The ceremony, which awes the souls of Christians, takes place in the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem. The date for Pascha is determined anew for every year. It must be a first Sunday after the spring equinox and Jewish Passover. Therefore, most of the time it differs from the date of Papal Protestant and Protestant Easter, which is determined using different criteria. The Holy Fire is the most renowned miracle in the world of Eastern Orthodoxy. It has taken place at the same time, in the same manner, every single year for centuries. No other miracle is known to occur so regularly and so steadily over time. No other miracle is known to occur so regularly and so steadily over time. It happens in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the holiest place on earth, where Christ was crucified, entombed, and where He finally rose from the dead.
Breaking News from #Jerusalem the Resurrection Church :blood is leaking from the stone Jesus body was laid before his burial . You can hear the Israeli police closed the area.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on June 21, 2013
The Arab Spring, at least when it comes to religious freedom, isn’t yielding the bastion of free-thought and democracy that many world leaders once predicted. Just a few years ago, politicians and pundits were heralding disturbances in the Middle East as a potential first-step to improving human rights. But new information from the Pew Research Center is calling these claims into question.
In a study released on Thursday, the polling and research firm announced its findings, which show an increase in religion-based crackdowns, even in light of the Arab Spring and its promised ideological and legislative reforms. It’s likely that critics of the Obama administration will seize upon the research organization’s findings as proof that, despite positive predictions, the Middle East may be headed in an even more restrictive direction.
In a study released on Thursday, the polling and research firm announced its findings, which show an increase in religion-based crackdowns, even in light of the Arab Spring and its promised ideological and legislative reforms. It’s likely that critics of the Obama administration will seize upon the research organization’s findings as proof that, despite positive predictions, the Middle East may be headed in an even more restrictive direction.
“A new study by the Pew Research Center finds that the already high level of restrictions on religion in the Middle Eas
t and North Africa – whether resulting from government policies or from social hostilities – continued to increase in 2011, when most of the political uprisings known as the Arab Spring occurred,” reads the first line of a Pew press release.
To be clear, though, the religious freedom situation has always been a contentious one in the region. But instead of bringing important reforms and freedoms to the forefront, the study seems to show that, at least in 2011, the situation in the Middle East actually worsened.
According to the findings, the number of nations in the region that reported sectarian violence between religious groups doubled in size from five to 10 — and that’s only one of the findings.
Among countries where Arab Spring uprisings occurred, government restrictions took various forms. In Egypt, for instance, the government continued to permit people to convert to Islam but prohibited them from abandoning Islam for another faith. In Bahrain, the Sunni-dominated government used high levels of force against Arab Spring demonstrators, most of whom were Shia Muslims. And in Libya, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, then chairman of the National Transitional Council, declared in October 2011 that Libya in the post-Moammar Gadhafi era would be run as an Islamic state with sharia law forming the basis of legislation.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on January 22, 2011
A Muslim woman in Russian Republic of Bashkiria, who was unsuccessfully treated for infertility for 14 years, gave birth to a son after praying before the icon of St. Nicholas in an Orthodox church.
“I’m a Muslim, but for some reason I believed that it (the icon – IF) will help me,” the happy mother is quoted as saying by Ufa edition of the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily.
Her friends advised her to go to the church: her marriage has almost failed and the diagnosis sounded as a death verdict to family happiness – it is impossible to give birth with such decease.
It was the first time the woman came to the church, she was a little bit scared and did not how to pray. Parishioners told her “sincerely, from the heart” ask St. Nicholas.
Then she invented a simple prayer: “Nicholas the Wonderworker help me, give us a son, please…” Finally, the woman took off her favorite golden chain and left it near the icon – there is a belief that such gifts make a prayer more effective.
She understood that she is pregnant a month after. Her son Tamerlan makes his parents happy: he is so cheerful and clever.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on January 15, 2011
What is the fastest-growing religion on Earth?
Most news reports suggest it is Islam — but it’s actually Christianity
The evidence suggests a new, or, perhaps, original form of biblically inspired evangelical Christianity is sweeping through places like China, Africa, India and Southeast Asia – making it, by far, the fastest growing faith on the planet.
In “Megashift,“ author Jim Rutz coins a new phrase to define this fast-growing segment of the population. He calls them “core apostolics” – or “the new saints who are at the heart of the mushrooming kingdom of God.”
Rutz makes the point that Christianity is overlooked as the fastest-growing faith in the world because most surveys look at the traditional Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church while ignoring Christian believers who have no part of either.
He says there are 707 million “switched-on disciples” who fit into this new category and that this “church” is exploding in growth.
“The growing core of Christianity crosses theological lines and includes 707 million born-again people who are increasing by 8 percent a year,” he says.
So fast is this group growing that, under current trends, according to Rutz, the entire world will be composed of such believers by the year 2032.
“There will be pockets of resistance and unforeseen breakthroughs,” writes Rutz. “Still, at the rate we’re growing now, to be comically precise, there would be more Christians than people by the autumn of 2032, about 8.2 billion.”
According to the author, until 1960, Western evangelicals outnumbered non-Western evangelicals – mostly Latinos, blacks and Asians – by two to one. As of 2000, non-Western evangelicals outnumbered Westerners by four to one. That moved to seven to one this year.
“There are now more missionaries sent from non-Western nations than Western nations,” he writes.
This trend, says Rutz, has been missed by Westerners because the explosive growth is elsewhere.
Hundreds of millions of these Christians are simply not associated with the institutional churches at all. They meet in homes. They meet underground. They meet in caves. They meet, he says, in secret.
And what is driving this movement?
Miracles, he says.
“Megashift” attempts to document myriad healings and other powerful answers to the sincere prayers of this new category of believer, including, believe it or not, hundreds of dramatic cases of resurrections – not near-death experiences, but real resurrections of actual corpses.
“When I was a kid in Sunday school, I was really impressed that 3,000 people were saved on the Day of Pentecost,” he writes. “I thought, ‘Wow, that’ll never happen again!'”
But, Rutz says, it now happens around the globe every 25 minutes.
“By tomorrow, there will be 175,000 more Christians than there are today,” he writes
The essence of Rutz’s book is about how Western Christians can tap into what he sees as a mighty work of God on Earth.
“Very few people realize the nature of life on Earth is going through a major change,” he writes. “We are seeing a megashift in the basic direction of human history. Until our time, the ancient war between good and evil was hardly better than a stalemate. Now all has changed. The Creator whose epic story flows through the pages of Scripture has begun to dissolve the strongholds of evil. This new drama is being played out every hour around the globe, accompanied sometimes by mind-bending miracles.”
