Churches ordered closed during Olympics - Pastors forced to sign agreements not to meet for 90 days

An organization founded by a man who escaped from China after being persecuted for his Christian faith says it has uncovered a secret Chinese government document demanding that churches shut their doors for 90 days around the Beijing Olympics.

"Should church members violate these rules they will be subject to the disciplinary actions of the Chinese government," said the report from China Aid Association, an organization dedicated to helping persecuted Christians.

"Pastors were forced to sign a written agreement that they would not participate in religious services while the Olympic Games are taking place in China," the organization said.

China Aid said the document, drafted by Chinese government officials, specifies that the house churches in China "refrain from organizing and joining illegal gatherings and refrain from receiving donations, sermons and preaching from overseas religious organizations and groups that have a purpose."

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Muslim father burns Christian daughter alive - Man slices out girl's tongue, ignites her after 'heated debate on religion'

A Saudi Arabian Muslim father cut out his daughter's tongue and lit her on fire upon learning that she had become a Christian.

The child became curious about Jesus Christ after she read Christian material online, the Gulf News reported.

Her father read of her Internet conversation, detached her tongue and burned her to death "following a heated debate on religion," according to an International Christian Concern report.

The father is employed by the muwateen, or Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. The muwateen are police tasked by the government with enforcing religious purity. The man has been taken into custody, and his identity has not been released.

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Random House pulls novel on Islam, fears violence

Publisher Random House has pulled a novel about the Prophet Mohammed's child bride, fearing it could "incite acts of violence."

"The Jewel of Medina," a debut novel by journalist Sherry Jones, 46, was due to be published on August 12 by Random House, a unit of Bertelsmann AG, and an eight-city publicity tour had been scheduled, Jones told Reuters on Thursday.

The novel traces the life of A'isha from her engagement to Mohammed, when she was six, until the prophet's death. Jones said that she was shocked to learn in May, that publication would be postponed indefinitely.

"I have deliberately and consciously written respectfully about Islam and Mohammed ... I envisioned that my book would be a bridge-builder," said Jones.

Random House deputy publisher Thomas Perry said in a statement the company received "cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment."

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Start of Olympics on 8.8.08 Hardly 'Lucky' for Suffering Christians

8.8.08 will signal the start of the long-awaited 2008 Beijing Olympic Games on Friday with the elaborate opening ceremonies.

The Chinese consider eight a lucky number because in Cantonese it sounds like the word for "get rich" or "prosper."

Many Chinese will celebrate Aug. 8, 2008 as one of the most important dates in Chinese history – the launching of a prestigious event for the entire world to see the "new, open China."

But many Christians are hardly "lucky" this year. The fact is that many Christians have suffered even harsher persecution by the Chinese government due to the glare of the Olympic spotlight. As a result, many have been thrown into prison or transported to areas far away from Beijing and the Games venues. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) reported last week that nearly 700 Protestant leaders who are not registered with the government have been placed in custody in the past year.

An estimated 100 million Christians worldwide suffer interrogation, arrest and even death for their faith in Christ, with more millions facing discrimination and alienation.

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Saudis to Christians: Get out! - Those accused of worshipping in homes ordered deported

More than a dozen Christians in Saudi Arabia who were accused by government officials of worshipping in their homes have been ordered deported.

According to a report from International Christian Concern, the Christians will be expelled tomorrow for their part in a home worship service in Taif in April.

The deportation conflicts with the message stated just weeks earlier by Saudi King Abdullah, who called for interfaith dialogue and held a summit in Spain with a representatives from several major religions.

"Deporting Christians for worshipping in their private homes shows that King Abdullah's speech is mere rhetoric and his country is deceiving the international community about their desire for change and reconciliation," said Jeff King, the president of ICC.

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More Obama News

Here are some Obama stories that are not your typical headlines, but you might want to check them out, as they offer things you may not hear on CNN, CBS, ect...

Obama site: Jews must be 'burned' -
Anti-Semites congregate on candidate's official presidential campaign blog

Arabs deny Obama camp returned illegal donations
Candidate's staffers insist Gaza brothers refunded, but men say, 'We did not receive any money back'

Almost half polled say 'enough already' from Obama

Anti-Obama Bloggers Say They Were Silenced

Has Obama prepped world for the Antichrist?

Interesting Commentary by Hal Lindsey. Worth some consideration.

From WorldNetDaily

Prayer targets world's 3rd largest mission field – America

A blanket of prayer for America is being proposed for Sept. 11, 2008, the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, because it no longer is the Christian nation it once was, according to a coalition of organizations.

"America used to send out missionaries," Matti Stevenson, a spokeswoman for the effort, told WND. "Now it's the third-largest mission field itself. People from Africa are coming to help us. What does that say?

"It just takes my breath away," she said.

The project is called "Cry Out America" and intends to have a prayer vigil in every county – all 3,141 of them – on that day. It's being assembled by the Awakening America Alliance, a non-partisan, broad coalition of Christian leaders, denominations, churches, ministries and others.

"America is a nation in great spiritual decline evidenced by current statistics which show that only 17 percent of Americans attend church on any given Sunday and that America is the third largest mission field in the world," the organization said.

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No Bomb Sniffing Dogs Please, We Don't Want to Offend the Jihadist

Bomb sniffing dogs used by British Transit Police in the U.K. are no longer allowed to come in contact with Muslims. Why? It's against their religion of course. In the Muslim faith, dogs are deemed to be spiritually “unclean”.

Studies by Islamic Jihadist have shown that actually wearing suicide vests renders the devices more effective in lieu of checking them with the rest of their luggage. Nonetheless, a report for the Transport Department has stated that the animals should only touch passengers’ luggage because it is considered “more acceptable”.

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State Dept. promotes 'Mosques in America' - Publishes '09 calendar featuring worship sites for only 1 religion

This now available from the U.S. State Department: "2009 Mosques of America Wall Calendar: Limited Edition for Ramadan."

"Yep, you read that correctly. It's 'perfect for Muslim outreach efforts," according to a commentary at the Gates of Vienna blog. "Where's the ACLU on this one?"

The product was being advertised by "Global Publishing Solutions," a division of the U.S. State Department, until bloggers started talking about it.

Officials then apparently hid the page behind the security of a password-protected wall. However, the page is still viewable in a Google cache of the website.

This item is on sale until August 1st, 2008 in shrink-wrapped packs of 20 pieces.

"Remember," said the Internet commentator, "This was on an official State Department (state.gov) web page. GPS describes itself this way: 'The Global Publishing Solutions, manages this site as a gateway to information and transactions for their U.S. State Department clients."

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When Human Rights Extend to Nonhumans

The environment committee of the Spanish Parliament last month voted to grant limited rights to the great apes — chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans.

The committee would bind Spain to the principles of the Great Ape Project, which points to apes’ human qualities, including the ability to feel fear and happiness, create tools, use languages, remember the past and plan the future. The project’s directors, Peter Singer, the Princeton ethicist, and Paola Cavalieri, an Italian philosopher, regard apes as part of a “community of equals” with humans.

If the bill passes — the news agency Reuters predicts it will — it would become illegal in Spain to kill apes except in self-defense. Torture, including in medical experiments, and arbitrary imprisonment, including for circuses or films, would be forbidden.

The 300 apes in Spanish zoos would not be freed, but better conditions would be mandated.

More monkey buisness from The New York Times

Pastor among suspects in illegal snake bust

The pastor of a Kentucky church that handles snakes in religious rites was among 10 people arrested by wildlife officers in a crackdown on the venomous snake trade. More than 100 snakes, many of them deadly, were confiscated in the undercover sting after Thursday's arrests, said Col. Bob Milligan, director of law enforcement for Kentucky Fish and Wildlife.

Most were taken from the Middlesboro home of Gregory James Coots, including 42 copperheads, 11 timber rattlesnakes, three cottonmouth water moccasins, a western diamondback rattlesnake, two cobras and a puff adder.

The snakes, plus one alligator, were turned over to the nonprofit Kentucky Reptile Zoo in Slade. Most appeared to have been captured from the wild, with some imported from Asia and Africa.

Zoo Director Jim Harrison said some of the animals would likely have become exotic pets had they not been seized.

"You can purchase anything off the Internet except common sense," Harrison said. "A venomous snake isn't a pet. You don't play with it. If you do, you're an idiot."

More at Yahoo News

U.N. scheme to make Christians criminals Sharia-following Islamic nations demanding anti-'defamation' law

Dozens of nations dominated by Islam are pressing the United Nations to adopt an anti-"defamation" plan that would make Christians criminals under international law, according to a United States organization that has launched a campaign to defend freedom of religion worldwide.

"Around the world, Christians are being increasingly targeted, and even persecuted, for their religious beliefs. Now, one of the largest organizations in the United Nations is pushing to make a bad situation even worse by promoting anti-Christian bigotry," the American Center for Law & Justice said yesterday in announcing its petition drive.

The discrimination is "wrapped in the guise of a U.N. resolution called 'Combating Defamation of Religions,'" the announcement said. "We must put an immediate end to this most recent, dangerous attack on faith that attempts to criminalize Christianity."

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Iranians consider mandatory execution for apostasy - Christians being interrogated on suspicion of crime of leaving Islam

A plan is being discussed by lawmakers in Iran that would require the death penalty for anyone who leaves Islam for Christianity or someone who promotes such a conversion even on the Internet, according to a new report from Compass Direct News.

Those discussions of a penal code that was drafted earlier this year bring urgency to situations such as the two men arrested recently and under interrogation for that very crime, the report said.

Under the existing sharia laws in Iran, the death penalty is available for the crime of apostasy, but not required.

The proposal, however, would change that.

"If passed, the penal code drafted last January would require execution of any Muslim who converts to Christianity," Compass said. Such punishments could not be "changed, reduced or annulled."

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'Gay' man sues Bible publishers $70 million for emotional distress because homosexuality cast as sin

A homosexual man who has a blog on Sen. Barack Obama's campaign website is suing two major Christian publishers for violating his constitutional rights and causing emotional pain, because the Bible versions they publish refer to homosexuality as a sin.

Bradley LaShawn Fowler, 39, of Canton, Mich., is seeking $60 million from Zondervan and another $10 million from Thomas Nelson Publishing in lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, the Grand Rapids Press reported.

Fowler filed his claim against Grand Rapids-based Zondervan Monday, alleging its Bibles' references to homosexuality as a sin have made him an outcast from his family and contributed to physical discomfort and periods of "demoralization, chaos and bewilderment," the paper said.

He filed suit against Tennessee publisher Thomas Nelson in June.

Zondervan says that even if Fowler's claim is credible, he's suing the wrong party. A company spokesman told WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids that Zondervan doesn't translate the Bible or own the copyright for any of the translations but relies, instead, on the "scholarly judgment of credible translation committees."

Just assuming he could actually win, which is very unlikely, what good for him or anyone else to gain millions, or even the whole world and then loose their soul? And how can you sue a man or a company if you are in disagreement with God? It is His word after all.

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Al Qaeda Expanding Recruitment Of Children

Al Qaeda has successfully established a network for recruiting boys as young as 12 from across central Asia as it seeks new volunteers to enlarge its team of prospective suicide bombers and militants fighters, senior security officials from the Middle East have revealed to CBS News.

News of al Qaeda venturing into the former Soviet central Asian republics with a population that has a largely Muslim heritage marks a significant addition to reports earlier this year that the hardline group had recruited young boys in the Pak-Afghan border region.

Last May, a senior Pakistani security official showed a rare video clip to CBS News documenting a boy, barely 12 years old, using a machete to severe the head of a middle-aged man whom militants probably suspected as being a spy for the U.S.

In an execution which typified the Taliban brand of quick justice, that boy severed the head of his victim who was completely tied up and thrown on the ground as a crowd of hundreds of spectators cheered.

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Will the World End in 2012? - Thousands Worldwide Prepare for the Apocalypse, Expected in 2012

Two years ago, Patrick Geryl, then 51, quit his job as a laboratory worker for a French oil company. He'd saved up just enough money to last him until December 2012. After that, he thought, he wouldn't need it anyway.

Instead, Geryl, a soft-spoken man who had studied chemistry in his younger years, started preparing for the apocalypse. He founded a "survival group" for likeminded men and women, aimed at living through the catastrophe he knew was coming.

He started gathering materials necessary to survive — water purifiers, wheelbarrows (with spare tires), dust masks and vegetable seeds. His list of survival goods runs 11 pages long.

That's because Geryl believes the world as we know it will end in 2012. He points to the ancient Maya cyclical calendars, the longest of which last renewed itself approximately 5,125 years ago and is set to end again, supposedly with catastrophic consequences, in 2012. He speaks of the ancient Egyptians, who, he claims, saw 2012 as a year of great change too. And he points to science: NASA predicts a sharp increase in the number of sunspots and sun flares for 2012, he said, sure to cause electrical failures and satellite disruptions.

These may sound like the ravings of a madman, or perhaps the head of a small apocalyptic sect. But Geryl is not the only one who believes in the apocalypse. Thousands of people worldwide seem to be preparing, in one way or another, for the end of days in 2012. Survival groups exist in Europe, Canada and the United States. A simple Google search for "2012" and "the end of the world" brings up nearly 300,000 hits. And the video-sharing Web site YouTube hosts more than 65,000 clips informing and warning viewers about their fate in 2012.

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Group Asks for Divine Intervention to Ease Oil Prices

As the price of oil continues to rise, some are turning to God and prayer for an answer to their financial troubles.

The Pray at the Pump Movement, founded by Rocky Twyman, has been holding prayer vigils at gas stations across the country. On Monday, Twyman decided to take his movement from Exxon and Shell stations straight to the steps of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, D.C., hoping to encourage the oil-rich country to raise the amount of barrels they release each day from 200,000 to 1.2 million.

Twyman, who is a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, spent the afternoon outside of the embassy praying and asking passersby to sign his petition for the release of more oil, which he hopes to deliver to the Saudi oil minister.

"Our people are really suffering through this crisis," Twyman told Cybercast News Service. "We need the Saudis to release at least 1.2 [million] barrels of oil per day for about the next six months until we can get everything settled in America ... (I)f they can just do that for us, than this will help us get through this crisis."

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Presbyterians move to allow gay clergy, but fight remains

The nation's largest Presbyterian denomination on Friday (June 27) cracked open the door to ordaining non-celibate gay and lesbian clergy, though the decades-old fight is far from over.

Delegates at the Presbyterian Church (USA) meeting here voted 54 percent to 46 percent to remove a clause in their constitution that requires clergy to be either married and faithful or single and chaste.

In a related move, delegates approved an "authoritative interpretation" of church rules on gay clergy, a move that was meant to piece back together a delicate compromise forged two years ago that was rejected by the church's highest court. Under the new interpretation, gay and lesbian clergy would be allowed to declare a conscientious objection to rules that would otherwise prohibit them. Local bodies could then choose to ordain them, or deny them access to the pulpit.

"I think the word that best describes what we feel is grief," said Terry Schlossberg of Presbyterian Coalition, a group that sought to preserve the ordination standards. "We think the implications are very serious and will do a great deal of harm to the church." In the proposal that now heads out to local presbyteries, delegates voted to replace language in the church's Book of Order that required ordination candidates to live "in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness."

It's getting bad when the Clergy don't even read their Bible or worse when they choose to ignore what is in it.

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Democratic Party official accused in satanic rape, kidnap

Joy Johnson

A Democratic Party official and her husband are facing charges in connection with alleged satanic rituals involving the kidnap, rape and starvation of another couple in North Carolina.

Joy Johnson, 30, a vice-chairwoman of the Durham County Democratic Party and vice chairwoman of the Young Democrats, made an appearance in court yesterday after she and her spouse, Joseph Craig, were arrested Friday.

Craig, 25, is charged with second-degree rape, second-degree kidnapping and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon for an incident in January and another in May. Johnson is charged with two counts of aiding and abetting.

According to published and broadcast reports, prosecutors said a man and a woman met Craig through a shared interest in Satan worship, although the couple never consented to any physical abuse.

Joseph Craig

Craig allegedly shackled his victims to beds, kept them in dog cages and starved them inside his home. Police say he beat the man with a cane and a cord, and raped the woman.

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