I spent the last week of February teaching Old Testament at the newly-formed Trinity Fellowship Pastors College in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia is by far the oldest nation I’ve visited, one of the few Old Testament nations still on the map. Its existence is a theological fact, testimony to the reliability of God’s promises.
According to the “primeval history” of Genesis, descendants of Cush settled the area that is now Ethiopia and Sudan soon after the flood. The Da’amat Empire was established in the tenth century B.C. by Menilek I, reputedly the son of Solomon and Makeda, queen of Sheba. According to the Kebre Negast (“The Glory of the Kings”), which was compiled in the fourteenth century A.D., Queen Makeda made a pilgrimage to Israel to learn statecraft from Solomon, who seduced her. Makeda conceived and went home to give birth to her son. As a boy, Menilek visited his father in Jerusalem, where Solomon anointed him as king of Ethiopia. As retribution for the humiliation of his mother, Menilek stole the Ark of the Covenant and levitated it across the Red Sea to Ethiopia, where it purportedly remains to this day. It’s a persistent national myth. Until Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown in 1974, Ethiopian leaders claimed to be sons of Solomon, lions descended from the Lion of Judah.
There’s nothing of this legend in Scripture. To ancient Israelites, Ethiopia wasn’t an ally but an uncanny and terrifying threat. Cush’s son Nimrod founded Nineveh and Babylon (Gen. 10:8–12), cities that later conquered Israel. Aaron and Miriam objected when Moses took a Cushite wife (Num. 12:1). During the reign of King Asa, Zerah the Cushite came over the southern horizon to invade Judah with hundreds of chariots and a million-man army (2 Chron. 14).
Against this background, the heroism of Ebed-Melech is all the more notable (Jer. 38). Ebed-Melech was a Cushite eunuch who served in the court of King Zedekiah during the last days of Judah. The prophet Jeremiah counsels Zedekiah to surrender to Babylon. Enraged by this message, Jerusalem’s officials force Zedekiah to approve their plan to put the traitorous prophet to death. Like Joseph, Jeremiah is tossed into a muddy cistern without water, left to die of thirst.
Ebed-Melech bursts onto the scene as an unexpected deliverer. As the wonderfully-named Deusdedit Musinguzi points out in a monograph on the passage, Ebed-Melech is a model of compassion, justice, and courage. Though a foreigner, he charges Jerusalem’s leaders with “evil” in open court, and persuades the king to let him pull Jeremiah up from the pit. Ebed-Melech’s name, “Servant of the King,” indicates he’s Zedekiah’s servant, but he proves himself loyal to the King. As a Gentile deliverer, he foreshadows Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus. He literally rescues Jeremiah from death, raising him from beneath the earth, a figure of the Spirit who brings a greater Prophet from the grave. In every way, Ebed-Melech is the antithesis of the corrupt Jewish courtiers, a Gentile without Torah who keeps the Torah written on his heart (Rom. 2:14–15).
Ebed-Melech is firstfruits of a great harvest from the land of Cush. According to Orthodox tradition, Christianity came to the country in the late third century through two shipwrecked Syrian boys, the brothers Aedisius and Frumentius, who were brought to the court of the Axum emperor. Through their faithful service, the boys rose to high positions, and their witness convinced the emperor to become a Christian. In 305, the emperor’s successor sent Frumentius to Alexandria to ask the patriarch—none other than Athanasius—to send a bishop to Axum to promote evangelism and church construction. Athanasius ordained Frumentius, who returned to baptize Emperor Ezana, who made Christianity the official religion of his empire. Ethiopia is among the oldest of Christian nations.
In Acts, Luke tells us that Christianity arrived in Ethiopia already in the early first century. The first known Gentile to be baptized was another Ethiopian eunuch, a latter-day Ebed-Melech, who meets Philip in a Spirit-arranged encounter on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza (Acts 8). Though “cut off” like the Suffering Servant in the text he reads, the Ethiopian eunuch becomes fruitful, with a place in the house of his God (Isa. 56:1–8; Deut. 23:1–5).
Already in the old covenant, when the very name “Cush” could send chills down Israelite spines, the Lord promised he would one day adopt Ethiopia as a “home-born” son and a child of Zion (Ps. 87:4). One day, he promised, Cush would bring tribute to Jerusalem (Isa. 45:14). These promises form the story arc of Ethiopia’s long history. Every time you see Ethiopia is still on the map, you’re seeing real-world proof of the faithfulness of God.
👉 Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute.
Controlling the terrestrial origin of all winds that create storms, tornados and hurricanes (Zion-Ethiopian Mountains) is the clandestine mission of the Luciferians. The on-going operation against ancient Christians of Ethiopia, against its churches and monasteries being as part of this mission.
The Holy Bible speaks of the north wind, the south wind, the east wind and the west wind. The four directions have immense spiritual significance. The west wind is symbolic of restoration. The west wind is mentioned only once in the Bible. The east wind brought the locusts and completely destroyed the vegetation in Egpt. But God brought the west wind to remove all the locusts in the land of Egypt and bring about restoration.
„And the LORD turned a very strong west wind, which took the locustes away and blew them into the Red Sea. There remained not one locust in the territory of egypt.“ [Exodus 10:19]
St. Thomas The Apostle brought Christianity to the south of the Indian Subcontinent to the current Kerela State in 52 AD. The west wind brought such European travelers and explorers like Marco Polo and Vasco da Gama to witness this. Vasco da Gama’s fleet reached India in 1498, the Portuguese were surprised to find Christian communities thriving in Southern India. They were even more surprised by the locals’ certainty that their church had been established by St. Thomas. They shouldn’t have been, as countless travellers, including Marco Polo, had claimed that the saint’s grave was there. St. Thomas had preached to the Hindus and the Jews of southern India and had won thousands of converts.
It was the west wind which brought The Holy Apostle Thomas, the apostle of Jesus Christ to begin God’s spiritual restoration of the Country of India. It must be also remembered that St Thomas landed on the West Coast, but was killed on the East Coast. St. Thomas was martyred on 3 July 72 AD, at Parangimalai, Chennai, in the Chola Empire, India.
🔥 GOING, GOING, GONE! Moment Church Spire Dramatically Topples to Ground in Storm Eunice Gales
THIS is the shocking moment a church spire snaps off and crashes to the ground after it was battered by Storm Eunice.
Damage to the Grade II listed building, built in 1856, has sparked concerns now arisen over its structural stability.
Matt Hodson, 17, who filmed the footage, told ITV news that he noticed the wind take a sudden violent turn when he went into his back garden.
“I was shocked – it was quite a surreal moment. I didn’t really expect it to actually fall – I was just filming just in case,” he said.
Reverend Claire Townes, a priest in at the church, added: “I literally thought to myself the church will be ok, it’s been here since Victorian times – and then two, three minutes later I had a telephone call from the police.”
The church said in a statement on Facebook: “Please do not come to the church to look at the fallen spire.
“We are awaiting the arrival of a structural surveyor as currently we cannot assure safety within the grounds until we know it is safe.”
Thankfully, nobody was injured by the the fallen spire.
Anglican Church Bans Women From Vicar’s Job on ‘biblical’ Grounds
An Anglican church has banned women from applying to its vacant post of vicar on ‘biblical’ grounds.
Holy Trinity Church in Wallington in south west London will now issue a job advert that specifically excludes female clerics from seeking the job.
The Church of England said such a move was rare but not unique. A spokesman said that because vicars and priests are ‘postholders’ rather than employees, the church does not fall foul of equal opportunities laws.
The decision to bar women from the £25,000 a year job was taken after a vote by Holy Trinity’s parochial church council.
The announcement made in the parish newsletter handed out to the congregation stated: “At our recent open evening we explained the parish church council’s view that the position of the overall leader (vicar) should be male for biblical reasons. Thank you to all those who shared their questions, views and points.
“We have now produced a summary sheet setting out the principle reasons from scripture for maintaining the historic position of this church on this matter.”
Women were first ordained as Church of England priests in 1994. Parishes can opt out of appointing female vicars by applying to the local diocese for ‘alternative oversight’ from a more conservative bishop.
A spokesman from the Diocese of Southwark said: “Although women play a full part in helping to lead a number of activities at Holy Trinity, Wallington they have asked for alternative oversight.
“Bishop Christopher Chessun has agreed to this and such oversight will be provided by the Bishop of Maidstone.
“This allows them to say, as a congregation, that they do not wish to receive the ministry of a woman Bishop or priest and thus to be able to advertise for a male priest.”
The campaign group Women and the Church (Watch) said it hoped that in the future discrimination against women priests would be outlawed but accepted the right of congregations to opt for men-only vicars.
A spokeswoman said: “Although Watch pray for the day when women and men, without caveat, can apply for any role within the Church of England, we accept that this is not currently the case. We endeavour to continue to work together with those with whom we disagree on this point.”
On the afternoon of November 2 last year, Gebremichael Teweldmedhin, a Tigrayan jeweller and father of nine, headed to work in Gonder, a city in the Amhara region of northern Ethiopia where he had lived for more than three decades.
When Gebremichael arrived in the city, he found a mob looting his nephew’s workshop. Gebremichael begged them to stop. Instead, they turned on him.
One relative, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, told the Bureau: “The looters took them, Gebremichael along with another 10 or 11 people who worked in that area – by vehicle. We tried to follow them but we were not able to get their whereabouts.
“Then other people told us they were killed. They are buried in a mass grave.”
Gebremichael was not political, his relative said. He was not educated, and did not engage with the hatred and misinformation that swamps Ethiopian social media. Yet his relative claimed online hate campaigns and calls for violence – particularly on Facebook – played a key role in not only his killing, but many others.
“The worst thing that contributed to their killing are the so-called activists who have been spreading hate on social media,” he told the Bureau. Some posts, he claimed, would name individuals or even post photos helping create an atmosphere “inciting attacks, killings and displacements”.
Thousands have died and millions more have been displaced since fighting broke out between government forces and armed opposition groups from the country’s Tigray region in November 2020. The government has also been fighting an armed group from the Oromia region, and the UN secretary general António Guterres said last November that “the stability of Ethiopia and the wider region is at stake”.
On November 9, Mercy Ndegwa, Facebook’s public policy director for East Africa, and Mark Smith, its global content management director, used a blog post to offer reassurances that Ethiopia “has been one of our highest priorities” and that their company “will remain in close communication with people on the ground”.
But the Bureau’s investigation has uncovered a litany of failures. The company has known for years that it was helping to directly fuel the growing tensions in the country. Many of those fighting misinformation and hate on the ground – fact checkers, journalists, civil society organisations and human rights activists – say Facebook’s support is still far less than it could and should be.
A senior member of Ethiopia’s media accused Facebook of “just standing by and watching this country fall apart”. Others told the Bureau that they felt requests for assistance had been ignored and that meetings failed to materialise. These failures, they said, were helping to fuel a conflict that has already led to reports of ethnic cleansing and mass rape. Amnesty International has accused both sides in the conflict of carrying out atrocities against civilians.
All the while posts inciting violence or making false claims designed to encourage hate between ethnic groups in Ethiopia have been allowed to circulate freely. The Bureau has identified and spoken with relatives of people allegedly killed in multiple different attacks, but has not been able to cross-check specific details on the ground because of the ongoing violence.
Facebook said it had worked for two years on a comprehensive strategy to keep people in Ethiopia safe on their platforms, including engaging with civil society groups, fact checking organisations, and forming a special policy unit.
Gebremichael’s family cited one Facebook user in particular: Solomon Bogale, an online activist with more than 86,000 followers on Facebook. Though listed on Facebook as living in London, Bogale’s social media indicates that he has been in Ethiopia since August 2021, with posts of him in fatigues and carrying an assault rifle often accompanied by statements praising the Fano, an Amharan nationalist vigilante group.
In the opinion of one of Gebremichael’s family members, Bogale’s “inciteful posts” had resulted in many attacks on Tigrayans in Gonder.
In the weeks before Gebremichael’s killing, Bogale called for people to “cleanse” the Amhara territories of the “junta”, a term often used by government supporters to refer to the Tigrayan forces fighting the government and Tigrayans more generally. The post continued: “We need to cleanse the region of the junta lineage present prior to the war!!”
On October 31, two days before Gebremichael’s disappearance, Bogale posted an image of an elderly woman holding grenades, with the caption: “#Dear people of Amhara, there are mothers like these who are fighting to destroy Amhara and destroy Ethiopia! The main solution to save the #Amhara people and to protect Ethiopia is we Amharas have to rise up!! Get together Amhara.”
The Bureau has verified that both posts remained up on Facebook almost four months later, along with many others from various sources containing hate speech, calls for violence and false claims. Throughout the conflict misinformation and hate have been deployed on Facebook and other social media, inflaming tensions and influencing the outcome of military operations.
Contacted over Facebook, Bogale denied that any Tigrayans were killed in Gonder in early November, saying all Tigrayans in the city were safe. He also claimed that Tigrayan forces had killed ethnic Amharans in the region.
He also said he would delete the posts cited by the Bureau.
Facebook said it had reviewed the posts flagged by the Bureau and had removed any content that violated its policies. The Bureau found one post had been removed. At the time of publication, the post of the woman holding grenades remained online.
Criticism of Facebook’s failings is made more damning by the extensive evidence that the company has known of the risk of such problems for years, according to disclosures made to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by the legal counsel of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. The redacted versions received by Congress were reviewed by a consortium of news organisations, including the Bureau.
As early as January 2019 an internal report into various countries’ “On-FB Badness” – a measure of harmful content on the platform, including hate and graphic violence – rated the situation in Ethiopia as “severe”, its second-highest category.
By June 2020, Facebook had become even more starkly aware of the problem. An internal document discussing measures used to assess the level of harmful content said it had “found significant gaps in our coverage (especially in Myanmar and Ethiopia)”.
Six months later, Ethiopia had risen to the top of Facebook’s list of countries where it needed to take action. In a presentation circulated on December 10 2020, the risk of societal violence in Ethiopia was ranked as “dire” – Facebook’s highest threat warning. It was the only country to be given that ranking.
More than a year on, the Bureau’s investigation has found that Facebook is said to have frequently ignored requests for support from fact checkers based in the country and some civil society organisations say they have not met with the company in 18 months. The Bureau has learned from multiple sources that Facebook only appointed its first senior policy executive from Ethiopia to work on East Africa in September.
Facebook does run a third-party fact-checking programme, providing partners with access to internal tools and payment for fact checks. As its website states: “We rely on independent fact checkers to review and rate the accuracy of stories through original reporting.” But it has not partnered with a single organisation based in Ethiopia to tackle the misinformation spread by all sides in the country’s conflict.
Abel Wabella, founder of the Ethiopian fact-checking initiative HaqCheck said Facebook had failed to support his organisation since he first approached executives more than a year ago.
“They told me, ‘OK, we can help you, just write to us, our email.’ They gave me their cards. And I wrote to them,” he told the Bureau. But he heard nothing back. “At that time, our initiative was very small, so I thought they didn’t find something good in our platform, so they wanted to keep silent because of that.”
Wabella sent two further emails over the next few months, the second to the new Facebook executive from Ethiopia he had heard had been appointed. Despite assuring him that she would take action in September, he said he had heard nothing from the company since.
Rehobot Ayalew, HaqCheck’s lead fact checker, said the lack of support had severely hampered her team’s work. “Most of the people have low media literacy, so Facebook is considered to be credible … So working with Facebook, and also checking and verifying Facebook content, is the major way to counter this disinformation.” Wabella added: “The problem is not specific to Tigray. Ethiopian citizens from every corner across ethnic groups were severely affected by hateful content circulating online, specifically Facebook.”
The other major independent fact-checking organisation based in Ethiopia, Ethiopia Check, is also not part of Facebook’s partner programme.
Facebook said it had constantly engaged with civil society organisations and human rights groups on the ground, but did not partner with HaqCheck and Ethiopia Check because neither was certified by the International Fact-Checking Network.
Facebook does work with two fact-checking organisations on content from Ethiopia – PesaCheck, which runs a small team in Nairobi, and Agence France-Presse (AFP) – but both of them are based outside the country. We understand that AFP has just one fact checker in the country but in response to our story Facebook told the Bureau that “both PesaCheck and AFP have teams based in Ethiopia for fact-checking”. While misinformation flagged by PesaCheck and AFP has often been labelled as false or removed by Facebook, content investigated and debunked by HaqCheck has largely remained unaltered and free to spread.
This has included false declarations of military victories on both sides, false allegations of attacks on civilians and false claims of captured infiltrators. On November 25 last year, the Ethiopian government banned all unofficial reporting of battles, further enforcing an information vacuum in which misinformation spreads easily.
“As far as I know, support for fact checkers in Ethiopia by Facebook is almost non-existent,” said the senior person working in Ethiopian media, who asked to remain anonymous. “Facebook doesn’t pay the attention Ethiopia needs at this crucial moment, and that’s contributing to the ongoing crisis by inflaming hatred and spreading hate speech.”
A number of civil society groups have similar complaints of feeling ignored and sidelined. Facebook organised a meeting with several groups in June 2020, to discuss how the platform could best regulate content before scheduled elections. As of November, two of the organisations involved said they had heard nothing about any subsequent meetings.
“The recent development has been overwhelming. Facebook should have had a similar consultation,” said Yared Hailemariam, executive director of the Ethiopian Human Right Defenders Center. “Facebook also ought to have a working group, collaborating with human rights organisations and civil society groups.”
Haben Fecadu, a human rights activist who has worked in Ethiopia, said the hate speech issue was flagged to Facebook years ago but the company had still not provided adequate resources to deal with it
“There’s really no excuse and I wish someone had come down harder on them about it,” she said. “I’ve doubted they have invested enough in their Africa content moderation, and doubt that the Africa team has had enough resources to moderate content properly. They don’t have enough moderators … I suspect they didn’t have a Tigrinya-speaking moderator until very recently.”
Facebook’s owner Meta said in January that it would “assess the feasibility” of complying with a recommendation by its independent oversight board that it launch a human rights assessment of its activity in Ethiopia. The recommendation came after the board directed Facebook to remove a post that claimed Tigrayans were involved in atrocities in the Amhara region.
Ayalew, the HaqCheck fact checker, said the inadequate support from one of the world’s richest companies was demoralising. “We usually come across sensitive content, images that are horrifying and hateful content. It’s hard by itself,” she said. “And when you know that, even though you’re trying, you’re not getting the support from the platform itself, that is allowing this kind of content.
“You ask yourself why? Why am I doing this? Because you know that they can do more, and they can change the situation. They have a big role in this, and they’re not doing anything. You’re trying alone.”
Mercy Ndegwa, speaking on behalf of Facebook, said: “For more than two years, we’ve invested in safety and security measures in Ethiopia, adding more staff with local expertise and building our capacity to catch hateful and inflammatory content in the most widely spoken languages, including Amharic, Oromo, Somali and Tigrinya. As the situation has escalated, we’ve put additional measures in place and are continuing to monitor activity on our platform, identify issues as they emerge, and quickly remove any content that breaks our rules.”
Just over three weeks after Gebremichael’s murder, Hadush Gebrekirstos, a 45-year-old who lived in Addis Ababa, was arbitrarily detained by police who heard him speaking Tigrinya.
“After they knew he was a Tigrinya speaker, they said, ‘This one is mercenary!’ and took him to a nearby police station … They were beating him hard,” said a relative, who also wished to remain anonymous and who was told what happened by witnesses.
“Two days after – on November 26 – his body was found dead, about 200 to 150m from the police station. They threw his body out there.”
Again, Hadush’s relative said he had no political or social media engagement. Again, he believes that it was lies and hate on Facebook that played a key role in causing the killing.
“It really does. Irrespective of reality, because people do not have the ability to verify what was posted on Facebook. Like calling people to kill Tigrinya speaking residents – as a result of hatred and revenge feelings … You don’t even know who is killing you, who is detaining you and who is looting your property. It’s total lawlessness.”
💭 Can you see the similarities between the Soumela St.Mary Monastery and the Mariam Dengelat St. Mary Monastery of Tigray, Ethiopia? On November, 2020 more than 100 Orthodox Christians were massacred by Turkish-allied evil leader of Ethiopia.
➡ CNN Investigation of Massacre at Maryam Dengelat Church in Ethiopia’s Tigray Region
💭 The courtyard of Panagia Soumela Monastery was recently turned into a nightclub for an advertising video clip, causing outrage in the Orthodox world.
The controversial video clip, with a DJ playing loud electronic music in the courtyard of the historic monastery and people dancing, had many Orthodox Christians reacting in anger.
Many comments in social media speak of the desecration of the historic monastery as along with the music, church bells can be heard in the background.
Some even demanded explanations from Turkish authorities, as the historic monastery had essentially been turned into a nightclub.
Greece’s Foreign Ministry said, on Monday, images showing a band dancing to electronic music at the former Orthodox Christian Sumela Monastery in Turkey were “offensive” and “a desecration” of the monument, Reuters reports.
The Ministry called on Turkish authorities “to do their utmost to prevent such acts from being repeated” and to respect the site, a candidate for UNESCO’s list of world heritage sites.
“The recent images that were displayed on social media, in which a foreign band seems to be dancing disco in the area of the Historical Monastery of Panagia Soumela, are a desecration of this Monument,” it said.
Turkish officials were not immediately available for comment.
Founded in the 4th century, Sumela is a monastic complex built into a sheer cliff above the Black Sea forest in eastern Turkey. It was long ago stripped of its official religious status and operates as a museum administered by the Culture Ministry in Turkey.
Thousands of tourists and Orthodox Christian worshippers journey to the monastery annually.
In 2010, Turkish authorities allowed the first Orthodox liturgy since ethnic Greeks were expelled in 1923 as part of a population exchange between Greece and Turkey. In 2015, the Sumela Monastery was shut for restoration and re-opened to tourists in 2019.
A liturgy to mark the Feast Day of the Virgin Mary was allowed in 2020 and 2021.
“It is surprising that the permit was given to the band, as the Monastery of Panagia Soumela opens only for pilgrims,” the Greek Foreign Ministry said. “These images are offensive and add to a series of actions by the Turkish authorities against World Heritage Sites,” its statement said, without elaborating.
Greece and Turkey disagree on a range of issues from airspace to maritime zones in the eastern Mediterranean and ethnically split Cyprus.
Expressing an important value among the places you should go to in Trabzon, one of the most beautiful cities of the Black Sea, Sumela Monastery was built on steep cliffs in Altındere Village located within the borders of Maçka district of Trabzon. It is known by the name of “Mama Maria” among the people. Located approximately 300 meters above Altındere village, the Virgin Mary was built in accordance with the tradition of steep cliffs, forests, and caves, which are traditional monastery construction sites. The monastery, which was founded in reference to the Virgin Mary, took the name Sumela from the word molasses, which means black.
Etymology of the Name Sumela
It is understood that the name of Sumela comes from the word “molasses” meaning black, black darkness in the local language of the years when the monastery was built, and the name of the region is Oros Melas. The original name of the monastery is “Panagia Sou Melas”. In the Ottoman Empire records, the monastery takes place as “Su (o)Mela.
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Addis Ethiopia Weblog 