💭 When we hear Muslims claim that the State of Israel posed threats to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, our attention should be turned again to Haj Amin al-Husseini, the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a collaborator with Nazi Germany and the leader of Arab Palestinian nationalism before and immediately after World War II. Some historians and, briefly, Israels Prime Minister Netanyahu also attributed to Husseini a significant decision-making role in the Holocaust in Europe.
“And he called out with a mighty voice, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast.“
🐦 Can Animals And Birds Predict Earthquake?
According to a report from United States Geological Survey, The oldest account of strange animal behaviour prior to a large earthquake dates back to 373 BC in Greece. Rats, weasels, snakes, and centipedes reportedly fled their homes several days before a devastating earthquake.
Animals and birds may sense earthquake by various ways. Some animals may be sensitive to changes in the electromagnetic field that occur before an earthquake. Some may detect changes in barometric pressure, which can occur before an earthquake.
Animals that are close to the ground, such as those in burrows or nests, may be able to feel the ground movements that occur before an earthquake. Earthquakes generate low-frequency vibrations that can be felt by some animals, such as dogs, before they can be felt by humans.
✞ The 129-year-old Assumption Church in Chan Thar in Ye-U township in the northwestern Sagaing region was set ablaze on Jan. 15, along with many villagers’ homes.
Myanmar junta forces have continued their attacks on Christian communities by torching a more than century-old Catholic church in a predominantly Christian village.
The church was completely destroyed in the inferno. However, there were no human casualties as villagers managed to flee before the army arrived.
The place of worship built in 1894 had a ‘priceless’ historical value for Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Before setting fire to it, soldiers desecrated it by drinking and smoking inside. Catholics and Buddhists have lived together in harmony in the area for centuries. In the past year, the village has been attacked four times by militia, without any clashes or provocations.
It is a new wound for the religious minority, after two air force fighter jets carried out a raid in Karen State in recent days, destroying a church and killing five people including a child.
The first Catholic presence in the area, which refers to the diocese of Mandalay, dates back about 500 years and the village of Chan Thar itself arose and developed thanks to the work of descendants of Portuguese Catholics who then inhabited it for centuries.
In the village, the population has always been predominantly Catholic, scattered in 800 houses in close contact and harmony with two neighbouring Buddhist centres. Last year, the military set fire to the houses of Chan Thar on 7 May and a second time a month later, on 7 June 2022, destroying 135 buildings.
The third assault took place on 14 December, just before the start of the Christmas celebrations; the last was a few days ago, on 14 January 2023, when the Tatmadaw (Armed Forces) men razed and burnt almost all the houses.
Local sources, on condition of anonymity, report that the soldiers attacked and set fire to the church “for no apparent reason”, because there was no fighting or confrontation going on in the area, and without any provocation.
The soldiers had been stationed in the area in front of the church since the evening of 14 January, and before leaving the area, they carried out an “atrocity” by setting fire to the building and “completely burning” the church, the parish priest’s house and the centuries-old nunnery, which collapsed after being enveloped in flames.
The Church of Our Lady of the Assumption was a source of pride for Catholics in Upper Myanmar not only because of its centuries-old tradition, the baptism of the first bishop and the birth of three other archbishops and over 30 priests and nuns.
The place of worship was in fact a historical and cultural heritage for the entire country, including Buddhists, and proof of this is the climate of fraternal cooperation that was established between the different communities.
The church, bell tower and other buildings were destroyed on the morning of 15 January. Government soldiers, an eyewitness revealed, also “desecrated” the sacredness of the place by “looting, drinking alcohol and smoking” inside.
In response to the attack, a number of Burmese priests on social networks have been raising appeals to pray for the country and for the Christian community itself. On the other hand, there have been no official statements or declarations from the Archdiocese of Yangon and Card. Charles Bo.
“We are deeply sorrowful as our historic church has been destroyed. It was our last hope,” a Catholic villager, who did not want to be identified due to repercussions by the army, said.
Villagers said a Marian grotto and the adoration chapel were spared. But the parish priest’s house and the nuns’ convent were destroyed.
They said the army arrived in the village in the conflict-torn Sagaing region on the evening of Jan. 14 and set many houses on fire and stayed in the church overnight before setting it ablaze early on Jan. 15, when local Catholics were expected to arrive for worship.
More than 500 houses in the village were also destroyed. in what was the fourth raid on the village in eight months.
“We have no more houses and the church where there was an antique painting of St Mary, which can’t be replaced,” another resident who wished to remain anonymous said.
The junta is targeting the Sagaing region to tackle growing resistance to its rule by people’s defense forces who are suspected to be based there.
Christians make up around 8.2 percent of Myanmar’s 55 million population. The junta has repeatedly raided Chan Thar since May, 2022. Nearly 20 houses were destroyed and two Catholics, including a mentally disturbed person, were killed during a raid on May 7, 2022. More than 100 houses were set ablaze a month later on June 7. In a raid on Dec.14, more than 300 houses were torched.
Thousands have fled the village since last May and taken shelter in churches near Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, and at relatives’ homes in other parts of the country.
Chaung Yoe, Mon Hla and Chan Thar, which are part of Mandalay archdiocese, are known as Bayingyi villages because their inhabitants claim that they are the descendants of Portuguese adventurers who arrived in the region in the 16th and 17th centuries. These villages have produced many bishops, priests, and nuns for the Church.
✞ São Paulo: The Oldest Orthodox Church in Brazil Was Destroyed by a Fire
💭 The Antiochian Orthodox Church of the Annunciation to the Theotokos, in São Paulo, was destroyed in a fire yesterday and today. It had been founded in 1904 by Syrian and Lebanese immigrants, seven years after the first Divine Liturgy in Brazilian history had been celebrated in a room in the same street. The community had mostly merged with that of the Orthodox Metropolitan Cathedral, but there were still weekly liturgies that kept the memory of the temple alive. Only the altar survived, but some icons could be retrieved from the walls.
The fire started in a nearby store, and it doesn’t seem anyone was hurt.
In 2016, Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church visited The Antiochian Orthodox Church of the Annunciation to the Theotokos, which was founded in 1904
The Karen are a large and dispersed ethnic group of Southeast Asia. They trace their origins to the Gobi Desert, Mongolia, or Tibet. Karen settled in Burma/Myanmar’s southern Irrawaddy Delta area and in the hills along the Salween River in eastern Myanmar and in neighboring Thailand. In the past numerous peoples were considered Karen sub-groups: the Pwo Karen (mostly delta rice-growers), the Sgaw Karen of the mountains; and the Kayahs (also called Karennis), Pa-Os, and Kayans (also called Padaungs), who live in the Karenni and Shan States of Myanmar. Now all of these groups consider themselves distinct ethnic groups.
The total population of Karen in around 6 million (although some it could be as high as 9 million according to some sources) with 4 million to 5 million in Myanmar, over 1 million in Thailand, 215,000 in the United States(2018), more than 11,000 in Australia, 4,500 to 5,000 in Canada and 2,500 in India in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and 2,500 in Sweden,
🔥 ‘A Living Hell’: Churches, Clergy Targeted By Myanmar Military
On Thursday, a Baptist pastor and a Catholic deacon were killed in Lay Wah village, two women wounded, hundreds flee. Karen rebels call the attack a “war crime”, urge the international community to cut off fuel supplies to ruling military junta. Myanmar’s government-in-exile condemns the attacks, extends condolences to victims’ families.
Thursday afternoon two jet fighters attacked Lay Wah, a village located in Mutraw district, Karen State, south-eastern Myanmar.
The area is under the control of the Karen National Union (KNU) whose armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), has been repeatedly engaged in heavy fighting with Myanmar’s regular army.
At least five people were killed as a result of the bombing. Hundreds of residents hastily left their homes and fled, fearing further raids and more violence.
Local sources report that at least two bombs were dropped. Over the past few days, two churches and a school, as well as several other buildings were hit.
The mother and the child died instantly, while a Baptist pastor and a Catholic deacon succumbed later to their injuries. Two other women were wounded albeit not seriously.
The child, Naw Marina, would have turned three next month; she died along with her mother, Naw La Kler Paw; Catholic deacon Naw La Kler Paw; Rev Saw Cha Aye; and the last victim, Saw Blae, a villager who helped out in church.
Four large craters now dot the area, the result of the blasts; some believe the churches were the target. But luckily, the death toll was limited because the school was closed. For some time, its pupils have been attending lessons in a nearby forest.
KNU spokesperson Padoh Saw Taw Nee described the bombing as a “war crime”. For him, “It is very important to stop the supply of fuel for the junta military’s aircraft,” to limit the attacks.
“I ask again that the international community take more effective action against the junta,” he added.
Following the bombing of Lay Wah, Myanmar’s exiled National Unity Government (NUG), which includes former MPs from Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League of Democracy, issued a statement condemning the raid.
“We convey our condolences to all those who have lost their lives,” the press release said. “ We pledge that we will do our utmost to bring justice for all those lives lost, be it national or international,”
Myanmar’s military junta has repeatedly attacked civilian targets in Karen and Kachin states and Sagaing and Magwe regions. So far, the bombing campaign has killed at least 460 civilians, including many children.
👉 Just in:
One person was killed and eight others wounded when rebels opposed to the ruling junta attacked a state celebration in eastern Myanmar today, the military said.
The nation has been in turmoil since Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government was toppled in an army coup almost two years ago.
Long-established ethnic rebel groups, as well as dozens of “People’s Defence Forces” (PDF), have emerged in opposition.
The junta said one man was killed when a rebel group and PDF shelled an event in eastern Kayah’s capital Loikaw early Sunday as people gathered to celebrate the anniversary of the state’s recognition.
“The artillery fell at the celebration area near city hall and at the ward where people were staying,” a junta statement said.
Among those wounded were six students, as well as a man and a woman, the military said, adding that some security services personnel were also hurt.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
More than 2,700 civilians have been killed since the military grabbed power in February 2021, according to a local monitoring group.
The junta blames anti-coup fighters for a civilian death toll it has put at almost 3,900. — AFP
🔥 Genocide Alert: Attacks on Ethiopia’s oldest Churches and Monastries.
There are new reports that the joint Eritrean & Ethiopian fascists forces are bombarding Debre Damo, one of THE OLDEST MONASTRIES of the Orthodox Church (6th century), with heavy artillery. Dozens of civilian casualties, mainly monks, also reported
Saint Abune Aregawi (also called Za-Mika’el ‘Aragawi) was a sixth-century monk, whom tradition holds founded the Monastery.
💭 History repeats itself:
🔥 Amharas & Oromos bombing Tigray, Using Rape, Hunger & forced resettlement (Mengistu did it back then, Abiy Ahmedl is doing the same evil now) as a Weapon against People in Tigray for the past 130 years:-
😈 Menelik ll: Half Oromo + Half Amhara = Oromo (Crypto-Muslim / Man of the flesh)
😈 Haile Selassie: Half Oromo + Half Amhara = Oromo (Crypto-Muslim / Man of the flesh)
😈 Mengistu Hailemariam: Half Oromo + Half Amhara = Oromo (Crypto-Muslim / Man of the flesh)
😈 Abiy Ahmed Ali ´= Half Oromo + Half Amhara = Oromo (Crypto-Muslim / Man of the flesh)
✤✤✤ [Galatians 5:19-21]✤✤✤
“Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
😈 Look how Satan worship leads to the cold blooded murder and massacre.
Oromo Ritual human sacrifice: Over 54 Christians massacred
💭 Two days before the fascist Galla-Oromo regime and its allies started an all-out Jihad against ancient Christians of Northern Ethiopia ( 3-4 November, 2020), at least 54 Christians were massacred on the 1st of November, 2020 by the Oromos in in an area of western Ethiopia known as Wollega. Victims mostly Christian Amhara women and children and elderly people. The Christians were dragged from their homes and taken to a school, where they were brutally massacred. Drunk with the blood of the Christians, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, the Satan-worshiping Oromos went on slaughtering over a million Orthodox Christians across Tigray, historical northern Ethiopia.
💭 If you were traveling through the verdant Ethiopian highlands, you might make a stop at the Abba Gärima monastery about three miles east of Adwa in the northernmost part of the country. If you were a man—and you’d have to be to gain entry into the Orthodox monastery—then you might be permitted to look at the Abba Gärima Gospel books. These exquisitely illuminated manuscripts are the earliest evidence of the art of the Christian Aksumite kingdom. Legend holds that God stopped the sun in the sky so the copyist could finish them. Leafing through a Gospel book you would come upon portraits of the four evangelists—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—the authors of the book’s contents. You might be surprised to find, however, that there is a fifth evangelist included there.
“A fifth evangelist?!” you say, and rightly so. This fifth portrait is that of Eusebius of Caesarea, the man who taught us how to read the Gospels. A new book, Eusebius the Evangelist: Rewriting the Fourfold Gospel in Late Antiquity, by Dr. Jeremiah Coogan, an assistant professor of New Testament at the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University, sheds light on history’s lost “fifth evangelist” and explains the pervasive influence of the bishop who has, arguably, done more than anyone else to shape how we read the gospels.
Eusebius of Caesarea is not a very well-known name outside of scholarly circles. He was born in the last half of the third century in Caesarea Maritima, in what is today Israel. He became first a priest and then a bishop. He would later become a biographer of the emperor Constantine possibly even a wheeler-dealer in the ecclesiastical politics of the imperial court. Under the influence of the third-century theologian Origen, who spent a long period of his life in Caesarea, Eusebius became an accomplished textual scholar.
If you’ve heard Eusebius’s name before it’s probably because of his Church History, an account of Christianity’s origins from the Apostles to his own day. As influential as the Church History is—and it became the template for how people have written the history of Christianity ever since—it doesn’t compare to the impact of his less visible and least-known literary production, the canon tables (also known as the Eusebian Apparatus).
In Eusebius’ time the contents of the New Testament were not universally established. Though many agreed that there should be four Gospels, and even grounded this assumption in the natural order of the universe, they did not read the Gospels in parallel. At least part of the reason for this was that, practically speaking, this was hard to do. Even if you had a Gospel book that contained copies of the four canonical Gospels, identifying how the various stories related to one another involved familiarity with the text, deductive skills, and a real facility navigating the physical object itself. Gospel books were big and heavy; the text was usually written in a series of unbroken Greek letters; and there were no chapter, verse, or page numbers to help you find your way.
Enter Eusebius, the man whose invention made reading the Gospels in parallel possible. It is basically a carefully organized reference tool that allows you to navigate books. In a period before chapter and verse divisions, Eusebius and his team of literary assistants divided the canonical Gospels into numbered sections and produced a set of coordinating reference tables that allow readers to cross-reference versions of the same story in other Gospels. This was an important innovation in book technology in general. As Coogan put it “the Eusebian apparatus is the first system of cross-references ever invented—not just for the Gospels, but for any text.” Reference tables might not seem sexy, but by producing them Eusebius inaugurated a trend that would dominate how Christians ever since have read the Bible.
“While Eusebius was never formally denounced as a heretic, some of his opinions were pretty unorthodox.”
The enormity of his innovation is hard to see precisely because it has become ubiquitous. We thread the different sayings of Jesus from the Cross together into one story. We merge the infancy stories of Matthew and Luke together to produce a single shepherd and wise men-filled Nativity story. These decisions are relatively uncomplicated, but we should consider the amount of decision-making that went into the production of this reading scheme. First, the team had to decide on unit divisions: what is a unit, where does it begin, and where does it end? While today church services have designated readings, early Christians often read for as “long as time permitted.” In segmenting the Gospel, the Eusebian team was cementing preexisting yet informal distinctions about what constituted a particular story, episode, or section of the life of Jesus.
Once this was accomplished, each unit had to be correlated to the corresponding units in the other Gospels. Some decisions seem easy: Jesus feeds 5,000 people in all four Gospels, for example. But there is an additional story—relayed by Mark and Luke—in which he feeds 4,000 people. What should we do with them? What about chronological discrepancies? The incident in the Jerusalem Temple where Jesus gets into a physical dispute with moneychangers appears in the final week of his life in the Synoptics but kicks off his ministry in the Gospel of John. Are they the same story? Did Jesus cleanse the Temple twice? These were and indeed are live questions for Christian readers, but by drawing up his tables, Eusebius and his team provided answers by means of a simple chart. A great deal of interpretation and theological work happens in the construction of the chart, but the tables seem to be factual accounting. Instead of argumentation that makes itself open to disagreement, we see only beguilingly agent-less lines and numbering.
This kind of schematization might seem to be the ancient equivalent of administrative or clerical work. Indeed, it drew upon technologies and practices from ancient administration, mathematics, astrology, medicine, magic, and culinary arts. The portraits from the Ethiopian Gärima Gospel, however, capture an often-hidden truth: Schematization is theological work. Segmenting the Bible and mapping its contents created theologically motivated juxtapositions and connections. For example, by connecting the story of divine creation from the prologue of the Gospel of John (“In the beginning was the word…”) to the genealogies of Matthew and Luke (the so-and-so begat so-and-so parts), the Eusebian team could underscore the divine and human origins of Jesus. Equally important, they instructed the reader to read the Gospels in a new way: a way that reoriented the original organization. If this shift seems unimportant or intuitive to us, it is only because we have so thoroughly absorbed it.
Take, say, the interweaving of Jesus’s finals words at the crucifixion. Mark’s version ends with Jesus in psychic and physical distress crying that God has abandoned him. It’s an uncomfortable scene and it is meant to be. Luke and John have more self-controlled conclusions: Jesus commends his spirit into the hands of his father (Luke) and authoritatively proclaims his life “finished” (John). Though Eusebius doesn’t reconcile these portraits himself, his apparatus allowed future generations to combine them in a way that neutralizes the discomfort we have when we read Mark.
While others had thought about reading the Gospels alongside one another, it was Eusebius and his team who came up with the tool to do it in a systematic way. From Eusebius onwards, Coogan told The Daily Beast, “most manuscripts of the Gospels included the Eusebian apparatus. When a reader encountered the Gospels on the page, they generally did so in a form shaped by Eusebius’ innovative project. While Eusebius prepared his Gospel edition in Greek, the apparatus had an impact in almost every language the Gospels were translated into. We find it in manuscripts in Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopic, Gothic, Georgian, Arabic, Caucasian Albanian, Nubian, Slavonic, Old English, Middle German, and Dutch. Thousands of Gospel manuscripts, from the fourth century to the twentieth, reflect Eusebius’ approach to reading the Gospels.” Even today when academics think about the relationships between the Gospels and print Gospels in parallel with one another, we are asking the same questions as Eusebius did. It might be said that Eusebius is still controlling how we think.
The truth is however that any kind of supplementary material (scholars call them paratexts) like an index or a table of contents creates new ways to read a text. Matthew or Mark may have wanted you to read their stories linearly from start to finish, but Eusebius and his team gave you a new way to read. You could hunt and peck between the bindings. Reading out of order can be powerful work, as Wil Gafney’s A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church is, because it creates new pathways through the text that disrupt the ways that the authors meant the texts to be read. Most authors don’t write narratives with the expectation that people will just use Google to search inside it.
While Eusebius was never formally denounced as a heretic, some of his opinions—including some of the judgments that inform his apparatus—were pretty unorthodox. Like Origen he was sympathetic to views about the nature of Christ that would later be condemned as heresy. It’s probably because of the ambiguities surrounding his theological views that Eusebius, one of the most influential figures in Christian history, never became a saint. But his story proves that it is sometimes invisible actors who are the most powerful of all.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on October 4, 2022
👹 U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe, who is retiring at the end of the year, was in Ethiopia this past weekend. For the 2nd time since the fascist Oromo-Islamo-Protestant regime began the genocidal war two years ago against Orthodox Christians of Tigray, Ethiopia. Of course, the Senator gave 👹 evil Abiy Ahmed Ali another green light to massacre children and women of Tigray. Today, the fascist Oromo’s air force conducted a horrific drone attack in Adi Daero town of Tigray. The air strike on Tigray camp for displaced people killed dozens of children and elderly. This is the second time in a month.
💭 Kosovo all over again. That’s why America is babysitting and allowing the fascist Oromo regime of Ethiopia (which is the enemy of historical Ethiopia, Orthodox Christianity and the Ge’ez Language) to survive – and attack civilian targets:
The aim of this genocidal war is to destroy Ethiopia + Orthodox Christianity + The Ge’ez language.
👹 Senator James Inhofe visits the black Hitler, Abiy Ahmed Ali.
Ethiopian leaders have expressed their genocidal intent in closed-door talks & openly on social media platforms. A while ago, their supporters called, openly, to ‘drain the sea.’ Look at what’s happening in # Tigray; # TigrayGenocide is not a plan anymore, nor is it a hidden desire
💭 TigrayGenocide | The Nobel Peace Laureate PM A. Ahmed The Black Adolf Hitler?
☆ The majority, according to Christian Ethiopians and ministry workers in Ethiopia that I interviewed, support the military operation. Their support has held strong even as reports of civilian deaths, ethnic cleansing, horrific human rights abuses, and widespread hunger inflicted on the Tigrayan population rise in scale and urgency.
☆ That evangelical support seems to be rooted in a particular interpretation of what God is doing in the current conflict. Many evangelical Christians, such as theologian and preacher Paulos Fekadu, have publicly declared that ☆ “what is happening in north Ethiopia, in Tigrayis the judgment of God.” Several of the Ethiopian Christians I interviewed said their friends and family readily declare that the Tigrayans “deserve what they get.”
☆ Her friend Desalajn Assefa Alamayhu, an evangelist who is Tigrayan himself, agrees. And he accuses Orthodox Christians in Tigrayof being active contributors to the conflict.
“ TigrayOrthodox Christians participate in evil things with TPLF. They participate completely with TPLF. They said, ‘In the Bible, we can oppose federal government because we need freedom.’” In contrast, he contends, “most Protestant Christians in Ethiopia agree with the federal government because Dr. Abiy teaches and preaches from the Word of God.”
☆ The The Elephant that many evangelical Ethiopians seem to be wrestling with is this: With whom would Jesus side—the charismatic evangelical leader determined to defeat his enemies, or the primarily nonevangelical Orthodox Tigrayans who are suffering immensely?
💭 EndNote: 98.5 % of Protestants side with the evil monster Abiy Ahmed Ali, who is guilty of war crimes and genocide in Christian Tigray.
As the humanitarian issues escalate in the largely Orthodox north, the conflict tests evangelicals’ loyalty and theology.
The transition to an ethnically Oromo leader marked a break from 27 years of rule by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). And in a country historically dominated by Orthodox and Muslim believers, Abiy became the first openly evangelical head of government Ethiopia ever had.
But since a bitter and violent conflict broke out between Abiy’s government and the formerly ruling TPLF in the northern Tigrayregion in November 2020, evangelicals—who make up just over 18 percent of the population—have been divided over how to respond.
The majority, according to Christian Ethiopians and ministry workers in Ethiopia that I interviewed, support the military operation. Their support has held strong even as reports of civilian deaths, ethnic cleansing, horrific human rights abuses, and widespread hunger inflicted on the Tigrayan population rise in scale and urgency.
💭 Green Light from USA to The Fascist Oromo Regime of Ethiopia to Go Ahead with Genocide of Christians?
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Addis Ethiopia Weblog 
