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Posts Tagged ‘Hagar’

Ishmael Will Be a Wild-ass Man

Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on December 16, 2014

IshmaelSynd

My note: Not a single day goes by without hearing/witnessing about the horror massacre by Islamists of innocent men, women and children who do not even carry guns and bombs. The demonic heartlessness is characteristic of all the Jihadi zombies all over the globe. It’s amazing, this typical character of Islam / the Arab Muslim was predicted before the birth of Ishmael 4000 years ago, and it remains true of him today. His mother, Hagar was told of her son, Ishmael:

He will be a wild-ass man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren (Genesis 16:12)

Ethiopia’s ‘Islam Lesson’ for the West

Yet another Christian church was destroyed by Muslims in Ethiopia—this time by local authorities.

Heaven’s Light Church, which served some 100 evangelical Christians, was demolished last November 28. The church had stood and functioned in the Muslim-majority city of Harar for five years. In the days preceding the destruction, officials forcibly removed the church’s exterior sign and warned believers not to worship there, citing complaints by a local Muslim. Officials further told church members who had previously congregated at the church “not to gather under what remains of the church building.” Accordingly, Christians are now meeting in homes of individual believers.

Prior to the demolition of the church, when some Christian leaders protested, they were illegally detained, released only after community members, “outraged by the wrongful detentions,” called “for their immediate release,” reported International Christian Concern, a rights advocacy group supporting the Christians:

These are no isolated incidents, explained ICC, adding that it had documented “numerous ongoing land rights battles between churches and their local governments across Ethiopia.”

In many cases, ICC said, “churches have been operating peacefully for decades on land given to them by now-deceased former congregants.”

However efforts by local majority Muslim populations to “eliminate the public presence” of churches resulted in the forceful closure, destruction and demolition of several church buildings in recent years, according to ICC investigators.

ICC’s Regional Manager for Africa, Cameron Thomas, accused Ethiopia of violating the rights of devoted Christians. “Corrupt officials willing to defend their religion [Islam] rather than the laws they’ve sworn to uphold, are violating Christians’ rights by forcibly closing, destroying and demolishing churches across Ethiopia,” the official said.

If this is the treatment Christian churches receive by Muslim officials and politicians—”sworn to uphold” the rights of every citizen, not just Muslims—one can imagine the treatment churches receive by Muslim mobs. One example suffices:

In 2011, after a Christian was accused of desecrating a Koran, thousands of Christians were forced to flee their homes when “Muslim extremists set fire to roughly 50 churches and dozens of Christian homes” in a Muslim-majority region in western Ethiopia. At least one Christian was killed, many injured, and anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 displaced. Around the same time, in another area that is 90% Muslim, “all the Christians in the city woke up to find notes on their doors warning them to convert to Islam, leave the city or face death.”

For those few Western observers who live beyond the moment and have an interest in the “big picture”—the world bequeathed to future generations—it is well to reflect on the question of numbers in the context of Ethiopia. As Jonathan Racho, another official at ICC, earlier said, “It’s extremely disconcerting that in Ethiopia, where Christians are the majority, they are also the victims of persecution.”

That Muslims are an otherwise peaceable minority group in Ethiopia, but in enclaves where they represent the majority, they attack their outnumbered Christian countrymen, suggests that Muslim aggression and passivity are very much rooted in numbers. This reflects what I call “Islam’s Rule of Numbers,” which holds that, wherever and whenever Muslims grow in number—and thus in strength and confidence—so too does Muslim intolerance for “the other” grow (video explanation here).

This naturally has lessons for the West, especially European nations like Britain and France that have a significant and ever-growing Muslim population—and where church attacks and even beheadings are now taking place.

By way of final illustration, the reader is left with the story of Islam’s entry into Ethiopia, one of the oldest Christian civilizations. According to Islamic tradition, in 615, when the pagan Quraysh were persecuting Muhammad’s outnumbered followers and disciples in Arabia, some fled to Ethiopia seeking sanctuary. The Christian king, or “Negus” of Ethiopia, welcomed and protected these Muslim fugitives, ignoring Quraysh demands to return them—and thus reportedly winning Muhammad’s gratitude.

Today, 14 centuries later, when Islam has carved itself a solid niche in Ethiopia, accounting for 1/3 of the population, Muslim gratitude has turned into Muslim aggression—not least a warning to Western states.

Source

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Posted in Ethiopia, Faith, Infos | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Abraham / አብርሃም (Bible Film)

Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on May 29, 2014

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Posted in Faith, Infotainment | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

“Bathsheba, Bathed in Grace: How Eight Scandalous Women Changed the World”

Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on October 16, 2013

 

The description on the back of this fascinating book reads:

Adultery, lies, deception, scandal, murder, cover-up, heartache, pain, and loss—stories with these sordid elements are relevant today. And women with shady pasts—labeled, shamed, and linked with tragedies—are part of our heritage. Bathsheba, a victim or temptress, Eve outside of Eden, Tamar posed as a prostitute, Leah stole her sister Rachel’s fiancé…Sarah gave Hagar to her husband and Rebekah masterminded a grave deception. How well do you really know the women of the Bible?

The names are familiar: Eve, Rachel, Bathsheba, Hagar, Sarah, Tamar, Leah, Rebekah. Their stories are also familiar, yet the stories that lie beneath the familiar words of biblical text give a new perspective and new appreciation for them and the lessons they reveal.

Carol Cook, author of the book “Bathsheba, Bathed in Grace (How Eight Scandalous Women Changed the World),” has delved into these buried secrets of the Bible, gently peeling back the layers to bring each woman to life. As her story unfolds, the woman’s strengths, trials and challenges are revealed to serve as a testimony of God’s love and an encouragement to their modern daughters.

Cook found facets of her own personality in each of the eight women. She said, “When I wrote about Eve, I thought, ‘I’m Eve. I’m lost in perfection. It’s never enough, there’s always something wrong.’ Then I wrote about Sarah and I thought, ‘That’s me. I’m so controlling. I have instances in my life that caused me to feel unprotected and I have trust issues. In my family, I have been rightly accused of being controlling in every situation. Then with Hagar, I identified with her because I have felt invisible. … I identified with each of the women. I’ve had jealousy, I’ve had unforgiveness. God is helping me overcome that, and I think that’s the biggest gift in doing with Rachel.”

Biblical mentoring

Cook had spent much time in philanthropic pursuits in Phoenix, helping raise funds for causes in which she believed.

“There came a time when that just wasn’t enough,” she said. “I read a scripture from the new testament that the older women should help the younger women, so I sort of segued into mentoring from my philanthropy.”

Cook led a Bible study each year for about 30 weeks on different courses of study.

“Bathsheba, Bathed in Grace” is the first of three books, each dealing with eight women of the Bible. Cook said she strived to stay true to the biblical text even though the stories themselves are fictionalized versions of the Scriptures.

When women read the book, she hopes they will come away with the knowledge that they are enough just as they are.

“Society and the world keeps telling us that we are not enough,” she said. “Scripture says we’re not perfect, but we’re enough, not because of us, but because of God. … The driving desire of my heart is that women can look back to see how to move from victim to victory as these women did.”

Source

Another Review:

A well-executed debut historical novel that melds biblical history with steamy romance, intrigue and high drama.

In this book’s introduction, Cook writes of how she researched and presented living-history characterizations of biblical women in her Scripture-study classes, which she turned into this compelling collection of eight short stories. These “scandalous women,” who, as the subtitle notes, indeed changed the course of history, include extraordinary princesses, ordinary women, and even slaves and concubines. In these stories, sisters battle one another over societal rank as viciously as their male counterparts clash over territory, and Cook’s diverse cast conveys detailed, emotional insight into a panorama of human history. Bathsheba has an affair with King David and hastily marries him. She’s a shrewd operator who gains her own degree of political power, and she gives birth to the peaceful King Solomon, author of the biblical book of Ecclesiastes and builder of the protective shrine for the sacred Ark of the Covenant. After David’s death, as Solomon’s mother, she becomes the first queen mother of Israel. Leah and Rachel each tell their side of a story that pits the two sisters against each other in a marriage-bed battle over Jacob, and Abraham’s wife Sarah, a princess, recounts how her faith journey led her to become the mother of Isaac at age 90. (Curiously, the story doesn’t include Sarah’s reaction to Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac.) Cook also gives voice to the lesser-known Hagar, Sarah’s servant slave, who, under Sarah’s orders, bore Abraham’s first son, Ishmael; in a fit of anger and jealousy, Sarah banishes both Hagar and Ishmael. The novel’s range of emotions and viewpoints make it a worthwhile read; each woman, no matter her rank or her hardship, learns the same universal lesson: Love conquers all, and mercy and forgiveness are at the heart of it. Eve, the mother of all humanity, tells her story in the book’s final chapter, a fitting closure for an exceptional narrative.

A highly readable historical novel, with enough period detail for biblical purists and enough drama and romance for secular readers.

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