained independence only when the name “Eretz Yisrael” [the Land of Israel], the name in the hearts of the first Zionists, was restored to it. Had not this identity been preserved by the Jewish People, and had it not been preserved in the hearts of the Christian Bible-loving nations who made up the League of Nations, the national rebirth of the Jewish People might never have taken place.
This is the substance of the war being waged on millions of television screens throughout the world. It is being waged over the identity of Eretz Yisrael. It is being waged by means of all the media, and it seems as though the Arabs have the upper hand, while Israel leaves an impression of impotence, of not yet having even identified the battlefield on which its fate will be sealed.

While Israel prepares jets and tanks for a military struggle, Israel’s enemies are preparing their weapons for the final battle, for sticking the last dagger into the back of a State of Israel that does not understand and is not even ready for this battle. Unless Israel prepares for this battle, comes to an understanding of its complexity and frees itself from the false terminologies and constant brainwashing, Israel will be defeated and its land will be irrevocably taken from it.

Will Israel, which valiantly vanquished all the Arab armies when they attacked it also know how to face this propaganda attack that is threatening to destroy it?

It would seem as though the battle is already decided. The Arab propaganda has already penetrated the nervous system and destroyed the immune system that defended the Jewish People for 2000 years, with even the Israeli Prime Minister and Foreign Minister saying that “Israel’s interest is to establish a Palestinian state”…

In other words, what they want is for the Bible to be rewritten and for King David’s land of the Bible to become the land of Goliath the Philistine.

Could anything be more insane? Is there another nation on earth that behaves this way?

Is it possible that Israel will be beaten without a single shot being fired, simply handing over their land to a wretched fabrication, a coarse, primitive, charlatan canard, a deception that conceals the destruction that the Arabs are preparing for Israel? Could Israel’s leaders be too blind to see the danger looming of the Land’s Jewish identity being lost? Will precisely the vision of the prophets, fulfilled with the establishment of the State of Israel, bring with it the destruction of the identity of the Jewish People’s land, and lead to its exchange for the false identity of Hadrian – Palestine?

When lies are repeated many times, they become true. Such a lie is the fabrication regarding the existence of a historic Palestinian identity. That false identity, which began with Hadrian’s curse and that was revived by Lord Balfour, has become a first rate propaganda tool. It became that the moment the Arabs understood the potential of destroying the identity of Eretz Yisrael, and with it the identity of the People of Israel, whose name bears the stamp of ownership of the Land.

The struggle against Israel was the glue that bound the Arab world, otherwise sunken in endless internal quarrels. The Arabs’ aim in fabricating Palestine was not to build a nation but to annihilate a nation. Yet to conceal that plan, they invented the plan of “phases”. The first phase is the invention of a “Palestinian People.” The second phase is the liquidation of Israel, weakened and wearied after Oslo.
By such means did the Arabs conceal their genocidal intent with a “new tool”, in the words of Zahir Muhsein, for conquering Eretz Yisrael without firing a shot.

All of these lies and falsehoods, this whole “costume ball” is being marketed by the media, which is turning out to be an obsessive collaborator with the biggest lie on earth.
Precisely this Hadrian understood. That’s why he chose the name Palestine.

Precisely this is understood as well by Hadrian’s heirs – the Arab propagandists who through their use of this false name sever the historic tie between the People and the Land of Israel. Without doing that, it would be impossible to use the word “conquest” – could a people be considered the conqueror of its own land? The question Israel faces is this: Will the Jews forego the name and the identity of their Biblical land? Will the Christian world agree to concede on the identity of the cradle of western civilization, the holy land, Eretz Yisrael?

It’s the twist of fate that for all this to happen, the Jews had to vanquish Hadrian completely, return to their land, establish sovereignty, resurrect the Hebrew language, establish a mighty army, industry, the best agriculture on earth, hi-tech, culture, song, dance, reestablish a nation, rebuild Jerusalem as their capital and settle every town and village that Hadrian destroyed. Could we have possibly come full circle? Will Hadrian’s curse, which didn’t succeed for 1800 year, precisely when Israel was in exile from their land, succeed just now, with Israel’s return? Will it be precisely the Israeli government that will resurrect Hadrian’s curse, previously lost in the depths of forgetfulness?

Today, 1800 years later, an Israeli Prime Minister is calling for fulfilling what Hadrian failed to do – the erasure of Eretz Yisrael and the establishment of Palestine.

The Emperor Hadrian is smiling from the grave.

The writer, a Former member of the secular Kibbutz “Ein Charod” is a media personality, serves in an elite army unit [Sayeret Matkal] and was one of the founders of the “Nahalal Forum on Behalf of the Entire Eretz Yisrael”. He is presently preparing a documentary film on the Arab Palestine myth called : Hadrian’s Curse

Godspeed

Webpastor B

www.jesuspodkast.org

 

A doorway to slander

 

Talkativeness is the throne of vainglory on which it loves to preen itself and show off. Talkativeness is a sign of ignorance, a doorway to slander, a leader of jesting, a servant of lies, the ruin of compunction, a summoner of despondency, a messenger of sleep, a dissipation of recollection, the end of vigilance, the cooling of zeal, the darkening of prayer.

Intelligent silence is the mother of prayer, freedom from bondage, custodian of zeal, a guard on our thoughts, a watch on our enemies, a prison of mourning, a friend of tears, a sure recollection of death, a painter of punishment, a concern with judgment, servant of anguish, foe of licence, a companion of stillness, the opponent of dogmatism, a growth of knowledge, a hand to shape contemplation, hidden progress, the secret journey upward.

For those who recognise their sins have taken control of their tongue, while the chatterers have yet to discover themselves as they should.

The Salvation Army IHQ

Godspeed

Webpastor B

www.jesuspodkast.org

Don’t Give In

 

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Nehemiah: Lessons In Rebuilding

Lesson 13: Don’t Give In

By Eric Elder

www.theranch.org

Some people will try to discourage you from reaching your dreams because they love you, they care about you, and they don’t want to see you get hurt in pursuing something that may never happen.

But others will try to discourage you because they’re afraid you might actually accomplish what you’ve set out to do.  They’re not interested in your future, your success, your well-being.  They’re interested in their own dreams and goals and will do whatever they can to stop you from achieving yours.

Nehemiah faced his share of opposition.  But one group opposed him throughout his project because they were afraid he’d actually accomplish what he had set out to do.  They tried to lure him away from his project, calling out to him:

“Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono.”
(Nehemiah 6:2).

But Nehemiah saw through their plan.  He knew they meant to harm him, not help him.  So he sent messengers to them with this reply:

“I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?” (Nehemiah 6:3).

Those who opposed Nehemiah didn’t just ask him to leave the work and meet with them once or twice.  Four times they tried to lure him away.
And four times, Nehemiah gave them the same answer: “Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?”

Sometimes it may seem impolite if we don’t respond to all of our critics.  We feel we need to explain ourselves to them, hear them out, and negotiate with them through our disagreements.  But sometimes we just need to follow Nehemiah’s example.  You don’t negotiate with a wolf.

Even Jesus warned his disciples:

“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16).

When others want you to give up on your plans, give careful thought to their reasons.  Is their advice really for your benefit, or simply for their own?  While it’s important to listen to those who truly care about you and who care about what you feel God has called you to do, it can be just as important to ignore those who don’t care about you, who care mainly about their own plans instead.

I was hard at work renovating our Clover Ranch retreat center one day when a man came by and asked if I would be willing to sell the place.
He wasn’t a wolf, but he also wasn’t aware of what God had spoken to me about the project.  He said he’d had his eye on the property for some time and would really like to buy it if I’d like to sell it.  His offer was tempting.  I was starting to wear out from working on the project myself.  It would be much easier, I thought, to just give in and sell the place to him.

I talked to my Dad later that day and mentioned this man’s offer.  My Dad said, “Don’t sell it.  You’ve put in too much work into it to sell it off now.”  His words woke me up to the reality of the situation, and to the vision that God had put on my heart for the project in the first place.  My Dad was right.  The project had been a lot of work, but this wasn’t the time to give in.  This was the time to press on and finish what God had put on my heart to do.

There are times when you might be tempted to give in to the demands of others.  You may even see their offer as a welcome relief at the time, getting you out of more hard work.  But if God has put this project on your heart, don’t even go there.  Don’t give up.  Don’t give in.  Don’t go down and meet with those who would try to distract you from what God has called you to do, especially wolves who don’t have your best interest at heart.

Don’t give in.  Keep pressing on with all that God has put on your heart to do.

Let’s pray…

Father, help me to not give in to the demands of others who don’t have my best interest at heart.  Help me to put Your priorities ahead of even my own, so that I can finish the work You’ve called me to do.  In Jesus’
name, Amen.

P.S.  If you need encouragement that God can do anything, absolutely anything, I hope you’ll take some time out of your day to watch a special video about a woman named Liesl Alexander.  I’ve corresponded with Liesl many times over the years, and her story and her life show that no one is beyond God’s reach, and no situation is too far gone for God to redeem it.

http://free2live.org.uk/video-testimony

Today’s Scripture:  Nehemiah 6:1-4

http://www.biblegateway.com

To read more from this series, “Nehemiah: Lessons In Rebuilding,” visit:

http://theranch.org/Nehemiah.572.0.html

Godspeed

Webpastor B

www.jesuspodkast.org

Change of heart

 

Mom got up early Sunday morning and got the kids ready for church. Dad sat in the living room, reading his newspaper and looking out at the snow.

They’d had the conversation before, but nothing had changed. “Why don’t you go with us this week?” she asked. He didn’t look up from his paper. “You know why,” he said out loud and then in his own mind finished the answer with “A truly great God wouldn’t care about puny humans anyway.” The man replayed the argument in his mind: “If God is so perfect and great, why would he care about helping us? If God is so powerful, why would he make his son become a human being? Why would he stoop so low to help us….if God is really so great.”

The house was silent except for the sound of the logs crackling in the fireplace. From the other end of the house came a strange thump. The man put down his paper and walked down the hall.

Outside the window huddled a group of birds. In confusion and fear, they had flown into the window pane and fallen to the ground. They huddled together in the snow trying to figure out what to do next. The man felt sorry for the birds. He thought to himself, “The birds could go in our barn and they’d be warm there.” So he went outside and opened the door to the barn. Then he waited in the cold. The birds didn’t move.

“I know, I’ll shoe them over to the barn door,” the man thought. But as he tried to herd the birds to the barn they simply scattered. Only after he left them alone did they come back to their spot in the snow.

The man had one last plan. He went back in the house and got a loaf of bread. Carefully, he tore off pieces of bread and made a path to the barn door. But the birds just huddled closer together, ignoring the gift of life which the man was offering.

Stumped, the man stood looking at the birds, wondering just what it would ake to get them to safety. He thought to himself, “If only I could become a bird and lead them to safety, then they wouldn’t have to die.” And he stopped and thought about it again. And he finally understood.

And the next Sunday things were different. 

Contributed by Mark Phillips at LOVE Notes–Weekly Words of Encouragement. www.dailywisdom.com

Godspeed

Webpastor B

www.jesuspodkast.org

Hamas has taken refuge in Gaza hospitals and schools

 

Israeli Public Security Minister Avi Dichter on Monday said that top tier Hamas commanders and many of their subordinates have taken refuge in hospitals and schools across Gaza City as Israeli forces advance on their traditional bases of operations.

Dichter said that Shifa Hospital, Gaza City’s main medical center, has become the de facto Hamas headquarters.

“Shifa Hospital has long ago ceased to be just a hospital, just as the UN humanitarian and health services in Gaza long ago ceased to be just humanitarian services providing food and medical services,” Dichter said in an interview with Army Radio.

UN and other schools were being similarly used by the terrorists.

Dichter said that for obvious reasons Israel will avoid targeting Shifa Hospital and other public places being misused by Hamas, but suggested that Israel is less than pleased with the international community for ignoring these blatant violations of the Geneva Conventions.

Israel Today 12 january 2009.

Godspeed

Webpastor B

www.jesuspodkast.org

Thousands support Israel at UK rallies

Jan. 11, 2009
Jonny paul, Jerusalem post correspondent in London , THE JERUSALEM POST

Protected by a massive police cordon, pro-Israeli groups rallied in London and Manchester on Sunday, a day after violent clashes erupted at an anti-Israel demonstration opposite the Israeli Embassy.

Some 5,000 people stood with Israel in Trafalgar Square in London and 3,000 at Albert Square in central Manchester calling for “peace for the people of Israel and Gaza” and an end to “Hamas terror.”

“The basic simple goal of the people of Israel is to be allowed to live in peace, without violence, without fear and without terror,” Ambassador Ron Prosor told the crowd in London. “We tell the terrorists enough is enough. They, and not us, will be defeated.”

The London rally almost fell victim to a hoax e-mail stating that it was canceled. However, community organizations put on a mammoth effort that included phone calls, e-mails and messages over the social networking site Facebook to make sure people knew it was going ahead.

The e-mail claimed to be from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the representative organization of Anglo-Jewry and one of the organizers of Sunday’s rally.

A community leader who asked not to be named told The Jerusalem Post that an arrest has been made. Police confirmed they were looking into “an allegation of a malicious e-mail communication” but could not confirm an arrest.

The hoax e-mail said that the Board of Deputies, in consultation with other Jewish organizations had decided to cancel the rally “after intense discussions within the community, due to a feeling that such a demonstration would not be in accordance with the board’s wish to bring the conflict to an immediate conclusion.”

It claimed that the board had called for an immediate cease-fire and for Israel to negotiate with Hamas.

“The board stands in solidarity with the besieged and injured people of Gaza, as well as the victims of terrorism in Israel, and we oppose all violence as contrary to the tenets of the Jewish religion,” the fraudulent e-mail said. “We would like to reach out to the British Muslim community, as well as those of no religion who have demonstrated against Israel’s military campaign. We share your anguish at the destruction and loss of life caused and hope that our action in calling off our demonstration will be a small step towards peace.”

There was a 1,000 strong counter-protest in London, where mainly Jewish anti-Zionist groups and Muslim protesters carried placards saying: “We are all Hamas” and “Stop the Holocaust in Gaza.”

At the end of the rally, sections of both sides remained behind and taunted each other – police allowed this to happen for around 20 minutes before moving the demonstrators on.

There was also a small counter-demonstration in Manchester. No trouble was reported.

On Saturday, protesters marching from Hyde Park in central London to the Israeli Embassy waved Hizbullah and al-Qaida flags and chanted “Hey, ho, Israel has gotta go” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Many held placards with Nazi analogies such as “Gaza = Warsaw Ghetto,” “Gaza: NaZionist death camp” and “Stop the Holocaust in Gaza.”

At the embassy, masked protesters pushed over crowd control barriers, threw things at police and set off firecrackers and fire extinguishers. Shop windows were smashed and pieces of broken window were thrown at police.

Police reported that three officers were injured, including one who was knocked unconscious, and at least 15 arrests were made.

Meanwhile, a group of prominent Jewish community members has called on Israel to cease its military operation in Gaza, saying that only negotiations can secure Israel’s security.

In a letter in Sunday’s Observer newspaper, a group of rabbis, and Jewish academics and politicians – that includes Sir Jeremy Beecham, former chairman of the Labor Party; Baroness Julia Neuberger, a rabbi and the Liberal Democrat whip in the House of Lords; head of the Reform Movement Rabbi Dr. Tony Bayfield; and the chief executive of Liberal Judaism, Rabbi Danny Rich – warned that Israel’s action will “strengthen extremism.”

“We are concerned that rather than bringing security to Israel, a continued military offensive could strengthen extremists, destabilize the region and exacerbate tensions inside Israel with its one million Arab citizens,” the letter stated.

The signatories, who describe themselves as “passionate supporters of Israel,” also wrote that Israel has a right to defend itself, calling Hamas’s actions a “war crime.”

However, they said Israel’s actions threatened to undermine international support and that “now only negotiations can secure long-term security for Israel and the region.”

Meanwhile, Canadian author Naomi Klein has called for a boycott of Israel.

Writing in the Guardian newspaper’s blog, “Comment is Free,” on Saturday, she said the best strategy to “end the increasingly bloody occupation” is for Israel “to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.”

“Economic sanctions are the most effective tool in the nonviolent arsenal: surrendering them verges on active complicity,” Klein wrote.

 

Godspeed

Webpastor B

www.jesuspodkast.org

God bless you

 

Rick Warren (REMEMBER HE WROTE ‘PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE‘)

You will enjoy the new insights that Rick Warren has, with his wife now having cancer and him having ‘wealth’ from the book sales. This is an absolutely incredible short interview with Rick Warren, ‘Purpose Driven Life ‘ author and pastor of Saddleback Church in California

 
In the interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren, Rick said:
People ask me, What is the purpose of life? And I respond: In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were not made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven.
One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body– but not the end of me.

I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act – the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity.

We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn’t going to make sense.

Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you’re just coming out of one, or you’re getting ready to go into another one.

The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort.

God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy.

We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that’s not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.
This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer.

I used to think that life was hills and valleys – you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don’t believe that anymore.

Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it’s kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life.

No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on.

And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for.

You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems.

If you focus on your problems, you’re going into self-centeredness,’which is my problem, my issues, my pain.’ But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.

We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her.

It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people.
You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life.
Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy. It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don’t think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease.

So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, II Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72

First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases.
Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church.

Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation.

Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free.

We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity?

Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God’s purposes (for my life)?

When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don’t get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better. God didn’t put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He’s more interested in what I am than what I do.

That’s why we’re called human beings, not human doings.
Happy moments, PRAISE GOD.
Difficult moments, SEEK GOD.
Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD.
Painful moments, TRUST GOD.
Every moment, THANK GOD.
God’s Blessings on you today.

 

Godspeed

Webpastor B

www.jesuspodkast.org