Free Christian Single Dating Knowledge Base
I'm looking for free christian dating singles websites,any of you guys know any free christian dating sites ? So I decided to give this free christian dating singles websites a try. I heard of people finding the love of their lives on sites like that. Did any of you guys try free christian dating singles websites. If you did can you please share your experience on free christian dating singles websites. I would highly appreciate any advice. I'm trying to find a good christian man, who is truly christian. I'm lonely, so decided to give this dating websites thing a try. Thank you in advance Joan
How do you assess & compare these 8 online Christian dating services?? R U a veteran of such sites?? Stories? Christian Dating Service for Christian Singles in the UK and the USA. 4 Dec 2006 ... ChristiansUK is an online Christian dating service exclusively for sophisticated and discerning Christian singles. ... http://www.christiansuk.com/ - 15k - Cached Christian Dating Cafe - Free 10 Day Trial for Christian Singles http://www.ChristianCafe.com is a Christian dating service for Christian singles. Our Web site features the largest database of Christian singles online. ... http://www.christiancafe.com/ - 27k Free Christian Dating Agency UK. Christian Singles Network, Online ... FREE Christian Dating service UK. Christian singles Chat site. Online uk Christian dating agencies personals, marriage introduction, dates personal ads for ... http://www.fusion101.co.uk/ - 32k Christian Dating - Christian Dating Service by friends1st What we do - how we differ from online Christian Dating sites. ... Christian Dating Site. The friendsfirst insurance service is designed to help you SAVE ... http://www.friends1st.co.uk/ - 27k Free Christian Dating | Online Dating, True Friendship, Love, Marriage Here at Free Christian Dating Site you can find Christian singles, live chat, send emails. Our online dating service is 100% FREE,UK dating & world wide. http://www.freechristiandating.co.uk/ - 71k Christian Connection - christian dating, friendship and ... Christian Connection is a web dating service dedicated to creating opportunities for friendship, dating and ... Online dating for the single christian. http://www.christianconnection.co.uk/ - 45k Online Christian Dating for Christian Singles | Christian Mingle Christian singles site for online Christian personals. http://www.ChristianMingle.com is the leading site for Christian dating. Enjoy our chat, IM, photo galleries, ... http://www.christianmingle.com/ - 17k Christian Online Dating for Christian Singles, Christian Dating ... Our Christian dating service was founded in 1995. Since then we have kept a reputation of an online dating service dedicated only to marriage minded ... http://www.christiansingles.com/ - 20k Oh: I help each Sunday, 5-7pm @ Cafe Sunday, with Chris Youngman & Ken Eaves, on http://www.7waves.co.uk Began a radio training course there On Monday, we get put in teams of 4 to work on magazine program ideas I only just thought - after I'd posted this question - that assessing online dating would be quite strategic to help folk, yes? I'll join all 8 later Amazing RNS That's one of just 2 I used, @ '89-'91 I'm fairly sure they are offering 10 days free trial now Can I just take this chance, as a veteran sales rep & a keen Christian, with Bible College training, son of a Bible College graduate, whose known the Lord for 47 years (almost to the week) Google Christian relationship expert advice online I always said that I sought maximum compatibility in my soulmate life partner But also encouraged folk to arrange group social meets in their own area & to be open to e-pals Christian Expert Advice - All Things Spiritual Directory Dear Vince - For Christian Relationship Advice - A site for those who need advice on ... Dr. Fran Young - Online Christian Counseling - Dr. Fran Young is a ... http://www.allspiritual.com/ChristianExpertAdvice.php3 - 17k Expert Advice About Christian Dating Services <h1>Expert Advice About Christian Dating Services</h1><strong>Author: <a ... Besides online singles there are many single parent Christian dating groups ... http://www.articlesbase.com/dating-articles/expert-advice-about-christian-dating-services-192054.html - 56k Christian Relationships Advice :: Christian Relationship advice ... Online free Christian relationships advice and help guide. ... The site includes expert advice, discussion groups and email, plus tips and articles on ... http://www.christianadvice.net/christian_advice_on_relationships.htm Ask Christian Relationship Advice Questions Christian Relationship Advice? Professional Relationship Advice, Answers & Dating Help. Online Marriage Counselors & Relationship Experts give Guidance on ... http://www.justanswer.com/archives/8-1241-1-christian-relationship-advice - 53k christian relationship advice videos expert advice expert relationship advice family relationship advice free live relationship advice free online relationship advice free relationship advice ... http://www.livevideo.com/media/tag/christian-relationship-advice.aspx - 94k Today's 7 daily readings from http://www.crosswalk.com/devotionals may well make you feel like doing them each day:- http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090127033656AA3O5HA&r=w Must go
How do you assess Christian online dating services? Good way 2 weigh folk up B4 U agree 2 meet up? How best 2? Christian Dating vs. Other Dating Services Spiritual Maturity Assessment. Spiritual Gifts Inventory. Discipleship Requirements ... our free online Christian dating advice services and relationship builder http://www.singlesoffaith.com/christian-dating.html Safety Dating Tips for Christian Singles " Christian-Dating-Service-PLUS ... you've decided to try Online Christian Personals. Great! Now let's talk about safety dating tips to keep you ... Christian girlfriend to assess the dating ... http://christian-dating-service-plus.com/safety-dating-tips-for-christian-... - Cached First Date Do's and Don't's " Christian-Dating-Service-PLUS ... date with someone you met though one of the online dating services can be fun and exciting, but also a little ... date is to assess whether there is enough http://christian-dating-service-plus.com/first-date-dos-and-donts.htm - Cached Some online dating services have found religion ... and hobbies, Christian singles use Don't y'all think that, as there are more folk who live alone than live in families - UK & USA - that it's a Christian thing to communicate & make friends online? I'm 60 & very happily enjoying my freedom to serve Christ & experience the moment-by-moment adventure that is I'm also ex-3 years running cahmpoin team martial artist - yahoo who first beat Japan in World Karate championships Who led that UK team? Liverpool Sensei Enoeda But many women alone are afraid to go out Is it Christlike to leave them in fear & despair? http://www.frontline.org.uk run Unite each Mon 10am-noon I'll today join several Christian online dating services under kinda like my old stage name & make it clear that '1 of U will rout 1000: 2 of U, 10,000' & that I'm not just seeking a highly compatible & local life partner, but have global vision, love email & 'net forums & have wide tastes & interests, inc songwriting, precinct preaching, Christian TV/radio & long walks be blest !!! WOW! Gotta go here 6.30pm:- The Lightouse, Anfield Temple of Praise, L6 see http://multimap.com Home > Calendar Line dancing Date : 11th June 2008 Time : 18:30 - 20:00 Description : It is pure unadulterated fun for everyone, whatever your age or ... Whoever you are, you’ll fit in and you’ll have a great time! Anyone hear http://The WordNetwork.org 9-9.30am - Sky *771 hot new book debate? Relationships: A Mess Worth Making By Timothy S. Lane & Paul D. Tripp With penetrating insight and practical applications, Relationships:A Mess Worth Making identifies how to work through the most stubborn problems that plague any contemporary relationship - be it marriage, parent-child, or friendship. Authors Paul David Tripp and Timothy S. Lane identify the deeper issues that drive a wide range of beliefs and behaviors that keep relationships less than they are designed to be... See http://TimeForHope.org - I'm sure they said @ a FREE copy?? Try this fun quiz test http://www.singlesoffaith.com/RelaReadyQuestX.asp Find Christian singles in your city looking for love and faith. Also... http://www.bigchurch.com Single? Find a Date Meet 1000s of singles online Search and register for Free. http://www.DatingForParents.com WEB RESULTS Christian Dating Service Christian Single Dating Online Free Christian ... ... online dating service provider offering free online dating, christian dating and ... Christians that are turning to the Internet for online dating services ... http://www.datingdisciples.com Adult singles dating - born christian dating ... ... websites, Colophon online dating insider, Cyber dating online review, Dating a christian man ... Dating services personals Dating telegraph dating ... http://amandanicol.com/cfggy/dating/dating_36.html Christian Dating Service for Christian Singles in the UK and the USA. ChristiansUK is an online Christian dating service exclusively for sophisticated ... sign up today for Free trial http://www.ChristiansUK.com What do ya think, guys? Is Yest & James bluffin' @ this:- Why did i always go to wealhtychats.com since the first time i has seen him there? may be it is my intuition. Thats it: wealthychats.com, which takes its love shovel and digs a whole lot ... wealthychats.com is the first, largest and most successful millionaire ... i always remembered the first time i saw him we chatted everything we could talk about such as life fashion,love...... 2 months ago I tried each of the Christian sites named in here so far &each & every one seems to have some kinda technical hitch: I'll check again later, but I don't think my stage name comes up in any? So, am I gald that, at 60, I'm past really caring -I'm so happy on my own that I joined DirectDating.com - who just happened to dens me a free offer Am I wrong to use that site to witness? I'm genuine @ being a typical Scouse/ NW-UK warm, friendly guy & I feel The Bg Party @ Hope St on Sat is just too good a chance not to ask em Just a few hoursa ago, I joined http://www.MillionaireMatch.com under kinda like my old stage name (in profile) Headline: "Richer han Croesus as a son of Almighty Creator/Savior" (as in Isaiah 12 - http://BibleGatway.com - as I explain there, in course of showing all those poor millionaires that true riches are spiritual & greed etc destroys What do you think @ how a 60-yr-old can witness to the young & foolish before more end up the way of AmyWinehouse & Britney Spears? I do urge folk there to prayfor those 2 & to ask there questions @ Man's Majer's Manual & why I'm 100% sure that this is the climax generation of all history & why so many top MSc/PhD folk see so much evidence of Intelligent Design - from micro-biology to astronomy - that they reject their atheist brainwashing See the many learned articles, mags, books, CDs, DVDs & MP3s @ http://www.discovery.org/csc http://www.creationism.org http://www.AnswersInGenesis.org http://creationontheweb.org
Do Christians have to invoke pagan gods to find romance? While looking at another question, I noticed this advert to the right of the screen: Christian Dating - Join 100% Free Christian Singles And Dating. Browse Photo Profiles. Join Free. www.ChristianCupid.com I just thought it was ironic that the Latin god Cupid was invoked.
I'm single what dating sites are there that I can go to that work for free? I am single and I am sick of it. I want to have a relationship. Are there any dating sites that I can go to that are free that work and that are trustworthy?? .... For those that are interested I'm 22 and female. I'm a Christian. I don't date outside my religion. I live in Canyon Lake Cali. Please only say if your interested if your willing to drive to me or I can walk to you or both. I can't drive can't pass the eye test. Telling you up front that I do have mild autism and my brother has sever autism. You can't deal with that don't bother me by e-mailing me. Btw I'm 5'8 so unless your 5'10 or taller nothing will happen trust me. Btw I want gentlemann who uses his manners. Someone polite and kind and within the ages of 21 - 30. For those of you who fit that description please e-mail me at lioness9012003@yahoo.com ty
?? Where are the single 21-30 yo. Christian MEN??? N. KY/ cin? I am a christian girl 22 and never been on a date, not even kissed. There are hardley any men my age that are "real "christian in my areas or on dating sites (free on's i'm poor college stu,) I feel discouraged, and feel thereis 10 girls for every christian guy . I have prayed to god to either help me find one or take away this longing if it is his will. I/m in the N. Ky area are there places to go to even meet people my age. I am BBW I don't know if that effrcts me
Single Christian girls out there, who are still virgins? I am 21, a Christian, and a virgin. I really wanted to meet a cute, sweet, girl who is a virgin, but it's nearly impossible. We don't have a singles club at my church, all of my guy friends have already done it (outside of a religious few), I don't know any girls at my college (they aren't Christian and have had sex and bfs), and I don't have any girls as friends to introduce me to girls. I just want to meet someone to have a decent relationship with, not for sex, until marriage. If there is anyone out there looking for this, please feel free to respond. I'm very patient, but I'm starting to lose hope. Here is my picture to show you I'm not ugly: (on the right side) http://tiu.facebook.com/people/Adam_Zaobiedny/119400589 http://www.myspace.com/muzicfan115 To let people know, I live near Arlington Heights, IL, so I would need someone to meet in my area. Online dating doesn't work for me, they aren't virgins. I don't smoke or really drink...yes, I'm a loser. Please help. I want to meet a Christian girl, because religion is a very important part of me. And I want to meet a virgin because, I don't want to be treated as second best or have a person that has had sex and will compare me. I hope this clarifies that I am NOT looking for sex, but I am looking for a positive and long lasting relationship. If anyone feels this way and is serious about a relationship, I need to know that I am not alone. Oh yeah, and I'm not a pervert, so I can't see anyone under the age of 18, sorry.
Any single Christian girls out there, who are still virgins? I am 21, a Christian, and a virgin. I really wanted to meet a cute, sweet, girl who is a virgin, but it's nearly impossible. We don't have a singles club at my church, all of my guy friends have already done it (outside of a religious few), I don't know any girls at my college (they are'nt Christian and have had sex and bfs), and I don't have any girls as friends to introduce me to girls. I just want to meet someone to have a decent relationship with, not for sex, until marriage. If there is anyone out there looking for this, please feel free to respond. I'm very patient, but I'm starting to lose hope. Here is my picture to show you I'm not ugly: (on the right side) http://tiu.facebook.com/profile.php?id=119400589 http://www.myspace.com/muzicfan115 To let people know, I live near Arlington Heights, IL, so I would need someone to meet in my area. Online dating doesn't work for me, they aren't virgins. I don't smoke or really drink...yes, I'm a loser. Please help. To clarify: I don't want to sleep with someone until marriage, or them to have had sex before they met me. I'm not going to promote those actions. And I want to meet a Christian girl, this is a must!
What is a "Christian loan"? and why are the Christians apparently intent on loaning me money and finding me a "Christian single" to date with? I get a lot of spam about this (and the Christian singles) and I can't see any difference between a Christian loan and a secular loan, so they obviously are charging interest. Are they not supposed to do so? I know Muslims aren't supposed to charge interest and Muslim loans are therefore interest-free. They have special banks set up and everything. Since this doesn't seem to be the case with the Christian loans, exactly what makes the loan "Christian"? (and what is the deal with the Christian singles and why do they want a Nordic Heathen wench? What have you people heard?!?) I fail to see how asking about my spam is an accusation, but OK. No, I won't post my spam. If you want to message me your email addy, I'll be glad to forward it to you though. Badwolf, actually, we prefer "Heathen" with the capital "H". Technically, I'm Forn Sed, a type of Germanic Heathenism from the Scandinavian area that is more folketro than Asatru. We've taken ownership of the word, use it to differentiate between ourselves and other followers of very old, indigenous faiths and don't consider it derogatory at all. I'm not sure it ever really was a derogatory word unless you were a Christian, in which case someone implying you were not would be quite the insult.
Christians - online dating? ? What do you think of this scripture? Corinthians 7:27 Are you married? Do not seek a divorce. Are you unmarried? Do not look for a wife And how come so many divorced men are on the christian single sites? Matthew 19:9 Jesus says "I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery" Wouldnt they have to specify that they were faithful, and this divorce was precipitated by an unfaithful spouse which frees him in the eyes of jesus? And divorced women? Mark 10:12 Jesus states And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery". 1 Corinthians 7:11 But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. The commands of god are strict mostly in terms of the reconciliation between husband and wife or a life of remaining single in the lord? According to the scripture - a divorced woman who is looking to be married in essence places another soul into jeaopardy, because the NT clearly states adulterers will not inherit the kingdom of god? Just looking for feedback?
I have no clue about the dating world.? I am a 29 year old divorced woman. I have a job, go to school to better myself, and have a cute little apartment. I am also a single mother to a 10 year old little girl. I have been divorced since December 2006. I would really like to start dating again, but have really no clue where to even start looking. I have also become alittle shy since my divorce and would like to come out of my shell to meet some new people. I really dont like the whole bar scene because I am a christian. Does anyone out there know where I can find a good, honest man. Are there any free dating sites. I am in Oklahoma.
I am attracted to a very traditional Christian girl from work. Does she lke me? Hello people, hoping you could help me out here with this question. I'm a single 25 year old. I am introverted for the most part, I am out going with people I know, but it's hard for me to make new friends. Consequently I am now 25 and have never dated. 5 weeks ago a lovely girl started where I am employed. I didn't have much to do with her in the first few weeks, but we would talk fairly often, to the point where other staff members began gossiping. I began to develop feelings for her and the week later we were assigned a group project that took us out of the office. For 5 days we worked side by side and chatted for hours and hours, consequently affecting our work. When we returned to the office we stopped talking as frequently to discourage gossiping, but we began emailing each other frequently, usually 5 times an hour of which she initiated mostly. The crux of the problem is this. She is very Christian and traditional. I am Catholic and I don't have a problem with her beliefs or the extent of them, in fact I respect this about her. I find her spirituality one of her most attractive qualities. I am a lapse Catholic, talking to her has made be reconsider God and Jesus more closely and consequently I have begun to strengthen my faith. I have started reading the Bible and I talk to God often. I have made an effort to not swear, not use God's name in vain and not pass judgement against others. The week after our offsite project she asked to talk to me privately after work. We went to the local bar where we sat down and chatted. This was her forth week at work and the second that I had really known her. She asked me where I saw us going and I said that I had feelings for her but wasn't sure. She seemed upset that I had feelings for her and explained that we wouldn't be able to be togeather. She said that she has asked God to tell her the right person to marry, that it's wrong for her to have a relationship with someone who doesn't believe (even though I do) and that the Bible teaches against having a boyfriend girlfriend relationship and further mentioned that her parents were friends for years and then got engaged and subsequently married. I was initially quite hurt, because I had only known her for two or so weeks and to be written off so early upset me. Anyway I walked her to the bus and saw her off. During the conversation she mentioned somethings to be I thought were interesting. She had no friends, no proper friends. People have distanced themselves from her because of her rules and because she openly talks about Jesus and God. She said she's been hurt ini the past by this and I get the impression she doesn't want to be hurt again. Anyway the following day she seemed nervous around me and would only speak to me in a casual way during a group conversation. I received no emails. At lunchtime I went into the kitchen to eat lunch, she was there with a few others. After about 30 minutes she got up to go outside for a walk. I watched her go and chased after her. She was surprised to see me and thought that I wouldn't want to talk to her again. We talked a little about last night and she reiterated that she was confused and was sorry for some of the things she said. Everything was fine for the next few days, the emails resumed and she talked to me more freely. We even went out for dinner as a group where we sat next to each other for 4 hours just chatting away. I dropped her home afterwards. She told me during the drive that doing things along togeather constituted dating and there were certain rules, such as getting parents permission. She understands that we are currently just friends but the perception from her parents would indicate otherwise, and while she is free to make her own choices, said her parents points of view carried weight with her. I said that's understandable and that we can just do things as a group if it makes her more comfortable. I have been open to her about my feelings and why I like her. I said I treasure every moment we spend together, that I find her very spirtual, cultured and sweet. She said I was a nice person and thanked me for the kindness I had shown her over the last few weeks and said I was very sensitive and that she liked that about me. Anyway yesterday at work everything was going as normal, we were trading emails and laughing and what not. She invited me out at lunch, she was going down to the local Christian book store and wanted me to come. I said yes and walked with her. We returned to the office and ate lunch togeather. Later in the afternoon our emails again started becoming serious. She thanked me again for taking her out to dinner (with the group) and said she really enjoyed herself. Said she wanted to do things with me as a group and needed time to sort through her confusion. I again reiterated that I had feelings, take the time you need and that doing things as a group was fine by me. I also said that any relationship takes risk and that everyone goes through this. She responded with mentioning being hurt in the past by people, saying real life was not Hollywood and that she just needed my paitence. That was the last words exchanged on the matter, we had to go home, she had a bus to catch. I am not sure if she likes me or not. She certainly likes to talk to me and spend time with me, but I think there are things about me she can't accept from a religous perspective. Do you think she likes me? Can someone give me advice on how to deal with this. I am happy to be paitent, but obviously in the long-run there is a limit to how long I can put my life on hold.
Is true courtship the way God intended it to be dead today due to DATING? I am first and foremost a child of God! I let that be known! Though I know I am on the right path and got THE BEST LIFE possible because of Jesus Christ, sometimes living in purity and integrity before almighty God can feel very lonely. With so many young people today and even older folks who are in the highly defective habits of the "dating game" and believe me it is a game! Whats an honest single Christian man to do in an age where sex before marriage runs ramped destroying what God created to only be enjoyed in the the safely guarded very protective bonds of Marriage or in other words, the protective covering of 100% total life long commitment where LOVE in every way is free to be expressed and it is guarded and protected. Does anyone even know what that is anymore?
Is this right? eHarmony forced to have a gay dating site? A gay man has won $5,000 and a free one year membership after he sued eHarmony for "discrimination" because they do not match gays up with each other. eHarmony settled with him. What do you think of the lawsuit? I think it is ridiculous that it did not get thrown out. Should a Christian dating website be forced to have a website for atheists, Muslims, and others? Should a "black singles" website be forced to have a site for white people too? http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,454904,00.html
"I have a situation at hand that I need some help with. I am in my mid forties.. See Below"? I moved from New Jersey five years ago. The first and main reason was because.. I had hated NJ my whole life.. never fitted in right.. its costly, polluted, filled with taxes, fines, fees, and crime. My grandmother died and my mother was to the sell the house. I had to move regardless. I wanted out of NJ.. bad. I had a year prior met a man on line who was four years younger then me. We are both Christians.. we became best friends.. and that was what I always wanted as a foundation for a marriage. He re assured me .. he wasn't afraid of love or commitments. I was trying.. to avoid my past mistakes. I moved to Wisconsin where he was a half hour away. He had said he was going to marry me.. until he met a woman 11 years younger then his age.. 14 then mine.. at the end of 2008. She lives in Romania. He hid this from me.. which started sometime while with him towards the end. Breaking up.. he wasn't honest.. I had to find out on yahoo.. through pictures and updates..what was said. Seeing and knowing the truth.. I still am not quite ready for a new relationship.. but. I am ready to create male friendships. I was devastated by this man. I love a lot about Wisconsin.. including car insurance is not required.. or asked for.. and there are no motor vehicle stations.. low.. crime.. and pollution.. a lot of land preservation/beauty. There are plenty to do... here. Shops..you name it we have it. The winters are too long and fierce here.. and I am tired of shoveling to be honest.. the snow never melts. My problem is .. I don't know what to do first. I was planning on taking a course here for five months for esthetics..I can transfer the license to another state one day. It doesn't hurt to get some things here career wise in order first. I am not in a position financially to move right now.. I am stuck. I feel alone. I lost whom use to be my best friend. I was thinking of moving to an alienation of affection state to protect me one day.. from this happening if I were to marry.. which would be North Carolina. I also researched Alaska.. where there are a lot of men and no taxes. New Hampshire ..like Wisconsin can save in car insurance .. which I have no money for.. which helps a lot. I read that Southern men.. treat women better and have much more respect for their mothers and women then Northern men do today. I don't know.. if I can or will ever trust anyone again. In my entire life.. I have dated.. over a hundred men.. DID NOT.. sleep with more then a handful.. But.. ALL of them cheated. Every single one. I thought this one was A Lot.. different and he proved the same way. I sometimes wonder if women should just remain single and be better off then going through all this pain. I want more companionship then anything else in my life. I miss that most. I don't even know.. if I should go into chat rooms in yahoo and ask about the states I am interested in? Or.. join free Christian or free on line dating services in general.. in this state.? Although that is no guarantee the man who lives in Wisconsin would be open to moving from here. I would have to know right away. I heard Washington is nice.. but as a scorn woman .. I feel the need to protect my heart. Mabe.. I should be more worried about that then no car insurance and go to North Carolina for a visit when I am able to. I just am lost.. without direction now.. in this area.. of men and where to move. I don't think North Carolina gets much snow? I don't know about how hot their summers are? We have great cool ones here. I like the beach.. but.. not a fan of real hot summers. Staying here makes me think about him.. and its been a year and a half and I am still not over this ordeal. It was cruel. Thank You All
How does a 40 year old woman find a relationship? I am a single 40 year old single woman. The problem is that for the life of me I cant find that special someone. I was briefly married to the wrong person but have really learned alot and know what I want and what Dint. I don't think I am ugly, I do know that I am somewhat overweight. I have tried the free online dating services with very little luck, most guys are looking for hook-ups, I have tried online dating services for at least 5 years. Been with match.com, e-harmony.com, chemistry.com, several christian dating websites and even one for people of size. I have had a few dates off of these but nothing that leads to anything serious. I try activities that I find interesting as well as church groups. I have even just stopped looking for some time. Nothing seems to work for me and Im not one of those people who doesn't want to get married, I do--very much so. I just don't understand whats going wrong. Any suggestions?
Can you help me write my profile for dating website? Can you rewrite my profile to date women? below is my information and everything about me and what I like in women: Name: Gabriel Address: Live in New York Age: 33 Religion: Christian but non-domination Looks: good looking, dark hair and eyes….with dark skin Height: 6’1 and weight 210 Lbs Race: American but my dad originally from Greece and my mom is Arabic Marital status: Divorced after I was married to woman 20 years older than me My Match: I like sexy old women, simple and caring….I prefer women over 30 years old. I don’t like skinny women. Tall, Curves and voluptuous….My women type is like Monica Bellucci and Raquel Welch. I would love to date divorced or single or widowed women …….even in her 50s …..I would love to date bi women too….I’m very open minded and people privacy means a lot to me….. I have been very busy lately; I work with US Government in IRAQ. Still looking for something real; Someone who can be my best friend, my lover and my confidant. Friendship is the first step in any relationship. I’m not looking for intimate encounter or multi relationships. I’m real and serious. I am looking for a mature smart female who enjoys being the center of attention, open minded, wanting to explore all of her experiences and never hesitate to share her fantasies with me …I have always being with people older than me, because of the maturity level..... I adore a mature woman that accepts me, for who I am, Qualities that I seek in a woman: - Intelligence - Confidence - Independence - Age (I think older women are sexy!) I believe strongly in a 50/50 relationship… I would like to meet a woman who knows who she is and is comfortable in her own skin. Integrity, Honesty, character, Intelligence and a sense of humor are traits that are important to me as well as chemistry Please, help me to write introduction to attract women between 30-50 years old……feel free to change anything and add anything u may think it will be good for me. Thank you
If there's life after death, why are christian so preoccupied with the world as it is now? If there life after death, then why aren't you christian worry free. So obsessed with petty human relationship and worldly objects. If there's truly life after death a relative dying should be trivial, you'll see them in heaven. Christian crying about a break up...a break up. You got a date with Jesus, no woman or man can touch that. If heaven is so great, why risk it for otherwise irrelevant things. Why shouldn't every single problem in life be faced with "ahhh whatever i got an eternity of paradise coming to me." *I know this is old* Why does the pope ride confined in bullet proof glass. A. He gets shot at; god omnipotent he can stop a bullet I hope. B. God will make sure the situation is avoided completely or C. Pop gets shot and dies; he dies then god wanted it to happen. Why is a man made contraption what's keeping him secure, rather than god grace. I thought your not suppose to fear anything, but god. All praise Sam Colt.....
Dating a Guy From Work? I am a single overweight female. I don't get asked out on dates ever. So this new guy started at work and I really liked him he was smart and interesting. He asked me out on a date and I had a good time. So I went on the second and third date. While he is smart I think he is mentally ill. He is absolutely obessed with religion (namely Christian Science). I do not subscribe to their beliefs. I think its a cult, not to hurt anyones feelings or anything. I know a lot about religion from having lots of free time on my hands and studying lots of religions in depth. Plus I was raised in The Church of God and I feel that is the particular faith I need to be in. But I digress, this guy is wanting to move way to fast. He just divorced a few weeks ago and he is talking about us marrying. I want more than anything to get married but I don't think this will work. I don't think I could ever love him. Should I wait or go with my gut? My gut says no way Jose! He kissed me and it was awful I am 43 years old and never married. I keep thinking this might be my only chance. He is 53. I just think even though I am over weight and most men don't like big women there has to be one guy out there who likes big women who isn't a nut case. I don't think I could ever be sexually attracted to him the kiss was awful it was like kissing a relative. It felt disgusting. Thanks Nels, that is good advice.
8- The Bible's "original manuscripts had been lost" according to the Christian scholars and theologians:? Some Christians decided to respond to many of the Bible's contradictions. They named their site "101 Clear Contradictions in the Bible." Ironically, their own quotes below refute them! For example, you can do a search on this text in their site: "Confirmation of this type of copyist error is found in various pagan writers as well." Even those Christian scholars admit with their own typed words by their own fingers that the Bible does indeed contain "copyist error(s)", and they lowered their Holy Scripture to the level of a pagan book through their comparison. My question is then, how can it be the word of GOD when it contains Satanic "copyist errors"? By the way, please visit: The Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible. Answering Infidel Shamoun on the Lie of Bible Preservation. The Original manuscript don't even exist according to the bible's own theologians! "Christians readily admit, however, that there have been 'scribal errors' in the copies of the Old and New Testament. It is beyond the capability of anyone to avoid any and every slip of the pen in copying page after page from any book, sacred or secular. Yet we may be sure that the original manuscript (better known as autograph) of each book of the Bible, being directly inspired by God, was free from all error. Those originals, however, because of the early date of their inception no longer exist." "Because we are dealing with accounts which were written thousands of years ago, we would not expect to have the originals in our possession today, as they would have disintegrated long ago. We are therefore dependent on the copies taken from copies of those originals, which were in turn continually copied out over a period of centuries. Those who did the copying were prone to making two types of scribal errors. One concerned the spelling of proper names, and the other had to do with numbers." "Most Christians will affirm that the Bible is our rule of faith and practice. It is a little self contradictory to stand in the pulpit and say the word of God is inspired, when in his heart the pastor knows he is not referring to any book here on this earth that people can hold in their hands and believe. He really should say what he believes - that the word of God WAS inspired at one time but we no longer have it, so the best we can do is hope we have a close approximation of what God probably meant to tell us." (http://www.geocities.com/brandplucked/transinsp.html) "It also seems a bit inconsistent to say he believes the originals were inspired, when he has never seen them, they never were together in one single book and they no longer exist anyway. How does he know they were inspired? He accepts this by faith. Yet he seems to lack the faith to actually believe that God could do exactly what He said He would do with His words. God said He would preserve them and that heaven and earth would pass away but His words would not pass away." (http://www.geocities.com/brandplucked/transinsp.html) Yet, this same person writes: "How Old Was Ahaziah, 22 or 42? This is an apparent contradiction that frequently is thrown in the face of Christians who believe we have an inspired Bible. Many Atheist, Islam and Bible debunker sites bring up this example. Sad to say, most of the “Christian” apologetic sites which promote the new bible versions cave in here and say the number 42 is a copyist error. Here is a typical response by those Christians who use and promote the modern versions. This one comes from Techtonics Apologetics. This “defender of the faith” answers: “ Was Ahaziah forty-two or twenty-two (per 2 Kings 8:26) when he ascended the throne? More likely 22, and 2 Chronicles has been hit by a copyist error. See our foundational essay on copyist errors for general background. In favor of the "22" reading in 2 Chronicles: The 2 Kings reading; some LXX and Syriac manuscripts. This typical Christian response is not limited to this one example, but in many objections brought up by the infidels or the curious, this same rote answer is given. There is a copyist error. There is a typo in God’s book. The skeptics laugh and the modern version proponent looks like a fool. 2 Chronicles 22:2 tells us that Ahaziah was 42 years old when he began to reign. The Hebrew texts, plus Wycliffe 1395,Coverdale 1535, Bishop's Bible 1568, Geneva Bible 1599, the Revised Version, the American Standard Version, Douay 1950, the Spanish Reina Valera 1960, Italian Diodati 1602, NKJV, RSV, NRSV, the Jewish translations of 1917 and 1936, the 1998 Complete Jewish Bible, Hebrew Names Bible, Rotherham's Emphasized Bible, Webster's 1833 translation, the New English Bible 1970, the New Jerusalem, KJV 21st Century, and the Third Millenium Bible all say Ahaziah was 42 years old when he began to reign. The inspired Hebrew text clearly says Ahaziah was 42 years old. The masoretic scribes were very scrupulous in copying their sacred tru
Christian girls who still are virgins left? I am 21, a Christian, and a virgin. I really wanted to meet a cute, sweet, girl who is a virgin, but it's nearly impossible. We don't have a singles club at my church, all of my guy friends have already done it (outside of a religious few), I don't know any girls at my college (they are'nt Christian and have had sex and bfs), and I don't have any girls as friends to introduce me to girls. I just want to meet someone to have a decent relationship with, not for sex, until marriage. If there is anyone out there looking for this, please feel free to respond. I'm very patient, but I'm starting to lose hope. Here is my picture to show you I'm not ugly: (on the right side) http://tiu.facebook.com/profile.php?id=119400589 http://www.myspace.com/muzicfan115 To let people know, I live near Arlington Heights, IL, so I would need someone to meet in my area. Online dating doesn't work for me, they aren't virgins. I don't smoke or really drink...yes, I'm a loser. Please help.
to all aithiests and christians/evolution &creationists i challenge you!? why is there so much debate between both parties. personally i have no problem with both co-existing. a lot of extremist christians refuse to believe that the universe was created from the big bang, but instead believe that we were created in 7 days. whereas an extremist atheist believes that everything is a series of random events that led to where we are today. in my opinion i think that both of these views are wrong IN A SENSE. perhaps god, or a higher intelligence, or however you wish to put it IS the random factor by which the universe was created, and that a being of higher intelligence would create something infinitely more complex than we can comprehend, instead of believing that we were created in 7 days by almost magic and the dinosaurs never existed. everything exists in both chaos and perfect harmony. this seems logical because it allows things in the universe to exist upon their own free actions, with the only technical rule being that for every single action there is an equal and opposite reaction. i think that the way that both mainstream religion and atheism is being portrayed to the masses is wrong. people take both sides too literally, instead of looking at the bigger picture, and coming to their own personal views about how everything works. some of the worst examples of religious extremism i have seen in christianity would have to be with the number of them who take the bible to be the literal truth. believing that the universe was created solely for man, yet there are billions of other species on our planet alone. who is to say that there are not undiscovered species in the universe, if they are ever found, did god forget about them?. now some will make the argument that because there is no literal proof, nothing else exists. but the same could also be said by the atheist about god. these extremists put down anyone who opposes them with slander,so think about this; the state of the eastern world just now. religious extremists feel that they have to hurt and eliminate anyone that does not agree with their Shi'ite law. but the same could be said about extremist christians, if they were readily given the same Access to weapons and explosives of the same caliber, and trained up to fight for a cause that they think is righteous, then who is to say that they would not pull the trigger? so really i think that taking the words of outdated thinkers and scholars literally is perhaps not the best idea. maybe the bible was created as a guide, not as a rulebook. and being so small minded to the wonders of the universe and how it was created is extremely outdated in my opinion. i think that the need for organized religion has long passed its sell by date, and that religion should be more of a personal thing than a tool used to impose the will of the small minded on the masses. WAKE UP AND SMELL THE BACON PEOPLE, ITS BURNING there is already far too much hate in the world, and with all the suffering in the world perhaps it is time to put things aside, get some common sense, go out and actually make a difference in the world instead of preaching how if you accept some sort of belief these problems will magically disappear. well it wont. change only comes from within. what i have said does not just relate to this argument , but to extremists in general you only have to look at history to see where extremists have led us. hitler for example.... and again i am not talking about EVERY SINGLE Christian and atheist. i talk of the small minded extremists, who will argue tooth and nail with everyone who opposes their views. thanks for reading, this is just my opinion. but i would like to hear yours?
Religious/Philosophical discussion on sex? This is a relatively long question, but PLEASE read it thru COMPLETELY if you wish to answer. In Amercian society, I believe that there is a relatively strong consensus that you should wait till marriage to have sex. On the whole I believe Americans are right in the middle….We are DEF. not as rigid as Eastern cultures (i.e. Indian, Muslim etc), although we are DEF. more conservative than Europeans. In any case, I was just looking at this from a religious/philosophical view. I am a Protestant Christian and I would say I am somewhat religious….I read my Bible and try to go to church when I can. An “average” person would probably agree that most of the Bible’s laws are “common sense” (i.e. do not steal, do not murder etc.). However….when it comes to sex….I dunno….my view If you read the Bible, you will tend to agree that you cant really look at “one verse” and make a judgement…..you have to see it as a WHOLE. Anyways the Bible says do not commit adultery…..Adultery is defined as basically “having sexual relations with another man’s wife or vice versa (woman having affair with a married man). Anyways, I honestly do not believe it is “adultery” if you have sex with someone who is single and you yourself are single (and what about dating….is it REALLY a sin if you have sex with a person you have been dating for a long time….?). Am I really supposed to belive that if someone has sex with their fiancé a week before they are married….is God really going to say that was SINFUL!!??? (as if waiting one more week till your married—now its suddenly SACRED????). That’s an extreme example…but my point is….sexual feelings/urges are NORMAL…..(as opposed to having urges to murder or steal). In any case I just cant come to believe that God would really view even “sleeping around” as a sin…or a SERIOUS sin….as long as BOTH MEMBERS ARE SINGLE….AND OF THE OPPOSITE SEX (duh). I mean in the Old Testament King David…(a man God said is “after his own heart”) had MANY wives (obviously this isn’t allowed anymore) and MANY concubines (in the thousands!!!) …concubines were essentially there to JUST sleep with the King….when David sinned was with BATHSHEBA….and that’s b/c SHE WAS MARRIED!!! God even said….the analogy with the sheep…..you had 1000s….he only had 1….and you took her…..that essentially meant God was saying that you had LOTS and LOTS of women…and you stole another man who only had one….let me also emphasize that having this many women was considered a BLESSING from God. In any case…..I also feel that the Bible paints TOO ROSEY of a picture of marriage…..in the Bible its always kinda that “rode together into the sunset” kinda marriages….MOST marriages are NOT that happy!!! Some of you may have great marriages…and good for you….but MOST do not. (Another analogy….not ALL ppl with money are happy….but its been PROVEN as a WHOLE that the richer you are the HAPPIER and HEALTHIER you are!!!---ppl who have a very active sex life are PROVEN to be HAPPIER and HEALTHIER than ppl that don’t—most ppl will tell you after the first few years of marriage….your sexual satisfaction decreases exponentially….). And one more thing….I am not saying “waiting for the one” is not important…it IS DEF. more special if you actually care about the person you have sex with…..however……there is also DEF. something GREAT about having a different partner everyday—(not getting “bored”)---like the “rock star lifestyle.” That’s why this is called a FANTASY. I know this may get “old” somehow for stars….and they marry too….however….you would be LYING if you said it would SUCK to have a different person in your bed every night…..whether you’re a guy or a girl!!! And why would God give EVERYONE these STRONG feelings if he only wanted you with ONE person---just doesn’t seem to make sense to me. Your thoughts?? All views are invited. Please feel free to critique my argument if you feel I said some incorrect things Hey thx for the feedback! I just wanted to respond to some of Joy's post. First of all congrats on being married for so long!! Obviously you disagree with my opinion.....but I do wanna point out that most marriages ARE NOT that happy--ABOUT 50% FAIL!!!! If a marriage fails---obviously mostly likely wasnt a happy one....but I HIGHLY doubt ALL of the other 50% of married ppl are thrilled with their marriages.....and the stat I said about sexual satisfaction may have been a little vague...so I'll clear it up.....MOST married ppl have sex LESS FREQUENTLY than when they first married....also many times (just like you said) they have to find ways to "spice it up." This is not what I would call being "sexually satisfied"--you MAY very well love each other more than ever....but....IN GENERAL.....sex lives DO tend to get "milder" as the years pass.
Can someone save me from this newfound obsession? First let me preface my little story by stating that I don't really believe in the supernatural- christian, pagan or anything in between, but just recently stumbled upon what I think is a startling relevance of certain numbers in my life. Now I find myself looking for it all the time and am afraid I'm starting to lose it (take note- I'm actually asking this on the net..lol) Having been unemployed for the past 2 months, I was lamenting to my mother about my situation and she kinda jokingly said "why don't you play the lottery and see if you get lucky". Not being a lucky person and having little extra money I wanted to pick my own numbers and just play that single set. I asked my hubby what numbers should I play- he said to use stuff like birthdays, important dates or numbers in my life. Since being unemployed affords me a lot of free time, I set out to calculate the perfect set of numbers for myself. Keep in mind that you have to choose five numbers between 1-56 and one number between 1-46. So I started playing around. I used old address numbers, starting with 405. Obviously you can't choose this number so I added them together - 4 0 9 = 9. Next house number 306 (3 0 6 =9) Ok, 9 is definitely my 1st number. Next 65- 6 5 = 11. Then my old apt. # 11. Second # is definitely 11. So then I thought, my b-day. I wrote down 26 and 12. Just for fun I added them together - 36, but couldn't help noticing that 3 6 =9, or if you add 1 2 2 6 =11. Wow I thought, what a coincidence! So I took my whole b-day 1 2 2 6 1 9 6 9. 36. Again. Or 3 6=9.Again. My curiosity was provoked so I decided to tinker with other numbers. My phone # totaled 47. 4 7=11. Cool. My last digits of my SS# are 11, or if you add the last 4 digits together they total 11. The 2 middle digits of ss# total 11 and the first 3 total 9. I was born at 8:30 am. 8 3 0 =11. My fisrt child was born at 11:18 am. 1 1 1 8=11. My granddaughter ( his daughter) was born at 9:11pm. I got a call for a job interview who left their message on my machine at 9:11 am for an interview on 7/31 (go ahead, add it up)at 8:30 (yep) Turned it down because of location and because I'm starting a p/t job with better pay. $11 p/h.Hmmm....I could give more examples but I think you get the point. I now find myself adding up sh*t all the time. Am I going crazy - I feel like the guy in the movie "23" Has anyone else experienced this? I think it's only fair to say that I came up with few 6's as well (upside down 9?) lol - somebody say something to return me to rationality. My husband is superstitious and is of no help. So give me your take.... Tim - you're right..lol , but it does equal 38 and 3 + 8 =11
No boyfriend, Valentine's Day is near...:(? Valentine's Day is just around the corner. I'm in college and have never had a boyfriend! I'm really shy, I'm really picky (at least I don't want to settle), and I'm not ugly, but I'm not a supermodel either (and the college I attend has more than enough of those to go around-and a lot of them are smart, too...) ANYWAY, life gets really lonely. I have very few friends but good ones, yet they don't go out to clubs. Come to think of it, we hardly go out and when we do, it's always the same small group and to a place where you can't meet any1 (restaurants, movies). There's no way to meet great guys or even just cute ones to be friends with. I am in a Christian club but all the guys there are dating (practically married-type dating). They're great, but none of them have single friends to introduce me to, either. I just don't know what to do anymore. School isn't getting any easier and I have less free time. I don't wanna end up a crazy old maid-I don't even like cats! lol..
Christians: Did I do the right thing in this? I question daily what I did. My ex-fiance cheated on me in June with her best friend's husband, and a few weeks later I took her back and 'forgave' her. Actions speak louder than words, and I didn't forgive her until way later. We decided to stop our sexual relations and remain sex free until marriage, or so I thought. It ended up ruining everything, including any intimacy we had. She eventually started hurting herself on purpose, and then she started dating someone behind my back until I investigated the phone records and found out. We were doing pre-marital counseling with a Christian counselor, but my ex was already moving on. She is now 'in love' and having a good relationship with him. I have not moved on yet, as I am trying to each day take a small step forward in my faith walk, and my walk towards independence and security in being me. But I still question, relationships are give and take, and sometimes you sacrifice for the good of the relationship. Was that a bad idea to take away the sex, because it eventually led to the demise of our five year relationship? I now find myself in a bind. I cannot find any good girls that are Christian and have a good head on their shoulders. There are millions of women, it just seems like none of them are single and the ones that are good already have a man or aren't looking for anything. I know you are gonna say she wasn't meant to be with me, I deserve better, the right one is right around the corner, take it 24 hours at a time, get more involved in church, do more activities, workout. I do all that. How do I get to the point where I am comfortable not having a significant other? For the last two years my mentality was how cool life is gonna be with this soul mate as my other in a house with our dog and eventually children. Now I have to say it's cool being alone and lonely and having nothing to look forward to like that. Blah blah concentrate on my career, whatever. I am not worried about making money at all, I want to make differences in people's lives and make an impact on as many people as I can, and I want a fulfilling relationship with Christ and a significant other, so why should I be content with being lonely? Maybe me and ex weren't meant to be, and I have to Let God and Let Go as it is out of my hands now. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! God bless...
I(I'm 26) have a past my boyfriend (He's 27) wants to break up with me over. Can you help? I'm a 26 year old female and I'm dating a 27 year old male. We've been dating for 8 mos. and we've been friends for almost 8 years. I met him at church, when I was actually dating someone else long time ago and he tried to date me back then. Fast forward to now 2009, we both happened to be single and because we're such good friends (I considered him my best male friend) I guess some attraction crept in our friendship. He asked me on a date and we've been together ever since. It's great. I love him to death and often we talk about our future together and being husband and wife. I love him so deeply. However, I have a past. I've slept with a few guys before we ever had the inkling of thought to date one another and he's ready to break up over it. He's keeps saying "I did him wrong" and "I should've saved myself for him." How is it possible? I did all those things before him and I had no idea that stuff would now be affecting me/us now. Back then I was doing what I wanted to do in those relationships. The really unfair thing is that his past isn't so squeaky clean either. He's sold drugs before, had one-night stands, more sexual partners than me period and run-ins with the law. He's since changed his life and since age 21 he's become a Christian and the only thing bad he's done since he became A Christian was a few sexual partners (including me). His problem with me is that he can't see where I ever, "turned my life around". He says all these years I've spent being a Christian, where a person is supposed to deny themselves of worldy pleasures because they're living for God, were fake. I had at least 1 sexual experience with each of the boyfriends I've had in the past. I date guys years at a time it seems and over the course of time I've slept with most of them. So he's saying he spent those years denying his hormonal urges (mostly) and I never had a period of hormonal denial. This is longer than I intended, sorry. Anyway, the things that absolutely kills me is that all these reasons he wants to break up with me now, all those guys (about 10; compared to his almost 15) he complains about I already told him about before we ever started dating and back then it bothered him and he sucked it up because he really wanted to date me. He pursued me heavily and I tried not to date him because we were such good friends first that I didn't want a breakup to occur and then the friendship is ruined. Now look were we are. He wants to break up because of things that happened before him that he already knew about. Can someone (guys preferably) help me understand what's going on in his mind and tell me if maybe we should split after all. Should I let him leave? Note: within our relationship we haven't had a snag at all (besides my past he can't get over). We're drama free and mature, good team work and we have fun together. He buys me all these flowers and writes me love letters and tells me how much he loves me all the time. We talk about the life we want to have together once we get married. I'm totally faithful and committed to him and him to me.
Fast 10 points for best Answer ! Changed my mind about dumping my GF, but now she is ignoring me? A week ago I was thinking about breaking up with my girlfriend of a year. (we were friends for two years before that and dating others,PLUS she lived/lives two hours away) while we were on vacation 3 weeks ago, she met my best friend for first time ... we're all in our 30s. my best friend is married with kids. since im single still he kept telling that life is short and to go be free and have fun and travel the world. he told me to quit my job as a lawyer and try being an entrepreneur to save time. anyway when we got back from vacation i suddenly snapped and decided that although my girlfriend is a pretty smart sweet devoted Christian girl who has been a good friend and loves me, that I felt stifled and hate that she can be well sort of NEEDY (not financially at all, just emotionally) And since she is moving to my city next month for both me and a new job here, I panicked. My parents also didnt help by telling me I have to marry her since we're not getting any younger. I used to want kids/marriage by 30... Now since I look young and feel young I ve been thinking to wait until my 40s. Well I turned cold and stony on my gf. Stopped calling her for a few days like I usually do. She emailed me twice and texted me. I didnt reply. Finally she wrote she had had a horrible week in her own life and was wondering why i suddenly seemed to hate her and that she hoped it was just a misunderstanding. I wrote back on a friday that i was feeling in a weird mood, didnt feel like talking to anyone and would call her that weekend to 'chat' she replied ok then i decided to go out friday night and be wild. strip bar with my friends. she texted me at 2 am that she hoped i was feeling better and good. I ignored that text. I also didn't call her Saturday because I went out with guy friends drinking. Finally I called Sunday night. No answer. Instead she emailed me a few minutes later that she had been up since 7 am and since it was 1 am was going to bed. Now its been a week and she is nt taking MY calls or replying to me except for every 5th or 6th email i send. She isnt showing any pain or anger on her facebook. To the contrary, she has been posting attractive new pics of herself and has nothing but busy but upbeat status updates. Hmmm also she seems to have crash dieted since our vacation (i had been nagging her to lose 10 pounds for months and it was our main source of strife) so she looks better than ever and seems to be happy. makes me miss her and want her and not ever break up. but i get the feeling that by ignoring her and claiming i had a weird mood that she doesnt trust me. also she has left a TON of stuff at my house instead of taking it back home. Since she is moving down to her apt here next month, we both agreed it wa spointless for her to haul it back home. So I have about 1500 dollars worth of luggage and shoes of hers here. Which means she has to see me sometime to retrieve it ! I posted this question earlier and got attacked. Im not a jerk, or at least a total one. I had this same problem befpore years ago. I needed a little space from afiancee and she left me. I can appreciate women when i have some time apart in quiet. Now that I want her and to be in contact she has frozen me out. what to do to ? she is still moving to my city next month for her job...
Could someone break this down for me? I'm single and that's perfectly fine. I'd prefer to be single til I'm 80 years old than marry the wrong person and be miserable. I know that's a hard thing to say and an EVEN harder thing to believe but I don't want to settle for someone who is mediocre, who will kind of make me happy instead of the person God truly has for me. I firmly believe in marrying the wrong person and that's a very scary thing. I get to a point sometimes where I think I NEED a boyfriend and some one to make feel good. But the fact of the matter is all I really need is the Lord. I believe God has a perfect and wonderful person out there for me and during this time of singleness all of my focus and desires MUST be directed towards him. It's VERY easy to lose sight of the Lord when your focusing on who your next boyfriend/girlfriend is going to be because your so scared to be alone. I know how true this is because I am guilty of it. No one wants to be alone. But in reality your never alone (great Barlow Girl reference). God wants to be your only Love. He is a jealous God. He doesn't want to be this Holy, untouchable figure in your life, but he wants to be your closest and best friend. He desires a deep and intimate relationship with you. I have been reading a book and it has never said it so clear to me that spoke right to my heart. 32 I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord's affairs—how he can please the Lord. 33But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— 34and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord's affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. 1 Corinthians 7:32-34 "Before you ask God for another man, take care of Him. If you are not ministering to His needs, and yet you are always before him, asking Him to give you one of His princes to minister to, your prayers are not being heard because you are not being faithful to Him. When you become faithful in your singleness, than you will be better prepared to be faithful with your husband." I read a book one time where young single girls were referred to as the Lord's "Lily White Princesses," as cheesy as that may sound I believe it. God is our one true Prince. He wants to hold and love us like no man can ever do. He is the one person on this earth who will never hurt us and who will always be there for us. His love for us is in no way comparable to any carnal way on this earth. He has a much deeper love for us, and we should have that same deep and intimate love for him in return. I believe this is the same for guys. However, I have not read many Christian Living books directed towards guys so there's no real way for me to put it towards you. Once again though , I feel like we put God in this position in our lives where we could never have an close and intimate relationship like we could with another person, but we can! I believe that's his true desire for us. And I believe once we get to this place, where nothing else matters, only then he will bless us with a husband or wife. When we have experienced that pure love with him, only than we will be able to experience it with another person on this earth. We claim to "trust the Lord" with our future husband or wife but spend SO much time looking. Like we think we need to help God out a little. But that's not truly trusting God. You cannot fully give something to God and still hold onto it. I firmly believe in Godly dating. Praying for wisdom in your decisions. My fear is trying to convince myself that the wrong person is right. But if you truly trust God and pray for wisdom, than you'll know and there won't be questions. A wise person once told me that ministry and relationships are like running a marathon. We all have a ministry I believe. We're all running a race, were all at different speeds depending on where we are in our ministry and relationship with God, and one day we'll just look beside us and someone will be next to us running the same speed and you'll wave, and than they'll wave and there that person will be. :) lol I know that sounds dumb but I feel like thats how its going to happen!
Is it anti-Catholic to think like this? I have been called anti-Catholic by many Catholics and by anti-Catholics themselves here on Yahoo! Answers. Someone, which I will not name, called me an anti-Catholic troll and that I'm deceptive, that I am a Jehovah Witness, or I belong to the Seventh-day Adventist Church or is fundamentalist Baptist, or I belong to Iglesia ni Cristo (Church of Christ) or Ang Dating Daan (The Old Path), I would like to say to that someone and to the Catholics and to the anti-Catholics, that I'm not anyone of those things that that someone mentioned, I am not anti-Catholic, I was raised a Catholic, and I still am a Catholic, I believe Jesus was a historical figure of staggering influence, perhaps the most enigmatic and inspirational leader the world has ever seen, he founded new philosophies, he inspired millions to better lives, he preached about love, kindness and a single God, I believe in God, I believe that Jesus is the son of God, I believe that Jesus is God made flesh, Jesus was my first childhood hero, and I believe going to Church is a great way to communicate to God... Does being Catholic mean that I have to follow what my religion believes? What happened to free-thinking and free-will? I have made an observation, which angered a lot of Catholics here on Yahoo! Answers, I observed and researched that before the Roman Empire decided to make Christianity the officially supported religion in the Roman state, ancient Rome was a pagan state, as they worshipped the Egyptian Isis and the Persian Mithras, but as the original Roman religion faded, many aspects of its hierarchy remain ingrained in Christian ritual, and as follows, the Egyptian sun disks became the halos of Catholic saints, Isis nursing her son Horus became the blueprint for our modern images of the Virgin Mary nursing Baby Jesus, virtually all the elements of the Catholic ritual, the miter, the altar, the doxology, and communion, were taken directly from paganism, even Christianity’s weekly holy day was from the pagans, originally, Christianity honored the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday, but was shifted to coincide with the pagan’s veneration day of the sun, Sunday, and Christ's birthday was taken from the pagan god, Mithras, who was born on December 25. What is so anti-Catholic about pagan symbology influencing Catholic symbology? Does God care about symbols? Does the pagan influences on Catholic symbology diminish the majesty of Christ's life and sacrifice? Of course not, if you are bothered by the facts that I present here, that you are bothered by pagan symbology influencing Catholic symbology, than your faith is flawed, even though I know these things, my love for my Catholic faith is not diminish, and my love for Jesus Christ is not diminish. And to the anti-Catholics, I will not convert to any other religion nor will I throw away my Catholic faith, becuase in the end, symbols are symbols, and God is mightier than symbols. Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_ancient_Rome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Invictus#Sol_Invictus_and_Christianity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagan_influences_on_Christianity
Where do I go from here? I question daily what I did. My ex-fiance cheated on me in June with her best friend's husband, and a few weeks later I took her back and 'forgave' her. Actions speak louder than words, and I didn't forgive her until way later. We decided to stop our sexual relations and remain sex free until marriage, or so I thought. It ended up ruining everything, including any intimacy we had. She eventually started hurting herself on purpose, and then she started dating someone behind my back until I investigated the phone records and found out. We were doing pre-marital counseling with a Christian counselor, but my ex was already moving on. She is now 'in love' and having a good relationship with him. I have not moved on yet, as I am trying to each day take a small step forward in my faith walk, and my walk towards independence and security in being me. But I still question, relationships are give and take, and sometimes you sacrifice for the good of the relationship. Was that a bad idea to take away the sex, because it eventually led to the demise of our five year relationship? I now find myself in a bind. I cannot find any good girls that are Christian and have a good head on their shoulders. There are millions of women, it just seems like none of them are single and the ones that are good already have a man or aren't looking for anything. I know you are gonna say she wasn't meant to be with me, I deserve better, the right one is right around the corner, take it 24 hours at a time, get more involved in church, do more activities, workout. I do all that. How do I get to the point where I am comfortable not having a significant other? For the last two years my mentality was how cool life is gonna be with this soul mate as my other in a house with our dog and eventually children. Now I have to say it's cool being alone and lonely and having nothing to look forward to like that. Blah blah concentrate on my career, whatever. I am not worried about making money at all, I want to make differences in people's lives and make an impact on as many people as I can, and I want a fulfilling relationship with Christ and a significant other, so why should I be content with being lonely? Maybe me and ex weren't meant to be, and I have to Let God and Let Go as it is out of my hands now. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! God bless...
Need advice, plenty of detail, She says she would spend the rest of her life with me, i love her but...? A little background, I'm a 17 year old guy, going to college two years early (i had had enough of high school). I'm random, very built, and always been a bit of a rebel, rules (written and unwritten) were optional, i did what I wanted; including more than a few one night stands in hs. Before coming to college i had never had a gf, i had never wanted one. I ended up having to give up that crazy life when i came to college, for many reasons. Five months ago I started going for runs with a girl from my chem class (a freshmen). She was a nice, somewhat timid, Christian girl (virgin by choice) a major tom-boy and whose one desire is to become a doctor. She liked me, and i eventually decided "Just go for it, you can't say you didn't try" and we started dating. But I warned her, "I'm probably the worst guy for you," and told her about my past. She told me she didn't care and told me about her past boyfriends (who were something similar) Three months later, she told me she loved me, I told her i didn't think i was capable of love . She said she didn't care. A month later, we had sex, she had been begging for it for over a month, but i told her i wouldn't do till she went a week without a single doubt it was right. The next day, while on a walk, I realized i did love her. Over the next couple weeks she told me about how she never knew it was possible to love someone as much as she loved me, and if someone was to spend the rest of her life with her, nothing would make her happier for it to be me. She also wanted me to teach her to be a rebel like me. I love her, but I don't think i'm even capable of that kind of love, and i don't feel it for her. But the longer we've been dating, the more she has become like the woman i thought i might marry... But the more worrying thing is that I want to be free again: one-night stands, not having someone to worry about me, having no connections to sever when I decided to pick up and leave, see the rest of the world, etc, and i don't see that changing for a long time, 15 years at the soonest. Any advice or comments are very appreciated. sorry i didn't make this clearer, she is actually 18 almost 19, in other words, shes a year and half older than me
Any advice on how to meet guys? I am a 21 year old Christian nurse who works full time at a local hospital on a floor that mainly has patients ages 50 to 90 years old. I am also a full time student working on my BSN. Obviously, I do not have any real free time. When I do have some free time, I would really like to have someone to go out and have fun with. Generally, I would go with friends but all of my friends either are in a relationship or have moved away, and all of my classmates/co-workers are much older than me and have their own families and such. I have tried the online dating thing without any luck, and all of my friends claim I am "too good" for the few single guys they know and will not attempt to set me up with any of them. I don't mean to be arrogant but I do not see where a guy would not like hanging out w/ me b/c many of my patients and friends tell me how attractive I am and how much fun they have with me. Any ideas or advice on how to meet guys to go out with would be appreciated. Thanks in advance! Thanks for the advice! I just wanted to add that yes I am a member of the Church I have attended my whole life (which is the only Lutheran Church around here) and I am the ONLY person between ages 18 and 35. lol. and my school, everything is online so I meet/see no one. The classmates I was referring to are those who I just happen to know through discussion boards and stuff for the classes.
I'm pregnant! If my boyfriend won't marry me, should I put our baby up for adoption? I've graduated from college, but took a mimimally paying job because it was all I could find in this economy. I've been dating a Marine for 4 months and now I'm pregnant. The baby is due in December and I'm not sure what to do. We've brought up marriage and signed up for a marriage prep class with the chaplain, however he's not ready to kiss his single life away... so he's unsure about getting married. Because I'm without health insurance and technically make too much to qualify for medicaid but honestly not enough to pay for my own I told him I was going to put the baby up for adoption if we decided not to marry. He's getting ready to move to a new duty station, and if we got married I'd go with him but if not, I'm stuck here with our baby and any kind of life I had is out the window. My family is 2000 miles away in Michigan, so I'm somewhat stuck here without any kind of support and my baby will spend all his time in daycare. If I say I'm putting the baby up for adoption if we don't get married, is that blackmail? I just don't know why I should get stuck with having absolutely no life while he could be foot loose and fancy free in California. No doubt, we love eachother and a marriage could easily work... I'm just waiting for a decision from him. Meanwhile, there are plenty of nice christian couples out there who could support my child a lot better than I could at this point in my life. Abortion is out of the question because I do not believe in it, for my particular situation any way. Additionally, I told him I'm okay with whatever he decides because I do not want to guilt him into anything and I do not want him to go into a marriage feeling trapped!
Is this normal? I'm only attracted to like .002% of the men I meet... and I'm a straight woman!? I'm 27 years old, I work in promotional modeling... so I'm not ugly... but I've been single for years now! Surely, I've been asked out in those years, but I've declined all offers due to lack of attraction. I am SO picky and I HATE IT!! I honestly WISH I could be attracted to some of the guys that are interested in me because they seem like nice guys. I've even prayed to God and told him to feel free to FORCE an attraction if it means that I'll be with a guy that treats me right!! I know many of you are going to say "Don't judge a book by its cover." and "Its whats on the inside that counts." I KNOW all of that, I BELIEVE all of that, but I can't FORCE myself to be attracted if I'm not. The thought of kissing a guy I'm not physically attracted to makes me want to gag. This wouldn't be much of an issue... but I'm 27... and I've been single for SO LONG... I haven't had a date since November of 2005. Being Christian and vegetarian doesn't seem to help either!
I have an attraction, but I'm not sure what to do about it. Suggestions? Hello all :) i have a friend with whom I spend my free periods at college (amongst others). I find him really attractive - he's really good looking, funny, nice and we have the same beliefs. I really quite like him, but there are complications. So here's the low-down as it stands: On several occasions, when we've been on opposite sides of the same room, I've caught him turn around and look at me. Also, during group conversation, he *seems* to hold eye contact with me for longer periods of time then one would consider normal and *seems* to make eye contact more frequently. His facebook profile is filled with wall comments from me, from a conversation that he initiated. There are no others on there. this proves that I'm teh only person he seems to have taken an active interest in talking to. When his friend asked me across the table if I was single he went quiet and stared down at the table. He seems to be everywhere literally. I'll turn around and he'll be somewhere behind me in the same room, and I'll catch his eye and we'll smile at each other. One the other hand: During a group conversation, shortly after I was asked about my availability, he went on a huge rant about how he loves being single and how he never wants a girlfriend. He was half joking, but he made several points relative to himself personally that make me think he was trying to divert me. He was saying how when you have a girlfriend you have no time for anything else (he made a huge list of such things) and how you're always short of cash. Then I asked him what he would do if he really liked someone and he said he would run a mile, and that all the people he likes he wouldn't date anyway because they don't share his beliefs. Kind of an obvious negative there. His brother absolutely despises me for no reason. I keep seeing similarities between him and a guy who used to play me around in the past, and I don't want to end up in that situation again. He has a very similar charisma, and I'm one of those silly people who assumes that just because someone is a Christian means that they're automatically good, respectful people. Silly I know. But yeah, the last guy warned me many times of his ways and I was fooled anyway, and so perhaps this guys 'single speech' was a similar warning? Also, I know this is just petty and superstitious, but there are lots of mini links between them too. this guys brother has teh same name as the old guy, and the last status he posted was in relation to something that I specifically remember the old guy talking about with me. what do you think? I know it's probably blindingly obvious but I want a second opinion. Haha I really hope what you're saying is correct, but I don't think I've done anything to make him think that way. I keep kicking myself because I always end up glancing over at him and he always catches me (I hope that means he was looking haha) but I keep thinking how obvious it is...
I feel as though i have died, yet live because of the hate I feel...? Cass Lyons was the first of many to replace me. To add insult to injury, not only did she replace me with a girl I completely hate, but Cass denied that she was replacing me, when she would hang out with this friend but not me, talk to this girl in class but not me, and just overall blew me off. The best part of it all? I found out Cass had been replaced by her best friend a year ago, and that she had felt the same way I did. But when i brought this up to her, she denied the two situations were alike and that I was being paranoid...******* hypocrite. Emily Palestino is just a *****. We got in a fight and to be honest I don't even remember what started the fight...but she's the bitchiest person I've ever met. I've tried to ignore her and forget this, but she'll randomly ***** at me when I'll have literally said nothing to her. I swear I am going to kill this girl...a part of me doesn't care about getting caught, so long as I watch her die and know I did it. And that's not even half of what's happened this past year. I went out with a girl named Niki Holzapfel for about...five ******* days before she dumped me. She had told me she thought we'd at least last a year... Cass said no matter how hard I pushed her away, she'd always come back. She never came back... Niki said we'd last a year, we didn't even last a week... Emily said she'd help me through my troubles, now she's my biggest trouble... Brain. Jenna. Olivia. Sara. Anny. All promised to stand by me, none followed through. Do you see now why I can't trust anyone?. These people sucked all the love out of me, and almost caused my physical death. Instead they caused a mental collapse. What can I say...I'm a stereotypical anime nerd. Completely akaward geek, obsessive, no friends, the whole nine yards. Give me a chance to talk about an anime, video game, or book I like and I could go on about every single tiny detail about it. I like any kind of rock, be it hard, soft, classic, new age. I absolutlely despise almost any other genre of music, though I do have some respect for pop. as far as rap, country, Christian, etc. go, I hate them all. I am the complete outcast of my family. My ENTIRE family is athletic, good looking, and normal, the total opposite of me. They tend to see anime and video games as pointless and feel my time is being wasted. I think the only reason they put up with it is because I have consistently good grades and my IQ is 127, 3 short of genius. Oh, and I like writing. A lot. I feel it's the best and most pain free method of releasing one's true form. the two girls I've dated dumped me after two days, and I've never even been kissed. I'm 15 and hideous in a world of beautiful people...
I am in severe need of help...please...please help me.? Cass Lyons was the first of many to replace me. To add insult to injury, not only did she replace me with a girl I completely hate, but Cass denied that she was replacing me, when she would hang out with this friend but not me, talk to this girl in class but not me, and just overall blew me off. The best part of it all? I found out Cass had been replaced by her best friend a year ago, and that she had felt the same way I did. But when i brought this up to her, she denied the two situations were alike and that I was being paranoid...******* hypocrite. Emily Palestino is just a *****. We got in a fight and to be honest I don't even remember what started the fight...but she's the bitchiest person I've ever met. I've tried to ignore her and forget this, but she'll randomly ***** at me when I'll have literally said nothing to her. I swear I am going to kill this girl...a part of me doesn't care about getting caught, so long as I watch her die and know I did it. And that's not even half of what's happened this past year. I went out with a girl named Niki Holzapfel for about...five ******* days before she dumped me. She had told me she thought we'd at least last a year... Cass said no matter how hard I pushed her away, she'd always come back. She never came back... Niki said we'd last a year, we didn't even last a week... Emily said she'd help me through my troubles, now she's my biggest trouble... Brain. Jenna. Olivia. Sara. Anny. All promised to stand by me, none followed through. Do you see now why I can't trust anyone?. These people sucked all the love out of me, and almost caused my physical death. Instead they caused a mental collapse. What can I say...I'm a stereotypical anime nerd. Completely akaward geek, obsessive, no friends, the whole nine yards. Give me a chance to talk about an anime, video game, or book I like and I could go on about every single tiny detail about it. I like any kind of rock, be it hard, soft, classic, new age. I absolutlely despise almost any other genre of music, though I do have some respect for pop. as far as rap, country, Christian, etc. go, I hate them all. I am the complete outcast of my family. My ENTIRE family is athletic, good looking, and normal, the total opposite of me. They tend to see anime and video games as pointless and feel my time is being wasted. I think the only reason they put up with it is because I have consistently good grades and my IQ is 127, 3 short of genius. Oh, and I like writing. A lot. I feel it's the best and most pain free method of releasing one's true form. the two girls I've dated dumped me after two days, and I've never even been kissed. I'm 15 and hideous in a world of beautiful people...
Looking for a "real" relationship...? I am 21, a Christian, and a virgin. I really wanted to meet a cute, sweet, girl who is a virgin, but it's nearly impossible. I'm trying to go to a singles club, but there really aren't any in Arlington Heights, IL. Some of my guy friends have already had sex (outside of a religious few), I don't know any girls at my college (they aren't Christian and have had sex and bfs), and I don't have any girls as friends to introduce me to girls. I just want to meet someone to have a decent relationship with, not for sex, until marriage. If there is anyone out there looking for this, please feel free to respond. I'm patient, but I'm starting to lose hope. Here is my picture to show you I'm not ugly. http://www.myspace.com/muzicfan115 http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=119400589 To let people know, I live near Arlington Heights, IL, so I would need someone to meet in my area. Online dating doesn't work for me, they often aren't virgins. I want to meet a Christian girl, because religion is very important to who I am. And I want to meet a virgin because I don't want to be treated as second best or have a person that has had sex and will compare me. I hope this clarifies that I am NOT looking for sex, but I am looking for a positive and long lasting relationship. If anyone feels this way and is serious about a relationship, I need to know that I am not alone. I talked with my pastor about this and he said he knows but I want to have Christian girls as friends, so I can maybe form a relationship. Oh , and I'm not a pervert, so I can't see anyone under the age of 18, sorry. I know this is long, but please no clichés. (i.e. "life is hard, get over it", "or you'll eventually find anyone"). I know it will be hard, and I'm willing to make sacrifices, such as someone that sometimes drinks, but smoking I can't because I'm allergic and I kept myself pure so long, so I want to have a pure girlfriend and wife. Thanks again.
Why the double standard towards women and sex? So, I am going to feel free to rant and vent my frustrations.....I am a young woman. I am well educated and have a good head on my shoulders. I pride myself in being a strong, independent woman. I am also sexually active, but not in a monogamous relationship. By personality, I am a very open (and considering the topic, pardon the pun) and honest person about myself in general and tend to be very sarcastic and speak alot in jest. Now, I work as a server/cocktail waitress. Anyone who has worked in the industry knows that the sex lives of co-workers and sex in general are always spoken of. It's pretty much the main topic of most conversations. Anyways, a few of my male co-workers have made comments implying that they think of me as "easy". Of course, I am very offended. It is true that I go out alot on dates and have many male friends, but because I am comfortable in stating that I enjoy sex while not being in a committed relationship, I am now thought of as easy (yet all of the single guys at work do the same). I don't see anything wrong in being sexually active because I get tested regularly, always use protection, and am never having sex for the wrong reasons ( i.e. self-esteem issues, some unresolved "daddy issues"). Yes, I agree that sex when shared with someone with whom you love and trust is so much more than just sex, but I haven't found that person yet so why should I not enjoy something that, to be honest, is quite enjoyable even without the emotional attachments? People like to cite "lacking in self-respect and morals" as a cause, but I don't entirely agree. For some, that may ring true. However, I have a few girlfriends who have only been with maybe 2 or 3 guys, but are regularly cheating on their boyfriends and doing drugs. In my opinion, a person's morals are already shot if they are cheating on their boyfriend and exposing your body to harmful drugs is more on the level of lacking self-respect than being a sexually active, responsible adult. I do not sleep with just anyone or the first guy who buys me a drink at the bar, but like I said I am not in a monogamous relationship and I don't see any harm in that--as long as it's being done responsibly, safely, and everybody is on the same page. Now, I was raised Southern Baptist so I understand the religious implications. I was taught that pre-marital sex is wrong. I actually abstained until I was 19. I think what made me start questioning my choice and what I still wonder to this day is why there is such an emphasis put on a girl's sexuality? I, regardless being man or woman, would care more about a person's thoughts, beliefs, and ambitions than their past sexual history or lack there of (alotting that they are clean). I don't think any girl who may have been with less or more men than me to be anymore moral or respectable. I'm just looking for other people's perspectives and why they think the double standard prevails....(And yes, I am a Christian and have pre-marital sex, but please spare me your moral outrage. I'm looking for opinions on the matter, not a lecture!) I cringed in fear of getting the religious responses.....yeah, yeah I get it. I wish I held the moral conviction to be perfect. I guess I wanted to garner responses from people who may have--God or Allah forbid!!--"sinned" sometime in their life. Or maybe people who aren't judgemental and self-righteous.
is it up to jesus if i date or not?(some guy told me this lol)? the above is not my concept but am wondering how absurd do some christians have to get before they realize they have lost credibility - why would any person tell me that its up to jesus if i date or not - god gave us free will so its up to me not jesus if i date or not - in closing why do you think some christians are this way - erroneous to a fault - is jesus really controlling of was this guy trying to play mind games with me ? bottom i dont know this guy - called a prayer line and shared a prayer request of being single and he said this me - my question is this, why?
Any single Christian girls out there, who are still virgins? I am 21, a Christian, and a virgin. I really wanted to meet a cute, sweet, girl who is a virgin, but it's nearly impossible. We don't have a singles club at my church, all of my guy friends have already done it (outside of a religious few), I don't know any girls at my college (they are'nt Christian and have had sex and bfs), and I don't have any girls as friends to introduce me to girls. I just want to meet someone to have a decent relationship with, not for sex, until marriage. If there is anyone out there looking for this, please feel free to respond. I'm very patient, but I'm starting to lose hope. Here is my picture to show you I'm not ugly: (on the right side) http://tiu.facebook.com/profile.php?id=119400589 http://www.myspace.com/muzicfan115 To let people know, I live near Arlington Heights, IL, so I would need someone to meet in my area. Online dating doesn't work for me, they aren't virgins. I don't smoke or really drink...yes, I'm a loser. Please help. I want to meet a Christian girl, because religion is a very important part of me. And I want to meet a virgin because, I don't want to be treated as second best or have a person that's "used up." I hope this clarifies that I am NOT looking for sex, but I am looking for a positive and long lasting relationship.
My husband or the single true love of my life? I husband and I were boyfriend and girlfriend for 4 years, we had good and bad times, as "normal". I really did love him, but after we got married, he changed. Gone was the sweet wooer, the gentleman, the kind hearted person I knew. Now he is abusive, rude, cold, and treats me like I am his inferior. He wants to dictate to me every aspect of my life, and gets violent if I don't agree with him. He dictates to me what my day should be like, what I think, how I feel, and what to say. He got furious when I said I was accepted into a school I had really wanted to get into.And had been planning o doing even before we wre bf and gf and had even told him. There is just so many things I have gone through with him after we got married, I don't even recognize him anymore. Then I find out that he could be cheating on me. I feel as if, if I get a divorce, I would have failed at something major in my life, and I am christian. One of the reasons I married him was I settled for what I had, and felt obligated to after so many years of being a couple. I never thought I would get to be with the true love I had and still have for the other person. Here is the other part...before my husband and I started dating, there was another man lets say A. A, I have known for years longer than i did my husband, and I have been his close friend through thick and thin, I have been witness to the girls he would date and who screwed him over, he thought he would be destined forever to live a loveless life...Well over time and through our friendship we well, fell in love... Neither of us did anything about it because he would be with someone at the time. Finally when i had the courage to try to let him know how I felt, my sister in law, who is his cousin stepped in and told me he was seeing someone and that he wanted to marry her... so dejected i sat around and well ultimately picked up my now husband. "A" is also really good friends with my sister, and he recently told her he was devasetaed that i had gotten married, and he had found out after the fact, and wasnt anywhere around to even be able to get ahold of when i wanted to tell him. It turns out that when i had wanted to "let him know" that I loved him, he had been wanting to do the same! My sister in law told him at the time, that i was seeing someone else(which wasnt true) and told me he was seeing someone else(which also turned out not to be true) Neither of us wanting to cross a boundry we werent certain of, just took it in silence. when he wanted to approach me again, after hearing from someone that I had broken up with my boyfriend(now husband) for some time, he asked my sister in law(not knowing yet she had lied before) she told him I had gotten married.(which wasnt true at the time either!). so once again he retreated.Well it recently got out of the bag, about the deception, and now I AM married, thinking he was getting married and hadnt felt the way i did, and am stuck with the feeling that I shouldnt get divoraced no matter how my husband treats me because it is against God. and he told my sister in confidence about how he still loved me and regretted not confirming what he had been told, well I walked in and heard them. and my heart broke, because he wont say a thing to me about it(out of respect for my marriage) so he doesnt know I know.. I thought he would have rejected me now with me being married,(he also sharing my faith) but he hasn't and told my sister that he is so angry about what he has heard other people mention about the way my husband has treated me, and his cousin (my sister inlaw) lying to us AND that he wishes i could leave my husband, but won't tell me because of our faith.... And now I am torn between my true love and my obligation to my husband. If my marriage was a good one, I would work harder to forget A and all, but its, unfortuanately not what it was supposed to be. So now it's God and my loveless marraige, or or what? I dont want to feel like I am an adulterer, but I dont want to be hurt anymore, right now I am living in another town because I am in school and my husband told me he would never come with me and that he would want a divorace, then he takes it back and says he would rather not, because he doesnt want to free me and that I am branded since the day he decided he wanted me to be his. And "A"? even though he has the full part of my heart, I know my resources and body and mind is that of my husband, and my obligation is to God, so I have to stay with him... I was ok with us being in different towns, because I....well.... frankly I was getting scared of what his mood would strike him to do next.... and that's it...my story... Through it all I insist on being optimistic, because isn't good supposed to always triumph? But it doesnt help me decide what to do...
What do you think about Saturday or Sunday being the Sabbath? The Sabbath is Saturday? Which Day? "And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." Genesis 2:2-3 Which day is the Sabbath? "The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God." Exodus 20:10. "And when the sabbath was past, ...very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre." Mark 16:1,2. Modern and Historic Statements on the Sabbath American Congregationalist Anglican Baptist Brethren Catholic Church of Christ Church of England Congregational Christian Church Disciples of Christ Episcopalian Lutheran Lutheran Free Church Methodist Moody Bible Institute Presbyterian Protestant Episcopal Southern Baptist Dictionaries and Encyclopedias Infidel Miscellaneous American Congregationalist: "The current notion that Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted the first day for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament." Dr. Layman Abbot, in the Christian Union, June 26, 1890. Anglican: "And where are we told in the Scriptures that we are to keep the first day at all? We are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first day... The reason why we keep the first day of the week holy instead of the seventh is for the same reason that we observe many other things, not because the Bible, but because the Church, has enjoined it." Isaac Williams, Plain Sermons on the Catechism, pages 334, 336. Baptist: “There was and is a command to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath day was not Sunday. It will however be readily said, and with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week, with all its duties, privileges and sanctions. Earnestly desiring information on this subject, which I have studied for many years, I ask, where can the record of such a transaction be found: Not in the New Testament – absolutely not. There is no scriptural evidence of the change of the Sabbath institution from the seventh to the first day of the week.” Dr. E. T. Hiscox, author of the ‘Baptist Manual’. "To me it seems unaccountable that Jesus, during three years' discussion with His disciples, often conversing with them upon the Sabbath question, discussing it in some of its various aspects, freeing it from its false [Jewish traditional] glosses, never alluded to any transference of the day; also, that during the forty days of His resurrection life, no such thing was intimated. Nor, so far as we know, did the Spirit, which was given to bring to their remembrance all things whatsoever that He had said unto them, deal with this question. Nor yet did the inspired apostles, in preaching the gospel, founding churches, counseling and instructing those founded, discuss or approach the subject. Of course I quite well know that Sunday did come into use in early Christian history as a religious day as we learn from the Christian Fathers and other sources. But what a pity that it comes branded with the mark of Paganism, and christened with the name of the sun-god, then adopted and sanctified by the Papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism." Dr. E. T. Hiscox, report of his sermon at the Baptist Minister's Convention, in 'New York Examiner,' November 16, 1893 (The leader / spokesman for the Roman Catholic Church agrees with this statement.See Below) "The Scriptures nowhere call the first day of the week the Sabbath. . .There is no Scriptural authority for so doing, nor of course, any Scriptural obligation." The Watchman. "We believe that the law of God is the eternal and unchangeable rule of His moral government."-"Baptist Church Manual," Art. 12. "There was never any formal or authoritative change from the Jewish seventh-day Sabbath to the Christian first-day observance." -WILLIAM OWEN CARVER, "The Lord's Day in Our Day," page 49. "There is nothing in Scripture that requires us to keep Sunday rather than Saturday as a holy day." Harold Lindsell (editor), Christianity Today, Nov. 5, 1976 Brethren: "With the views of the law and the Sabbath we once held ... and which are still held by perhaps the great majority of the most earnest Christians, we confess that we could not answer Adventists. What is more, neither before or since have I heard or read what would conclusively answer an Adventist in his Scriptural contention that the Seventh day is the Sabbath (Ex. 20:10). It is not 'one day in seven' as some put it, but 'the seventh day according to the commandment.' " Words of Truth and Grace, p. 281. ^ Top Catholic: “It is well to remind the Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and all other Christians, that the Bible does not support them anywhere in their observance of Sunday. Sunday is an institution of the Roman Catholic Church, and those who observe the day observe a commandment of the Catholic Church.” Priest Brady, in an address, reported in the Elizabeth, NJ ‘News’ on March 18, 1903. See This Rock "Protestants ... accept Sunday rather than Saturday as the day for public worship after the Catholic Church made the change... But the Protestant mind does not seem to realize that ... in observing Sunday, they are accepting the authority of the spokesman for the Church, the pope." Our Sunday Visitor, February 5th, 1950. See This Rock “Of course these two old quotations are exactly correct. The Catholic Church designated Sunday as the day for corporate worship and gets full credit – or blame – for the change.” This Rock, The Magazine of Catholic Apologetics and Evangelization, p.8, June 1997 Question: Which is the Sabbath day? Answer: Saturday is the Sabbath day. Question: Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday? Answer: We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday.” -Rev. Peter Geiermann C.SS.R., The Convert’s Catechism of Catholic Doctrine, p. 50 Q. Must not a sensible Protestant doubt seriously, when he finds that even the Bible is not followed as a rule by his co-religionists? A. Surely, when he sees them baptize infants, abrogate the Jewish Sabbath, and observe Sunday for which [pg. 7] there is no Scriptural authority; when he finds them neglect to wash one another's feet, which is expressly commanded, and eat blood and things strangled, which are expressly prohibited in Scripture. He must doubt, if he think at all. ... Q. Should not the Protestant doubt when he finds that he himself holds tradition as a guide? A. Yes, if he would but reflect that he has nothing but Catholic Tradition for keeping the Sunday holy; ... Controversial Catechism by Stephen Keenan, New Edition, revised by Rev. George Cormack, published in London by Burns & Oates, Limited - New York, Cincinnati, Chicago: Benzinger Brothers, 1896, pages 6, 7. "The Church, on the other hand, after changing the day of rest from the Jewish Sabbath, or seventh day of the week, to the first, made the Third Commandment refer to Sunday as the day to be kept holy as the Lord's Day. The Council of Trent (Sess. VI, can. xix) condemns those who deny that the Ten Commandments are binding on Christians." The Catholic Encyclopedia, Commandments of God, Volume IV, © 1908 by Robert Appleton Company, Online Edition © 1999 by Kevin Knight, Nihil Obstat - Remy Lafort, Censor Imprimatur - +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York, page 153. ''The [Roman Catholic] Church changed the observance of the Sabbath to Sunday by right of the divine, infallible authority given to her by her founder, Jesus Christ. The Protestant claiming the Bible to be the only guide of faith, has no warrant for observing Sunday. In this matter the Seventh-day Adventist is the only consistent Protestant.'' The Catholic Universe Bulletin, August 14, 1942, p. 4. "All of us believe many things in regard to religion that we do not find in the Bible. For example, nowhere in the Bible do we find that Christ or the Apostles ordered that the Sabbath be changed from Saturday to Sunday. We have the commandment of God given to Moses to keep holy the Sabbath Day, that is the 7th day of the week, Saturday. Today most Christians keep Sunday because it has been revealed to us by the Church outside the Bible." The Catholic Virginian, "To Tell You The Truth,” Vol. 22, No. 49 (Oct. 3, 1947). "... you may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we never sanctify." The Faith of Our Fathers, by James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, 88th edition, page 89. Originally published in 1876, republished and Copyright 1980 by TAN Books and Publishers, Inc., pages 72-73. 'Deny the authority of the Church and you have no adequate or reasonable explanation or justification for the substitution of Sunday for Saturday in the Third - Protestant Fourth - Commandment of God... The Church is above the Bible, and this transference of Sabbath observance is proof of that fact.'' Catholic Record, September 1, 1923. "But since Saturday, not Sunday, is specified in the Bible, isn't it curious that non-Catholics who profess to take their religion directly from the Bible and not the Church, observe Sunday instead of Saturday? Yes, of course, it is inconsistent; but this change was made about fifteen centuries before Protestantism was born, and by that time the custom was universally observed. They have continued the custom, even though it rests upon the authority of the Catholic Church and not upon an explicit text in the Bible. That observance remains as a reminder of the Mother Church from which the non-Catholic sects broke away - like a boy running away from home but still carrying in his pocket a picture of his mother or a lock of her hair." The Faith of Millions "Perhaps the boldest thing, the most revolutionary change the Church ever did, happened in the first century. The holy day, the Sabbath, was changed from Saturday to Sunday. "The Day of the Lord" (dies Dominica) was chosen, not from any directions noted in the Scriptures, but from the Church's sense of its own power. The day of resurrection, the day of Pentecost, fifty days later, came on the first day of the week. So this would be the new Sabbath. People who think that the Scriptures should be the sole authority, should logically become 7th Day Adventists, and keep Saturday holy." Sentinel, Pastor's page, Saint Catherine Catholic Church, Algonac, Michigan, May 21, 1995 “If Protestants would follow the Bible, they would worship God on the Sabbath Day. In keeping the Sunday they are following a law of the Catholic Church.” Albert Smith, Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, replying for the Cardinal, in a letter dated February 10, 1920. “The observance of Sunday by the Protestants is homage they pay, in spite of themselves, to the authority of the [Catholic] Church.” Monsignor Louis Segur, ‘Plain Talk about the Protestantism of Today’, p. 213. What Important Question Does the Papacy Ask Protestants? Protestants have repeatedly asked the papacy, "How could you dare to change God's law?" But the question posed to Protestants by the Catholic church is even more penetrating. Here it is officially: ""You will tell me that Saturday was the Jewish Sabbath, but that the Christian Sabbath has been changed to Sunday. Changed! but by whom? Who has authority to change an express commandment of Almighty God? When God has spoken and said, Thou shalt keep holy the seventh day, who shall dare to say, Nay, thou mayest work and do all manner of worldly business on the seventh day; but thou shalt keep holy the first day in its stead? This is a most important question, which I know not how you can answer. You are a Protestant, and you profess to go by the Bible and the Bible only; and yet in so important a matter as the observance of one day in seven as a holy day, you go against the plain letter of the Bible, and put another day in the place of that day which the Bible has commanded. The command to keep holy the seventh day is one of the ten commandments; you believe that the other nine are still binding; who gave you authority to tamper with the fourth? If you are consistent with your own principles, if you really follow the Bible and the Bible only, you ought to be able to produce some portion of the New Testament in which this fourth commandment is expressly altered."" *Library of Christian Doctrine: Why Don't You Keep Holy the Sabbath-Day? (London: Burns and Oates, Ltd.), pp. 3, 4. ''I have repeatedly offered $1,000 to anyone who can prove to me from the Bible alone that I am bound to keep Sunday holy. There is no such law in the Bible. It is a law of the holy Catholic Church alone. The Bible says 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.' The Catholic Church says, No. By my divine power I abolish the Sabbath day and command you to keep holy the first day of the week. And lo! The entire civilized world bows down in reverent obedience to the command of the Holy Catholic Church." Priest Thomas Enright, C.S.S.R., February 18, 1884, Printed in the American Sentinel, a New York Roman Catholic journal in June 1893, p. 173. "There is but one church on the face of the earth which has the power, or claims power, to make laws binding on the conscience, binding before God, binding under penalty of hell-fire. For instance, the institution of Sunday. What right has any other church to keep this day? You answer by virtue of the third commandment (the papacy did away with the 2nd regarding the worship of graven images, and called the 4th the 3rd), which says 'Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.' But Sunday is not the Sabbath. Any schoolboy knows that Sunday is the first day of the week. I have repeatedly offered one thousand dollars to anyone who will prove by the Bible alone that Sunday is the day we are bound to keep, and no one has called for the money. It was the holy Catholic Church that changed the day of rest from Saturday, the seventh day, to Sunday, the first day of the week." - T. Enright, C.S.S.R., in a lecture delivered in 1893. ''Of course the Catholic Church claims that the change was her act. And the act is a mark of her ecclesiastical power and authority in religious matters.'' C. F. Thomas, Chancellor of Cardinal Gibbons, in answer to a letter regarding the change of the Sabbath, November 11, 1895. “Tradition, not Scripture, is the rock on which the church of Jesus Christ is built.” Adrien Nampon, Catholic Doctrine as Defined by the Council of Trent, p. 157 "The Pope is of so great authority and power that he can modify, explain, or interpret even divine law". The pope can modify divine law, since his power is not of man, but of God, and he acts a vicegerent of God upon earth" Lucius Ferraris, Prompta Bibliotheca, art. Papa, II, Vol. VI, p. 29. "The leader of the Catholic church is defined by the faith as the Vicar of Jesus Christ (and is accepted as such by believers). The Pope is considered the man on earth who "takes the place" of the Second Person of the omnipotent God of the Trinity." John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 3, 1994 "...pastoral intuition suggested to the Church the christianization of the notion of Sunday as "the day of the sun", which was the Roman name for the day and which is retained in some modern languages.(29) This was in order to draw the faithful away from the seduction of cults which worshipped the sun, and to direct the celebration of the day to Christ, humanity's true "sun"." John Paul II, Dies Domini, 27. The day of Christ-Light, 1998 (Prominent protestant leaders agree with this statement - See above for a statement by Dr. E. T. Hiscox, author of the ‘Baptist Manual’) "The Sun was a foremost god with heathen-dom…The sun has worshippers at this hour in Persia and other lands…. There is, in truth, something royal, kingly about the sun, making it a fit emblem of Jesus, the Sun of Justice. Hence the church in these countries would seem to have said, to 'Keep that old pagan name [Sunday]. It shall remain consecrated, sanctified.' And thus the pagan Sunday, dedicated to Balder, became the Christian Sunday, sacred to Jesus." William Gildea, Doctor of Divinity, The Catholic World, March, 1894, p. 809 "The retention of the old pagan name of Dies Solis, for Sunday is, in a great measure, owing to the union of pagan and Christian sentiment with which the first day of the week was recommended by Constantine to his subjects - pagan and Christian alike - as the 'venerable' day of the sun."" Arthur P. Stanley, History of the Eastern Church, p. 184 "When St. Paul repudiated the works of the law, he was not thinking of the Ten Commandments, which are as unchangeable as God Himself is, which God could not change and still remain the infinitely holy God."-Our Sunday Visitor, Oct. 7, I951. "Question: How prove you that the Church hath power to command feasts and holydays? Answer: By the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which Protestants allow of; and therefore they fondly contradict themselves, by keeping Sunday strictly, and breaking most other feasts commanded by the same Church." Henry Tuberville, An Abridgment of the Christian Doctrine (1833 approbation), p.58 (Same statement in Manual of Christian Doctrine, ed. by Daniel Ferris [1916 ed.], p.67) "Some theologians have held that God likewise directly determined the Sunday as the day of worship in the NEW LAW, that he himself has explicitly substituted sunday for the Sabbath. But this theory is entirely abandoned. It is now commonly held that God simply gave His church the power to set aside whatever day or days she would deem suitable as holy days. The church chose sunday, the first day of the week, and in the course of time added other days as holy days." - Vincent J. Kelly, Forbidden Sunday and Feast-Day Occupations, Washington, DC, Catholic University of America Press, Studies in Sacred Theology, No. 70.,1943, p. 2. "If we consulted the Bible only, we should still have to keep holy the Sabbath Day, that is, Saturday, with the Jews, instead of Sunday; ..." -- A Course in Religion for Catholic High Schools and Academies, by Rev. John Laux M.A., Benzinger Brothers, 1936 edition, Part 1. "Sunday is a Catholic institution, and... can be defended only on Catholic principles.... From beginning to end of Scripture there is not a single passage that warrants the transfer of weekly public worship from the last day of the week to the first." Catholic Press, Aug. 25, 1900 "The Sabbath was Saturday, not Sunday. The Church altered the observance of the Sabbath to the observance of Sunday. Protestants must be rather puzzled by the keeping of Sunday when God distinctly said, 'Keep holy the Sabbath Day.' The word Sunday does not come anywhere in the Bible, so, without knowing it they are obeying the authority of the Catholic Church." Canon Cafferata, The Catechism Explained, p. 89. ''Reason and sense demand the acceptance of one or the other of these alternatives: either Protestantism and the keeping holy of Saturday, or Catholicity and the keeping holy of Sunday. Compromise is impossible.'' John Cardinal Gibbons, The Catholic Mirror, December 23, 1893. ^ Top Church of Christ: "But we do not find any direct command from God, or instruction from the risen Christ, or admonition from the early apostles, that the first day is to be substituted for the seventh day Sabbath." "Let us be clear on this point. Though to the Christian 'that day, the first day of the week' is the most memorable of all days ... there is no command or warrant in the New Testament for observing it as a holy day." "The Roman Church selected the first day of the week in honour of the resurrection of Christ. ..." Bible Standard, May, 1916, Auckland, New Zealand. "... If the fourth command is binding upon us Gentiles by all means keep it. But let those who demand a strict observance of the Sabbath remember that the seventh day is the ONLY sabbath day commanded, and God never repealed that command. If you would keep the Sabbath, keep it; but Sunday is not the Sabbath. The argument of the 'Seventh-day Adventists' is on one point unassailable. It is the Seventh day not the first day that the command refers to." G. Alridge, Editor, The Bible Standard, April, 1916. "There is no direct Scriptural authority for designating the first day the Lord's day."-DR. D. H. LUCAS, Christian Oracle, Jan. 23, 1890. "The first day of the week is commonly called the Sabbath. This is a mistake. The Sabbath of the Bible was the day just preceding the first day of the week. The first day of the week is never called the Sabbath anywhere in the entire Scriptures. It is also an error to talk about the change of the Sabbath. There never was any change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. There is not in any place in the Bible any intimation of such a change."-"First-Day Observance," pages 17, 19. "It has reversed the fourth commandment by doing away with the Sabbath of God's Word, and instituting Sunday as a holiday." DR. N. SUMMERBELL, "History of the Christian Church," Third Edition, page 4I5. "To command...men...to observe...the Lord's day...is contrary to the gospel." - "Memoirs of Alexander Campbell," Vol. 1, page 528. "It is clearly proved that the pastors of the churches have struck out one of God's ten words, which, not only in the Old Testament, but in all revelation, are the most emphatically regarded as the synopsis of all religion and morality."-ALEXANDER CAMPBELL, "Debate With Purcell," page 214. "I do not believe that the Lord's day came in the room of the Jewish Sabbath, or that the Sabbath was changed from the seventh to the first day, for this plain reason, where there is no testimony, there can be no faith. Now there is no testimony in all the oracles of heaven that the Sabbath was changed, or that the Lord's day came in the room of it."-ALEXANDER CAMPBELL, Washington Reporter, Oct. 8, 1821. ^ Top Church of England: "Many people think that Sunday is the Sabbath. But neither in the New Testament nor in the early church is there anything to suggest that we have any right to transfer the observance of the seventh day of the week to the first. The Sabbath was and is Saturday and not Sunday, and if it were binding on us then we should observe it on that day, and on no other." Rev. Lionel Beere, All-Saints Church, Ponsonby, N.Z. in Church and People, Sept. 1, 1947. "Nowhere in the Bible is it laid down that worship should be done on Sunday. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. ...! That is Saturday." P. Carrington, Archbishop of Quebec, Oct. 27, 1949; cited in Prophetic Signs, p 12. "The observance of the first instead of the seventh day rests on the testimony of the church, and the church alone." Hobart Church News, July 2, 1894; cited in Prophetic Signs, p 14. "Where are we told in Scripture that we are to keep the first day at all? We are commanded to keep the Seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first day. The reason why we keep the first day holy instead of the seventh is for the same reason that we observe many things, not because the Bible, but because the Church, has enjoined them." Rev. Isaac Williams, Ser. on Catechism, p. 334. "The seventh day, the commandment says, is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. No kind of arithmetic, no kind of almanac, can make seven equal one, nor the seventh mean the first, nor Saturday mean Sunday. ... The fact is that we are all Sabbath breakers, every one of us." Rev. Geo. Hodges. "Not any ecclesiastical writer of the first three centuries attributed the origin of Sunday observance either to Christ or to His apostles."-SIR WILLIAM DOMVILLE, "Examination of the Six Texts," pages 6, 7. (Supplement). "There is no word, no hint, in the New Testament about abstaining from work on Sunday. . . . Into the rest of Sunday no divine law enters…, The observance of Ash Wednesday or Lent stands exactly on the same footing as the observance of Sunday." -CANON EYTON, 'The Ten Commandments," pages 52, 63, 65. "Is there any command in the New Testament to change the day of weekly rest from Saturday to Sunday? None."-"Manual of Christian Doctrine," page 127. "The Lord's day did not succeed in the place of the Sabbath....The Lord's day was merely an ecclesiastical institution. It was not introduced by virtue of the fourth commandment, because for almost three hundred years together they kept that day which was in that commandment...The primitive Christians did all manner of works upon the Lord's day, even in times of persecution, when they are the strictest observers of all the divine commandments; but in this they knew there was none."-BISHOP JEREMY TAYLOR, "Ductor Dubitantium," Part I, Book II, Chap. 2, Rule 6. Sec. 51, 59. "Sunday being the day on which the Gentiles solemnly adore that planet and called it Sunday, partly from its influence on that day especially, and partly in respect to its divine body (as they conceived it), the Christians thought fit to keep the same day and the same name of it, that they might not appear causelessly peevish, and by that means hinder the conversion of the Gentiles, and bring a greater prejudice than might be otherwise taken against the gospel."-T. M. MORER, "Dialogues on the Lord's Day," pages 22, 23. "The Puritan idea was historically unhappy. It made Sunday into the Sabbath day. Even educated people call Sunday the Sabbath. Even clergymen do." "But, unless my reckoning is all wrong, the Sabbath day lasts twenty-four hours from six o'clock on Friday evening. It gives over, therefore, before we come to Sunday. If you suggest to a Sabbatarian that he ought to observe the Sabbath on the proper day, you arouse no enthusiasm. He at once replies that the day, not the principle, has been changed. But changed by whom? There is no injunction in the whole of the New Testament to Christians to change the Sabbath into Sunday.' - D. MORSEBOYCOTT, Daily Herald, London, Feb. 26, 1931. "The Christian church made no formal, but a gradual and almost unconscious transference of the one day to the other."- F.W. FARRAR, D.D., "The Voice From Sinai," page 167. "Take which you will, either of the Fathers or the moderns, and we shall find no Lord's day instituted by any apostolical mandate; no Sabbath set on foot by them upon the first day of the week."-PETER HEYLYN, "History of the Sabbath," page 410. "Merely to denounce the tendency to secularise Sunday is as futile as it is easy. What we want is to find some principle, to which as Christians we can appeal, and on which we can base both our conduct and our advice. We turn to the New Testament, and we look in vain for any authoritative rule. There is no recorded word of Christ, there is no word of any of the apostles, which tells how we should keep Sunday, or indeed that we should keep it at all. It is disappointing, for it would make our task much easier if we could point to a definite rule, which left us no option but simple obedience or disobedience. . . . There is no rule for Sunday observance, either in Scripture or history."-DR. STEPHEN, Bishop of Newcastle, N.S.W., in an address reported in the Newcastle Morning Herald, May 14, 1924. ^ Top Congregational: "The Christian Sabbath' [Sunday] is not in the Scripture, and was not by the primitive [early Christian] church called the Sabbath." Timothy Dwight, Theology, sermon 107, 1818 ed., Vol. IV, p49 Note: Timothy Dwight (1752-1817) was president of Yale University from 1795-1817. "It is quite clear that, however rigidly or devoutly we may spend Sunday, we are not keeping the Sabbath ... The Sabbath was founded on a specific divine command. We can plead no such command for the obligation to observe Sunday ... There is not a single sentence in the New Testament to suggest that we incur any penalty by violating the supposed sanctity of Sunday." Dr. Dale, The Ten Commandments, pp. 106, 107. "It must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the first day." Buck's Theological Dictionary page 403. "There is no command in the Bible requiring us to observe the first day of the week as the Christian Sabbath."-ORIN FOWLER, A.M., "Mode and Subjects of Baptism." "The current notion that Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted the first day for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament."-DR. LYMAN ABBOTT, Christian Union, Jan. 18, 1882. Christian Church: "I do not believe that the Lord's day came in the room of the Jewish Sabbath, or that the Sabbath was changed from the seventh to the first day, for this plain reason, where there is no testimony, there can be no faith. Now there is no testimony in all the oracles of heaven that the Sabbath is changed, or that the Lord’s Day came in the room of it." Alexander Campbell, in The Reporter, October 8, 1921 "It has reversed the fourth commandment by doing away with the Sabbath of God's Word, and instituting Sunday as a holiday." - Dr. N. Summerbell, History of the Christian Church, Third Edition, p. 415 "There is no direct scriptural authority for designating the first day the Lord's day." - Dr. D. H. Lucas, Christian Oracle, Jan. 23, 1890. "The first day of the week is commonly called the Sabbath. This is a mistake. The Sabbath of the Bible was the day just preceeding the first day of the week. The first day of the week is never called the Sabbath anywhere in the entire Scriptures. It is also an error to talk about the change of the Sabbath. There never was any change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. There is not in any place in the Bible any intimation of such a change." First-Day Observance, pp. 17, 19. Disciples of Christ: "There is no direct Scriptural authority for designating the first day ‘the Lord’s Day.’" Dr D.H. Lucas, Christian Oracle, January, 1890 "If it [the Ten Commandments] yet exist, let us observe it... And if it does not exist, let us abandon a mock observance of another day for it. 'But,' say some, 'it was changed from the seventh to the first day.' Where? when? and by whom? - No, it never was changed, nor could it be, unless creation was to be gone through again: for the reason assigned [in Genesis 2:1-3] must be changed before the observance or respect to the reason, can be changed. It is all old wives' fables to talk of the 'change of the sabbath' from the seventh to the first day. If it be changed, it was that august personage changed it who changes times and laws ex officio, - I think his name is "Doctor Antichrist.'" Alexander Campbell, The Christian Baptist, February 2, 1824, vol 1, no. 7 ^ Top Episcopalian: "We have made the change from the seventh day to the first day, from Saturday to Sunday, on the authority of the one holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church of Christ." Bishop Symour, Why We keep Sunday. "The Bible commandment says on the seventh-day thou shalt rest. That is Saturday. Nowhere in the Bible is it laid down that worship should be done on Sunday." Phillip Carrington, quoted in Toronto Daily Star, Oct 26, 1949 [Carrington (1892-), Anglican archbishop of Quebec, spoke the above in a message on this subject delivered to a packed assembly of clergymen. It was widely reported at the time in the news media]. Lutheran: "The observance of the Lord's Day (Sunday) is founded not on any command of God, but on the authority of the Church." Augsburg Confession of Faith. "They [the Catholics] allege the Sabbath changed into Sunday, the Lord's day, contrary to the Decalogue, as it appears, neither is there any example more boasted of than the changing of the Sabbath day. Great, say they, is the power and authority of the church, since it dispensed with one of the Ten Commandments." -Augsburg Confession of Faith, Art. 28, par. 9. "They [Roman Catholics] allege the change of the Sabbath into the Lord's day, as it seemeth, to the Decalogue [the ten commandments]; and they have no example more in their mouths than they change of the Sabbath. They will needs have the Church's power to be very great, because it hath dispensed with the precept of the Decalogue." The Augsburg Confession, 1530 A.D. (Lutheran), part 2, art 7, in Philip Schaff, the Creeds of Christiandom, 4th Edition, vol 3, p64 [this important statement was made by the Lutherans and written by Melanchthon, only thirteen years after Luther nailed his theses to the door and began the Reformation]. "For up to this day mankind has absolutely trifled with the original and most special revelation of the Holy God, the ten words written upon the tables of the Law from Sinai."-"Crown Theological Library," page I78. "The Christians in the ancient church very soon distinguished the first day of the week, Sunday; however, not as a Sabbath, but as an assembly day of the church, to study the Word of God together, and to celebrate the ordinances one with another: without a shadow of doubt, this took place as early as the first part of the second century."-Bishop GRIMELUND, "History of the Sabbath," page 60. "The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance."- AUGUSTUS NEANDER, "History of the Christian Religion and Church," Vol. 1, page 186. "I wonder exceedingly how it came to be imputed to me that I should reject the law of Ten Commandments...Whosoever abrogates the law must of necessity abrogate sin also."-MARTIN LUTHER, Spiritual Antichrist," pages 71, 72. "We have seen how gradually the impression of the Jewish Sabbath faded from the mind of the Christian church, and how completely the newer thought underlying the observance of the first day took possession of the church. We have seen that the Christian of the first three centuries never confused one with the other, but for a time celebrated both." The Sunday Problem, a study book by the Lutheran Church (1923) p.36 "But they err in teaching that Sunday has taken the place of the Old Testament Sabbath and therefore must be kept as the seventh day had to be kept by the children of Israel .... These churches err in their teaching, for scripture has in no way ordained the first day of the week in place of the Sabbath. There is simply no law in the New Testament to that effect" John Theodore Mueller, Sabbath or Sunday, pp.15, 16 ^ Top Lutheran Free Church: “For when there could not be produced one solitary place in the Holy Scriptures which testified that either the Lord Himself or the apostles had ordered such a transfer of the Sabbath to Sunday, then it was not easy to answer the question: Who has transferred the Sabbath, and who has the right to do it?” George Sverdrup, ‘A New Day.’ Methodist: "This 'handwriting of ordinances' our Lord did blot out, take away, and nail to His cross. (Colossians 2: 14.) But the moral law contained in the Ten Commandments, and enforced by the prophets, He did not take away.... The moral law stands on an entirely different foundation from the ceremonial or ritual law. ...Every part of this law must remain in force upon all mankind and in all ages."-JOHN WESLEY, "Sermons on Several Occasions," 2-Vol. Edition, Vol. I, pages 221, 222. "No Christian whatsoever is free from the obedience of the commandments which are called moral."-"Methodist Church Discipline," (I904), page 23. "The Sabbath was made for MAN; not for the Hebrews, but for all men."-E.O. HAVEN, "Pillars of Truth," page 88. "The reason we observe the first day instead of the seventh is based on no positive command. One will search the Scriptures in vain for authority for changing from the seventh day to the first. The early Christians began to worship on the first day of the week because Jesus rose from the dead on that day. By and by, this day of worship was made also a day of rest, a legal holiday. This took place in the year 321. "The reason we observe the first day instead of the seventh is based on no positive command. One will search the Scriptures in vain for authority for changing from the seventh day to the first... Our Christian Sabbath, therefore, is not a matter of positive command. It is a gift of the church... "-CLOVIS G. CHAPPELL, "Ten Rules for Living," page 61. "Sabbath in the Hebrew language signifies rest, and is the seventh day of the week... and it must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the first day." Charles Buck, A Theological Dictionary, "Sabbath" "In the days of very long ago the people of the world began to give names to everything, and they turned the sounds of the lips into words, so that the lips could speak a thought. In those days the people worshipped the sun because many words were made to tell of many thoughts about many things. The people became Christians and were ruled by an emperor whose name was Constantine. This emperor made Sunday the Christian Sabbath, because of the blessing of light and heat which came from the sun. So our Sunday is a sun-day, isn't it?"-Sunday School Advocate, Dec. 31, 1921. "The moral law contained in the Ten Commandments, and enforced by the prophets, He [Christ] did not take away. It was not the design of His coming to revoke any part of this. This is a law which never can be broken... Every part of this law must remain in force upon all mankind and in all ages; as not depending either on time or place, or any other circumstances liable to change, but on the nature of God and the nature of man, and their unchangeable relation to each other."-JOHN WESLEY, "Sermons on Several Occasions," Vol. I, Sermon XXV. “It is true that there is no positive command for infant baptism. Nor is there any for the keeping of the first day of the week. Many believe that Christ changed the Sabbath. But, from His own words, we see that He came for no such purpose. Those who believe that Jesus changed the Sabbath base it only on a supposition.” Amos Binney, ‘Theological Compendium’, p. 180-181 "The Sabbath instituted in the beginning, and confirmed again and again by Moses and the prophets, has never been abrogated. A part of the moral law, not a jot or a tittle of its sanctity has been taken away." New York Herald 1874, on the Methodist Episcopal Bishops Pastoral 1874 Moody Bible Institute: "The Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since. This fourth commandment begins with the word 'remember,' showing that the Sabbath already existed when God wrote the law on the tables of stone at Sinai. How can men claim that this one commandment has been done away with when they will admit that the other nine are still binding?"- D.L. MOODY, "Weighed and Wanting," page 47. "I honestly believe that this commandment [the fourth, or Sabbath commandment] is just as binding today as it ever was. I have talked with men who have said that it has been abrogated, but they have never been able to point to any place in the Bible where God repealed it. When Christ was on earth, He did nothing to set it aside; He freed it from the traces under which the scribes and Pharisees had put it, and gave it its true place. 'The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.' It is just as practicable and as necessary for men today as it ever was-in fact, more than ever, because we live in such an intense age.' - Id., page 46. "This Fourth is not a commandment for one place, or one time, but for all places and times." D.L. Moody, at San Francisco, Jan. 1st, 1881. ^ Top Presbyterian: "The Christian Sabbath (Sunday) is not in the Scriptures, and was not by the primitive church called the Sabbath." Dwight's Theology, Vol. 14, p. 401. "A further argument for the perpetuity of the Sabbath we have in Matthew 24:20, Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter neither on the Sabbath day. But the final destruction of Jerusalem was after the Christian dispensation was fully set up (AD 70). Yet it is plainly implied in these words of the Lord that even then Christians were bound to strict observation of the Sabbath." Works of Jonathon Edwards, (Presby.) Vol. 4, p. 621. "We must not imagine that the coming of Christ has freed us from the authority of the law; for it is the eternal rule of a devout and holy life, and must therefore be as unchangeable as the justice of God, which it embraced, is constant and uniform." JOHN CALVIN, "Commentary on a Harmony of the Gospels," Vol. 1, page 277. "God instituted the Sabbath at the creation of man, setting apart the seventh day for the purpose, and imposed its observance as a universal and perpetual moral obligation upon the race." American Presbyterian Board of Publication, Tract No. 175. "The observance of the seventh-day Sabbath did not cease till it was abolished after the [Roman] empire became Christian," American Presbyterian Board of Publication, Tract No. 118. "The moral law doth for ever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof; and that not only in regard to the matter contained in it, but also in respect of the authority of God the Creator who gave it. Neither doth Christ in the gospel in any way dissolve, but much strengthen this obligation." "Westminster Confession of Faith," Chap. 19, Art. 5. "The Sabbath is a part of the Decalogue-the Ten Commandments. This alone for ever settles the question as to the perpetuity of the institution ... Until, therefore, it can be shown that the whole moral law has been repealed, the Sabbath will stand...The teaching of Christ confirms the perpetuity of the Sabbath."- T.C. BLAKE, D.D., "Theology Condensed," pages 474, 475. "Sunday being the first day of which the Gentiles solemnly adored that planet and called it Sunday, partly from its influence on that day especially, and partly in respect to its divine body (as they conceived it) the Christians thought fit to keep the same day and the same name of it, that they might not appear carelessly peevish, and by that means hinder the conversion of the Gentiles, and bring a greater prejudice that might be otherwise taken against the gospel" T.M. Morer, Dialogues on the Lord's Day "There is no word, no hint in the New Testament about abstaining from work on Sunday. The observance of Ash Wednesday, or Lent, stands exactly on the same footing as the observance of Sunday. Into the rest of Sunday no Divine Law enters." Canon Eyton, in The Ten Commandments. "Some have tried to build the observance of Sunday upon Apostolic command, whereas the Apostles gave no command on the matter at all.... The truth is, so soon as we appeal to the litera scripta [literal writing] of the Bible, the Sabbatarians have the best of the argument." The Christian at Work, April 19, 1883, and Jan. 1884 Protestant Episcopal: “The day is now changed from the seventh to the first day... but as we meet with no Scriptural direction for the change, we may conclude it was done by the authority of the church.” ‘Explanation of Catechism’ ^ Top Southern Baptist: “The sacred name of the Seventh day is Sabbath. This fact is too clear to require argument [Exodus 20:10 quoted]… on this point the plain teaching of the Word has been admitted in all ages… Not once did the disciples apply the Sabbath law to the first day of the week, -- that folly was left for a later age, nor did they pretend that the first day supplanted the seventh.” Joseph Hudson Taylor, ‘The Sabbatic Question’, p. 14-17, 41. "The first four commandments set forth man's obligations directly toward God.... But when we keep the first four commandments, we are likely to keep the other six. . . . The fourth commandment sets forth God's claim on man's time and thought.... The six days of labour and the rest on the Sabbath are to be maintained as a witness to God's toil and rest in the creation. . . . No one of the ten words is of merely racial significance.... The Sabbath was established originally (long before Moses) in no special connection with the Hebrews, but as an institution for all mankind, in commemoration of God's rest after the six days of creation. It was designed for all the descendants of Adam."-Adult Quarterly, Southern Baptist Convention series, Aug. 15, 1937. Dictionaries and Encyclopedias: "Sunday was a name given by the heathens to the first day of the week, because it was the day on which they worshipped the sun, ...the seventh day was blessed and hallowed by God Himself, and ...He requires His creatures to keep it holy to Him. This commandment is of universal and perpetual obligation...The Creator 'blessed the seventh day'-declared it to be a day above all days, a day- on which His favour should assuredly rest. ...So long, then, as man exists, and the world around him endures,' does the law of the early Sabbath remain. It cannot be set aside so long as its foundations last.... It is not the Jewish Sabbath, properly so-called, which is ordained in the fourth commandment. In the whole of that injunction there is no Jewish element, any more than there is in the third commandment, or the sixth." Eadie's Biblical Cyclopedia, 1872 Edition, page 561. "Thus we learn from Socrates (H.E., vi.c.8) that in his time public worship was held in the churches of Constantinople on both days.... The view that the Christian's Lord's day or Sunday is but the Christian Sabbath deliberately transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week does not indeed find categorical expression till a much later period.... The earliest recognition of the observance of Sunday as a legal duty is a constitution of Constantine in A.D. 321, enacting that all courts of justice, inhabitants of towns, and workshops were to be at rest on Sunday (venerabili die Solis), with an exception in favour of those engaged in agricultural labour...The Council of Laodicea (363) ... forbids Christians from judaizing and resting on the Sabbath day, preferring the Lord's day, and so far as possible resting as Christians."-Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1899 Edition, Vol. XXIII, page 654. "Unquestionably the first law, either ecclesiastical or civil, by which the sabbatical observance of Sunday is known to have been ordained is the sabbatical edict of Constantine, A.D. 32I." Chambers' Encyclopedia, Article "Sunday." "It must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the first day."-M'CLINTOCK AND STRONG, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, Vol. IX, page 196. "Sunday (Dies Solis, of the Roman calendar, 'day of the sun,' because dedicated to the sun), the first day of the week, was adopted by the early Christians as a day of worship. The 'sun' of Latin adoration they interpreted as the 'Sun of Righteousness.' . . . No regulations for its observance are laid down in the New Testament, nor, indeed, is its observance even enjoined."-SCHAFF HERZOG, Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 1891 Edition, Vol. IV, Art. "Sunday." "Sabbath in the Hebrew language signifies rest, and is the seventh day of the week... and it must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the first day." CHARLES BUCK, "A Theological Dictionary," "As the Sabbath is of divine institution, so it is to be kept holy unto the Lord. Numerous have been the days appointed by men for religious services; but these are not binding, because of human institution. Not so the Sabbath. Hence the fourth commandment is ushered in with a peculiar emphasis-'Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.'…The abolition of it would be unreasonable."-'CHARLES BUCK, "A Theological Dictionary," 1830 Edition, page 537. "But although it [Sunday] was in the primitive times indifferently called the Lord's day, or Sunday, yet it was never denominated the Sabbath; a name constantly appropriate to Saturday, or the seventh day, both by sacred and ecclesiastical writers."-Id., page 572. "The notion of a formal substitution by apostolic authority of the Lord's day [meaning Sunday] for the Jewish Sabbath [or the first for the seventh day]...and the transference to it, perhaps in a spiritualized form, of the sabbatical obligation established by the promulgation of the fourth commandment, has no basis whatever, either in Holy Scripture or in Christian antiquity." - SIR WILLIAM SMITH AND SAMUEL CHEETHAM, "A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities," Vol. 11, page 182, Article "Sabbath." "This long series of temporal enactments (in considering which we have, for the sake of exhibiting them as a whole, anticipated chronological order) must have told very powerfully upon the conception of the Lord's day in the church itself, not only tending to formalize its celebration, but to invest it in great degree with the character of a sabbath. Still, however, there was no connexion of its observance with the obligation of the fourth commandment, and therefore no application to it either of the laws of the Jewish sabbath, or of our Lord's teaching on the subject, as modifying and spiritualizing these laws." -Id., page 1047 Infidel: 'Probably very few Christians are aware of the fact that what they call the 'Christian Sabbath' (Sunday) is of pagan origin. "The first observance of Sunday- that history records is in the fourth century', when Constantine issued an edict (not requiring its religious observance, but simply abstinence from work) reading, 'let all the judges and people of the town rest and all the various trades be suspended on the venerable day of the sun.' At the time of the issue of this edict, Constantine was a sun-worshipper; therefore it could have had no relation whatever to Christianity." - HENRY M. TABER. "Faith or Fact" (preface by Robert G. Ingersoll), page 112. "I challenge any priest or minister of the Christian religion to show me the slightest authority for the religious observance of Sunday. And, if such cannot be shown by them, why is it that they are constantly preaching about Sunday as a holy day? ...The claim that Sunday takes the place of Saturday, and that because the Jews were supposed to be commanded to keep the seventh day of the week holy, therefore the first day of the week should be so kept by Christians, is so utterly absurd as to be hardly worth considering....That Paul habitually observed and preached on the seventh day of the week, is shown in Acts 18:4-'And be reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath' (Saturday)."-Id., pages ,114, 116. ^ Top Miscellaneous: "You will tell me that Saturday was the Jewish Sabbath, but that the Christian Sabbath has been changed to Sunday. Changed! But by whom? Who has authority to change an express commandment of Almighty God? When God has spoken and said, 'Thou shalt keep holy the seventh day,' who shall dare to say, 'Nay, thou mayest work and do all manner of business on the seventh day; but thou shalt keep holy the first day in its stead'? This is a most important question, which I know not how you can answer." "You are a Protestant, and you profess to go by the Bible and the Bible only; and yet in so important a matter as the observance of one day in seven as a holy day, you go against the plain letter of the Bible, and put another day in the place of that day which the Bible has commanded. The command to keep holy the seventh day is one of the Ten Commandments; you believe that the other nine are still binding; who gave you authority to tamper with the fourth? If you are consistent with your own principles, if you really follow the Bible and the Bible only, you ought to be able to produce some portion of the New Testament in which this fourth commandment is expressly altered."-"The Library of Christian Doctrine," pages 3, 4. "The first precept in the Bible is that of sanctifying the seventh day: 'God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it.' Genesis 2:3. This precept was confirmed by God in the Ten Commandments: 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep It holy. ...The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.' Exodus 20: 8, 10. On the other hand, Christ declares that He is not come to destroy the law, but to fulfil it. (Matthew 5: 17.) He Himself observed the Sabbath: 'And, as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day.' Luke 4: r6. His disciples likewise observed it after His death: 'They . . . rested the Sabbath day, according to the commandment.' Luke 23: 56. Yet with all this weight of Scripture authority for keeping the Sabbath or seventh day holy, Protestants of all denominations make this a profane day and transfer the obligation of it to the first day of the week, or the Sunday. Now what authority have they for doing this? None at all but the unwritten word, or tradition of the Catholic Church, which declares that the apostle made the change in honour of Christ's resurrection, and the descent of the Holy Ghost on that day of the week."-JOHN MILNER, "The End of Religious Controversy," page 71. "Sabbath means, of course, Saturday, the seventh day of the week, but the early Christians changed the observance to Sunday, to honour the day on which Christ arose from the dead."-FULTON OURSLER. Cosmopolitan, Sept. 1951, pages 34, 35. "I do not pretend to be even an amateur scholar of the Scriptures. I read the Decalogue merely as an average man searching for guidance, and in the immortal 'Ten Words' I find a blueprint for the good life."-Id., page 33. "Most certainly the Commandments are needed today, perhaps more than ever before. Their divine message confronts us with a profound moral challenge in an epidemic of evil; a unifying message acceptable alike to Jew, Moslem, and Christian. Who, reading the Ten in the light of history and of current events, can doubt their identity with the eternal law of nature?"-Id., page 124. "The Sabbath is commanded to be kept on the seventh day. It could not be kept on any other day. To observe the first day of the week or the fourth is not to observe the Sabbath. . . . It was the last day of the week, after six days of work, that was to be kept holy. The observance of no other day would fulfil the law."-H. J. FLOWERS, B.A., B.D., "The Permanent Value of the Ten Commandments," page 13. "The evaluation of Sunday, the traditionally accepted day of the resurrection of Christ, has varied greatly throughout the centuries of the Christian Era. From time to time it has been confused with the seventh day of the week, the Sabbath. English speaking peoples have been the most consistent in perpetuating the erroneous assumption that the obligation of the fourth commandment has passed over to Sunday. In popular speech, Sunday is frequently, but erroneously, spoken of as the Sabbath."-F. M. SETZLER, Head Curator, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institute, from a letter dated Sept. 1, 1949. "He that observes the Sabbath aright holds the history of that which it celebrates to be authentic, and therefore believes in the creation of the first man; in the creation of a fair abode for man in the space of six days; in the primeval and absolute creation of the heavens and the earth, and, as a necessary antecedent to all this, in the Creator, who at the close of His latest creative effort, rested on the seventh day. The Sabbath thus becomes a sign by which the believers in a historical revelation are distinguished from those who have allowed these great facts to fade from their remembrance.' - JAMES G. MURPHY, "Commentary on the Book of Exodus," comments on Exodus 20: 8-11. ** The Bible also identifies the entity who thinks it can change God's law. ^ Top Enter a description of what you are looking for. "When St. Paul repudiated the works of the law, he was not thinking of the Ten Commandments, which are as unchangeable as God Himself is, which God could not change and still remain the infinitely holy God." Our Sunday Visitor, Oct. 7, 1951.
Do you belong to the "new Church of Global Warming"? "Aliens Cause Global Warming" A lecture by Michael Crichton California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA January 17, 2003 My topic today sounds humorous but unfortunately I am serious. I am going to argue that extraterrestrials lie behind global warming. Or to speak more precisely, I will argue that a belief in extraterrestrials has paved the way, in a progression of steps, to a belief in global warming. Charting this progression of belief will be my task today. Let me say at once that I have no desire to discourage anyone from believing in either extraterrestrials or global warming. That would be quite impossible to do. Rather, I want to discuss the history of several widely-publicized beliefs and to point to what I consider an emerging crisis in the whole enterprise of science-namely the increasingly uneasy relationship between hard science and public policy. I have a special interest in this because of my own upbringing. I was born in the midst of World War II, and passed my formative years at the height of the Cold War. In school drills, I dutifully crawled under my desk in preparation for a nuclear attack. It was a time of widespread fear and uncertainty, but even as a child I believed that science represented the best and greatest hope for mankind. Even to a child, the contrast was clear between the world of politics-a world of hate and danger, of irrational beliefs and fears, of mass manipulation and disgraceful blots on human history. In contrast, science held different values-international in scope, forging friendships and working relationships across national boundaries and political systems, encouraging a dispassionate habit of thought, and ultimately leading to fresh knowledge and technology that would benefit all mankind. The world might not be avery good place, but science would make it better. And it did. In my lifetime, science has largely fulfilled its promise. Science has been the great intellectual adventure of our age, and a great hope for our troubled and restless world. But I did not expect science merely to extend lifespan, feed the hungry, cure disease, and shrink the world with jets and cell phones. I also expected science to banish the evils of human thought---prejudice and superstition, irrational beliefs and false fears. I expected science to be, in Carl Sagan's memorable phrase, "a candle in a demon haunted world." And here, I am not so pleased with the impact of science. Rather than serving as a cleansing force, science has in some instances been seduced by the more ancient lures of politics and publicity. Some of the demons that haunt our world in recent years are invented by scientists. The world has not benefited from permitting these demons to escape free. But let's look at how it came to pass. Cast your minds back to 1960. John F. Kennedy is president, commercial jet airplanes are just appearing, the biggest university mainframes have 12K of memory. And in Green Bank, West Virginia at the new National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a young astrophysicist named Frank Drake runs a two week project called Ozma, to search for extraterrestrial signals. A signal is received, to great excitement. It turns out to be false, but the excitement remains. In 1960, Drake organizes the first SETI conference, and came up with the now-famous Drake equation: N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fL Where N is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; fp is the fraction with planets; ne is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; fl is the fraction of planets where life evolves; fi is the fraction where intelligent life evolves; and fc is the fraction that communicates; and fL is the fraction of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live. This serious-looking equation gave SETI an serious footing as a legitimate intellectual inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. And guesses-just so we're clear-are merely expressions of prejudice. Nor can there be "informed guesses." If you need to state how many planets with life choose to communicate, there is simply no way to make an informed guess. It's simply prejudice. As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from "billions and billions" to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely, the Drake equation is literally meaningless, and has nothing to do with science. I take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses. The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is unquestionably a religion. Faith is defined as the firm belief in something for which there is no proof. The belief that the Koran is the word of God is a matter of faith. The belief that God created the universe in seven days is a matter of faith. The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief. SETI is a religion. One way to chart the cooling of enthusiasm is to review popular works on the subject. In 1964, at the height of SETI enthusiasm, Walter Sullivan of the NY Times wrote an exciting book about life in the universe entitled WE ARE NOT ALONE. By 1995, when Paul Davis wrote a book on the same subject, he titled it ARE WE ALONE? ( Since 1981, there have in fact been four books titled ARE WE ALONE.) More recently we have seen the rise of the so-called "Rare Earth" theory which suggests that we may, in fact, be all alone. Again, there is no evidence either way. Back in the sixties, SETI had its critics, although not among astrophysicists and astronomers. The biologists and paleontologists were harshest. George Gaylord Simpson of Harvard sneered that SETI was a "study without a subject," and it remains so to the present day. But scientists in general have been indulgent toward SETI, viewing it either with bemused tolerance, or with indifference. After all, what's the big deal? It's kind of fun. If people want to look, let them. Only a curmudgeon would speak harshly of SETI. It wasn't worth the bother. And of course it is true that untestable theories may have heuristic value. Of course extraterrestrials are a good way to teach science to kids. But that does not relieve us of the obligation to see the Drake equation clearly for what it is-pure speculation in quasi-scientific trappings. The fact that the Drake equation was not greeted with screams of outrage-similar to the screams of outrage that greet each Creationist new claim, for example-meant that now there was a crack in the door, a loosening of the definition of what constituted legitimate scientific procedure. And soon enough, pernicious garbage began to squeeze through the cracks. Now let's jump ahead a decade to the 1970s, and Nuclear Winter. In 1975, the National Academy of Sciences reported on "Long-Term Worldwide Effects of Multiple Nuclear Weapons Detonations" but the report estimated the effect of dust from nuclear blasts to be relatively minor. In 1979, the Office of Technology Assessment issued a report on "The Effects of Nuclear War" and stated that nuclear war could perhaps produce irreversible adverse consequences on the environment. However, because the scientific processes involved were poorly understood, the report stated it was not possible to estimate the probable magnitude of such damage. Three years later, in 1982, the Swedish Academy of Sciences commissioned a report entitled "The Atmosphere after a Nuclear War: Twilight at Noon," which attempted to quantify the effect of smoke from burning forests and cities. The authors speculated that there would be so much smoke that a large cloud over the northern hemisphere would reduce incoming sunlight below the level required for photosynthesis, and that this would last for weeks or even longer. The following year, five scientists including Richard Turco and Carl Sagan published a paper in Science called "Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions." This was the so-called TTAPS report, which attempted to quantify more rigorously the atmospheric effects, with the added credibility to be gained from an actual computer model of climate. At the heart of the TTAPS undertaking was another equation, never specifically expressed, but one that could be paraphrased as follows: Ds = Wn Ws Wh Tf Tb Pt Pr Pe… etc (The amount of tropospheric dust=# warheads x size warheads x warhead detonation height x flammability of targets x Target burn duration x Particles entering the Troposphere x Particle reflectivity x Particle endurance…and so on.) The similarity to the Drake equation is striking. As with the Drake equation, none of the variables can be determined. None at all. The TTAPS study addressed this problem in part by mapping out different wartime scenarios and assigning numbers to some of the variables, but even so, the remaining variables were-and are-simply unknowable. Nobody knows how much smoke will be generated when cities burn, creating particles of what kind, and for how long. No one knows the effect of local weather conditions on the amount of particles that will be injected into the troposphere. No one knows how long the particles will remain in the troposphere. And so on. And remember, this is only four years after the OTA study concluded that the underlying scientific processes were so poorly known that no estimates could be reliably made. Nevertheless, the TTAPS study not only made those estimates, but concluded they were catastrophic. According to Sagan and his coworkers, even a limited 5,000 megaton nuclear exchange would cause a global temperature drop of more than 35 degrees Centigrade, and this change would last for three months. The greatest volcanic eruptions that we know of changed world temperatures somewhere between .5 and 2 degrees Centigrade. Ice ages changed global temperatures by 10 degrees. Here we have an estimated change three times greater than any ice age. One might expect it to be the subject of some dispute. But Sagan and his coworkers were prepared, for nuclear winter was from the outset the subject of a well-orchestrated media campaign. The first announcement of nuclear winter appeared in an article by Sagan in the Sunday supplement, Parade. The very next day, a highly-publicized, high-profile conference on the long-term consequences of nuclear war was held in Washington, chaired by Carl Sagan and Paul Ehrlich, the most famous and media-savvy scientists of their generation. Sagan appeared on the Johnny Carson show 40 times. Ehrlich was on 25 times. Following the conference, there were press conferences, meetings with congressmen, and so on. The formal papers in Science came months later. This is not the way science is done, it is the way products are sold. The real nature of the conference is indicated by these artists' renderings of the the effect of nuclear winter. I cannot help but quote the caption for figure 5: "Shown here is a tranquil scene in the north woods. A beaver has just completed its dam, two black bears forage for food, a swallow-tailed butterfly flutters in the foreground, a loon swims quietly by, and a kingfisher searches for a tasty fish." Hard science if ever there was. At the conference in Washington, during the question period, Ehrlich was reminded that after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, scientists were quoted as saying nothing would grow there for 75 years, but in fact melons were growing the next year. So, he was asked, how accurate were these findings now? Ehrlich answered by saying "I think they are extremely robust. Scientists may have made statements like that, although I cannot imagine what their basis would have been, even with the state of science at that time, but scientists are always making absurd statements, individually, in various places. What we are doing here, however, is presenting a consensus of a very large group of scientists…" I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had. Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period. In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of. Let's review a few cases. In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following childbirth . One woman in six died of this fever. In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and he was able to cure them. The consensus said no. In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compellng evidence. The consensus said no. In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said he was a Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post. There was in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century. Thus the consensus took one hundred and twenty five years to arrive at the right conclusion despite the efforts of the prominent "skeptics" around the world, skeptics who were demeaned and ignored. And despite the constant ongoing deaths of women. There is no shortage of other examples. In the 1920s in America, tens of thousands of people, mostly poor, were dying of a disease called pellagra. The consensus of scientists said it was infectious, and what was necessary was to find the "pellagra germ." The US government asked a brilliant young investigator, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, to find the cause. Goldberger concluded that diet was the crucial factor. The consensus remained wedded to the germ theory. Goldberger demonstrated that he could induce the disease through diet. He demonstrated that the disease was not infectious by injecting the blood of a pellagra patient into himself, and his assistant. They and other volunteers swabbed their noses with swabs from pellagra patients, and swallowed capsules containing scabs from pellagra rashes in what were called "Goldberger's filth parties." Nobody contracted pellagra. The consensus continued to disagree with him. There was, in addition, a social factor-southern States disliked the idea of poor diet as the cause, because it meant that social reform was required. They continued to deny it until the 1920s. Result-despite a twentieth century epidemic, the consensus took years to see the light. Probably every schoolchild notices that South America and Africa seem to fit together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912, that the continents had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered at continental drift for fifty years. The theory was most vigorously denied by the great names of geology-until 1961, when it began to seem as if the sea floors were spreading. The result: it took the consensus fifty years to acknowledge what any schoolchild sees. And shall we go on? The examples can be multiplied endlessly. Jenner and smallpox, Pasteur and germ theory. Saccharine, margarine, repressed memory, fiber and colon cancer, hormone replacement therap6y…the list of consensus errors goes on and on. Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way. But back to our main subject. What I have been suggesting to you is that nuclear winter was a meaningless formula, tricked out with bad science, for policy ends. It was political from the beginning, promoted in a well-orchestrated media campaign that had to be planned weeks or months in advance. Further evidence of the political nature of the whole project can be found in the response to criticism. Although Richard Feynman was characteristically blunt, saying, "I really don't think these guys know what they're talking about," other prominent scientists were noticeably reticent. Freeman Dyson was quoted as saying "It's an absolutely atrocious piece of science but…who wants to be accused of being in favor of nuclear war?" And Victor Weisskopf said, "The science is terrible but---perhaps the psychology is good." The nuclear winter team followed up the publication of such comments with letters to the editors denying that these statements were ever made, though the scientists since then have subsequently confirmed their views. At the time, there was a concerted desire on the part of lots of people to avoid nuclear war. If nuclear winter looked awful, why investigate too closely? Who wanted to disagree? Only people like Edward Teller, the "father of the H bomb." Teller said, "While it is generally recognized that details are still uncertain and deserve much more study, Dr. Sagan nevertheless has taken the position that the whole scenario is so robust that there can be little doubt about its main conclusions." Yet for most people, the fact that nuclear winter was a scenario riddled with uncertainties did not seem to be relevant. I say it is hugely relevant. Once you abandon strict adherence to what science tells us, once you start arranging the truth in a press conference, then anything is possible. In one context, maybe you will get some mobilization against nuclear war. But in another context, you get Lysenkoism. In another, you get Nazi euthanasia. The danger is always there, if you subvert science to political ends. That is why it is so important for the future of science that the line between what science can say with certainty, and what it cannot, be drawn clearly-and defended. What happened to Nuclear Winter? As the media glare faded, its robust scenario appeared less persuasive; John Maddox, editor of Nature, repeatedly criticized its claims; within a year, Stephen Schneider, one of the leading figures in the climate model, began to speak of "nuclear autumn." It just didn't have the same ring. A final media embarrassment came in 1991, when Carl Sagan predicted on Nightline that Kuwaiti oil fires would produce a nuclear winter effect, causing a "year without a summer," and endangering crops around the world. Sagan stressed this outcome was so likely that "it should affect the war plans." None of it happened. What, then, can we say were the lessons of Nuclear Winter? I believe the lesson was that with a catchy name, a strong policy position and an aggressive media campaign, nobody will dare to criticize the science, and in short order, a terminally weak thesis will be established as fact. After that, any criticism becomes beside the point. The war is already over without a shot being fired. That was the lesson, and we had a textbook application soon afterward, with second hand smoke. In 1993, the EPA announced that second-hand smoke was "responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year in nonsmoking adults," and that it " impairs the respiratory health of hundreds of thousands of people." In a 1994 pamphlet the EPA said that the eleven studies it based its decision on were not by themselves conclusive, and that they collectively assigned second-hand smoke a risk factor of 1.19. (For reference, a risk factor below 3.0 is too small for action by the EPA. or for publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, for example.) Furthermore, since there was no statistical association at the 95% confidence limits, the EPA lowered the limit to 90%. They then classified second hand smoke as a Group A Carcinogen. This was openly fraudulent science, but it formed the basis for bans on smoking in restaurants, offices, and airports. California banned public smoking in 1995. Soon, no claim was too extreme. By 1998, the Christian Science Monitor was saying that "Second-hand smoke is the nation's third-leading preventable cause of death." The American Cancer Society announced that 53,000 people died each year of second-hand smoke. The evidence for this claim is nonexistent. In 1998, a Federal judge held that the EPA had acted improperly, had "committed to a conclusion before research had begun", and had "disregarded information and made findings on selective information." The reaction of Carol Browner, head of the EPA was: "We stand by our science….there's wide agreement. The American people certainly recognize that exposure to second hand smoke brings…a whole host of health problems." Again, note how the claim of consensus trumps science. In this case, it isn't even a consensus of scientists that Browner evokes! It's the consensus of the American people. Meanwhile, ever-larger studies failed to confirm any association. A large, seven-country WHO study in 1998 found no association. Nor have well-controlled subsequent studies, to my knowledge. Yet we now read, for example, that second hand smoke is a cause of breast cancer. At this point you can say pretty much anything you want about second-hand smoke. As with nuclear winter, bad science is used to promote what most people would consider good policy. I certainly think it is. I don't want people smoking around me. So who will speak out against banning second-hand smoke? Nobody, and if you do, you'll be branded a shill of RJ Reynolds. A big tobacco flunky. But the truth is that we now have a social policy supported by the grossest of superstitions. And we've given the EPA a bad lesson in how to behave in the future. We've told them that cheating is the way to succeed. As the twentieth century drew to a close, the connection between hard scientific fact and public policy became increasingly elastic. In part this was possible because of the complacency of the scientific profession; in part because of the lack of good science education among the public; in part, because of the rise of specialized advocacy groups which have been enormously effective in getting publicity and shaping policy; and in great part because of the decline of the media as an independent assessor of fact. The deterioration of the American media is dire loss for our country. When distinguished institutions like the New York Times can no longer differentiate between factual content and editorial opinion, but rather mix both freely on their front page, then who will hold anyone to a higher standard? And so, in this elastic anything-goes world where science-or non-science-is the hand maiden of questionable public policy, we arrive at last at global warming. It is not my purpose here to rehash the details of this most magnificent of the demons haunting the world. I would just remind you of the now-familiar pattern by which these things are established. Evidentiary uncertainties are glossed over in the unseemly rush for an overarching policy, and for grants to support the policy by delivering findings that are desired by the patron. Next, the isolation of those scientists who won't get with the program, and the characterization of those scientists as outsiders and "skeptics" in quotation marks-suspect individuals with suspect motives, industry flunkies, reactionaries, or simply anti-environmental nutcases. In short order, debate ends, even though prominent scientists are uncomfortable about how things are being done. When did "skeptic" become a dirty word in science? When did a skeptic require quotation marks around it? To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a conclusion: "These results are derived with the help of a computer model." But now large-scale computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world-increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward. There can be no observational data about the year 2100. There are only model runs. This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because only if you spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen can you arrive at the complex point where the global warming debate now stands. Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds? Stepping back, I have to say the arrogance of the modelmakers is breathtaking. There have been, in every century, scientists who say they know it all. Since climate may be a chaotic system-no one is sure-these predictions are inherently doubtful, to be polite. But more to the point, even if the models get the science spot-on, they can never get the sociology. To predict anything about the world a hundred years from now is simply absurd. Look: If I was selling stock in a company that I told you would be profitable in 2100, would you buy it? Or would you think the idea was so crazy that it must be a scam? Let's think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horseshit? Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses? But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport. And in 2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy source that was unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Japan were getting more than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900. Remember, people in 1900 didn't know what an atom was. They didn't know its structure. They also didn't know what a radio was, or an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, IBM, IRA, ERA, EEG, EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, internet. interferon, instant replay, remote sensing, remote control, speed dialing, gene therapy, gene splicing, genes, spot welding, heat-seeking, bipolar, prozac, leotards, lap dancing, email, tape recorder, CDs, airbags, plastic explosive, plastic, robots, cars, liposuction, transduction, superconduction, dish antennas, step aerobics, smoothies, twelve-step, ultrasound, nylon, rayon, teflon, fiber optics, carpal tunnel, laser surgery, laparoscopy, corneal transplant, kidney transplant, AIDS… None of this would have meant anything to a person in the year 1900. They wouldn't know what you are talking about. Now. You tell me you can predict the world of 2100. Tell me it's even worth thinking about. Our models just carry the present into the future. They're bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment's thought knows it. I remind you that in the lifetime of most scientists now living, we have already had an example of dire predictions set aside by new technology. I refer to the green revolution. In 1960, Paul Ehrlich said, "The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines-hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ten years later, he predicted four billion people would die during the 1980s, including 65 million Americans. The mass starvation that was predicted never occurred, and it now seems it isn't ever going to happen. Nor is the population explosion going to reach the numbers predicted even ten years ago. In 1990, climate modelers anticipated a world population of 11 billion by 2100. Today, some people think the correct number will be 7 billion and falling. But nobody knows for sure. But it is impossible to ignore how closely the history of global warming fits on the previous template for nuclear winter. Just as the earliest studies of nuclear winter stated that the uncertainties were so great that probabilites could never be known, so, too the first pronouncements on global warming argued strong limits on what could be determined with certainty about climate change. The 1995 IPCC draft report said, "Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced." It also said, "No study to date has positively attributed all or part of observed climate changes to anthropogenic causes." Those statements were removed, and in their place appeared: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on climate." What is clear, however, is that on this issue, science and policy have become inextricably mixed to the point where it will be difficult, if not impossible, to separate them out. It is possible for an outside observer to ask serious questions about the conduct of investigations into global warming, such as whether we are taking appropriate steps to improve the quality of our observational data records, whether we are systematically obtaining the information that will clarify existing uncertainties, whether we have any organized disinterested mechanism to direct research in this contentious area. The answer to all these questions is no. We don't. In trying to think about how these questions can be resolved, it occurs to me that in the progression from SETI to nuclear winter to second hand smoke to global warming, we have one clear message, and that is that we can expect more and more problems of public policy dealing with technical issues in the future-problems of ever greater seriousness, where people care passionately on all sides. And at the moment we have no mechanism to get good answers. So I will propose one. Just as we have established a tradition of double-blinded research to determine drug efficacy, we must institute double-blinded research in other policy areas as well. Certainly the increased use of computer models, such as GCMs, cries out for the separation of those who make the models from those who verify them. The fact is that the present structure of science is entrepeneurial, with individual investigative teams vying for funding from organizations which all too often have a clear stake in the outcome of the research-or appear to, which may be just as bad. This is not healthy for science. Sooner or later, we must form an independent research institute in this country. It must be funded by industry, by government, and by private philanthropy, both individuals and trusts. The money must be pooled, so that investigators do not know who is paying them. The institute must fund more than one team to do research in a particular area, and the verification of results will be a foregone requirement: teams will know their results will be checked by other groups. In many cases, those who decide how to gather the data will not gather it, and those who gather the data will not analyze it. If we were to address the land temperature records with such rigor, we would be well on our way to an understanding of exactly how much faith we can place in global warming, and therefore what seriousness we must address this. I believe that as we come to the end of this litany, some of you may be saying, well what is the big deal, really. So we made a few mistakes. So a few scientists have overstated their cases and have egg on their faces. So what. Well, I'll tell you. In recent years, much has been said about the post modernist claims about science to the effect that science is just another form of raw power, tricked out in special claims for truth-seeking and objectivity that really have no basis in fact. Science, we are told, is no better than any other undertaking. These ideas anger many scientists, and they anger me. But recent events have made me wonder if they are correct. We can take as an example the scientific reception accorded a Danish statistician, Bjorn Lomborg, who wrote a book called The Skeptical Environmentalist. The scientific community responded in a way that can only be described as disgraceful. In professional literature, it was complained he had no standing because he was not an earth scientist. His publisher, Cambridge University Press, was attacked with cries that the editor should be fired, and that all right-thinking scientists should shun the press. The past president of the AAAS wondered aloud how Cambridge could have ever "published a book that so clearly could never have passed peer review." )But of course the manuscript did pass peer review by three earth scientists on both sides of the Atlantic, and all recommended publication.) But what are scientists doing attacking a press? Is this the new McCarthyism-coming from scientists? Worst of all was the behavior of the Scientific American, which seemed intent on proving the post-modernist point that it was all about power, not facts. The Scientific American attacked Lomborg for eleven pages, yet only came up with nine factual errors despite their assertion that the book was "rife with careless mistakes." It was a poor display featuring vicious ad hominem attacks, including comparing him to a Holocust denier. The issue was captioned: "Science defends itself against the Skeptical Environmentalist." Really. Science has to defend itself? Is this what we have come to? When Lomborg asked for space to rebut his critics, he was given only a page and a half. When he said it wasn't enough, he put the critics' essays on his web page and answered them in detail. Scientific American threatened copyright infringement and made him take the pages down. Further attacks since have made it clear what is going on. Lomborg is charged with heresy. That's why none of his critics needs to substantiate their attacks in any detail. That's why the facts don't matter. That's why they can attack him in the most vicious personal terms. He's a heretic. Of course, any scientist can be charged as Galileo was charged. I just never thought I'd see the Scientific American in the role of mother church. Is this what science has become? I hope not. But it is what it will become, unless there is a concerted effort by leading scientists to aggressively separate science from policy. The late Philip Handler, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, said that "Scientists best serve public policy by living within the ethics of science, not those of politics. If the scientific community will not unfrock the charlatans, the public will not discern the difference-science and the nation will suffer." Personally, I don't worry about the nation. But I do worry about science. Thank you very much.
rev kamal karna roy a newer politician in strategic redevelopment _ changes to evade "jungle democracy"? Click here to join the NEWSWEEK community, post comments and subscribe to our e-mail newsletters User Name: Password: Forgot password? News Politics Tech and Business Culture Health Voices Quick Guide Periscope National News International Next 2008 Iraq War Issues 2008 Against the Odds Video Top Story Campaign 2008: A Game of Survivor My Journey to the Top Latest News Clinton hints at shared ticket PAKISTAN Elections Usher in a New Face By Zahid Hussain, Ron Moreau and Michael Hirsh | NEWSWEEK Mar 3, 2008 Issue « Return to Article Related:Makhdoom Amin Fahim Pakistan Peoples Party Pervez Musharraf Discuss Comments: Posted By: CANDIDATE_REPUBLICAN @ 03/03/2008 10:05:01 PM Comment: TRIANGLE OF JUNGLE DEMOCRACIES USA TO PAISTAN TO RSSIA UJDER PUTIN TO USA. JUNGLES ARE DEEP FOREST BUT GREENS ARE SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT OF SHADE. OTHER JUGLES ARE DEEPLY OF CONCERN TO PEOPLE. bUT WE THE PEOPLE MUST BRING TO EQUITY IN JUSTICE,LEADERSHIP AND OPTIMUM PRIVILEGES TO MOST SOONER THE BETTER, SAID DR THE REVEREND KAMAL KARNA ROY , A MR CLEAN FOR U S PRESIDECY 2008 AS SCHEDULED, BUT MAY NOT BE HELD WITH U S DISTRICT COURT INTERVENTIONS AS PROVIDED IN U S CONSTITUTION AND OTHER LAWS OF U S. REPORTED BY REV MR PREMANGHU ROY DAS EFORMS AGENT IN DEMOCRACIES WORLD WIDE IN NEED OF REDELOPMENT. SEE BELOW WE NEED TRUE DEMOCRATIC CONDITIONS FOR WE THE PEOPLE OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. Posted By: shaista @ 03/01/2008 5:36:46 AM Comment: THE lunch hosted by Mr Asif Zardari for the newly elected members of the three leading parties on Feb 27 may well be remembered as a landmark in the long awaited transition to a democratic dispensation in Pakistan. The squalls that rocked the state on Oct 12, 1999 and in the form of the 17th amendment inflicted much damage. Then, the catastrophe of Nov 3 put all salvaging efforts beyond the capacity of any single party. The existing distortions in that historic but half-alive Constitution present a nightmare and demand the exercise of the highest form of political wisdom and legal expertise. The process of eliminating them by creating a new interface between politics and law has just begun. Pakistan???s present crisis is characterised by the bitter harvest of constitutional violations, growing imbalance between a power-hungry centre and the handicapped federating units, uncontrollable violence by ever-proliferating bands of extremists and, above all, by a rapidly rising table of sub-surface social anger at glaring inequalities of income and opportunity. A reasonably broad-based coalition government may provide a healing touch. There is no great virtue in a two-party system anymore as, for quite some time to come, regional aspirations will deepen particular identities of the constitutive elements of a diverse nation. The greatest achievement of the three top leaders present at Mr Zardari???s lunch is that they successfully persuaded their followers that these identities were perfectly compatible with an overarching national identity. Scratch the surface and lurking just beneath the protest against the humiliation of the higher judiciary and repeated violations of the Constitution is a palpable anguish of poverty and deprivation. Pakistan must eschew politics of vendetta but that does not mean that every crime against the state and society be brushed under the carpet. It needs a high-powered Commission on Truth, Justice and Reconciliation in the interest of historical accuracy and to build dykes for future security. We need to replace mercenary relations with relations based on mutual respect, community of interests and coordinated pursuit of common objectives within our respective national parameters. A strong and stable national coalition can be built around the present understanding between the PPP, PML-N and ANP. The US-led West should welcome it and not undermine it as it alone can make Pakistan???s battle against militant extremists effective The west should to withdraw their support from the one Musharaf who loathed by the people at maximum Posted By: shaista @ 03/01/2008 5:07:40 AM Comment: THE results of the election that took place on Feb 18 were astonishing. President Musharraf???s supporting party Pakistan Muslim League (Q) was wiped out and the ministers who were lucky enough to keep their seats are now at a safe distance from President Musharraf. The people at large want the president to go with no other choice. However, the US has been unduly interfering in our politics as its Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher has emphasised the need to continue President Musharraf???s rule. Pakistan has remained under military rule for more than half of its life, and the people no longer want any dictator to rule over them. As the PPP has secured the maximum number of seats, followed by the PML (N), the ties made between these parties also pose a serious challenge to the president???s stay any further in office. His rule for eight long years has brought many hardships to the nation and now he should quit The US slogan for democracy is and justice is just a slogan and in real and practicle not willing to be so for their own agenda From whome to expect the justice and democracy in the world the only power it self violate This is not the Musharaf pakistan but of 1,600/-Millions people and what they think of the rest This is not in the benifit of US to support the cruel one of the country who now the people think as Mechile G.Choaf The people and the young generation have very strong anti US sentiments due to their blind support of Dictator Musharaf This is not a good sign and this will increase with passage of time Posted By: eddiewhere @ 02/29/2008 2:12:44 AM Comment: IN THIS ENVIORNMENT OF ECONOMIC FEUDALISM WHERE THE MIDDLE CLASS MUST SUFFER IN ORDER TO INCREASE THE pROFITS OF MULTINATIONAL CORpORATIONS, WHO BENEFIT FROM CHEAp LABOR, THE AMERICAN DREAM HAS BEEN LOST. MULTINALTIONALS FROM INDIA HAVE BROUGHT THEIR CHEAp WAyS TO AMERICA. WE NOW HAVE AMERIANS GOING TO GET HEART SURGERy IN INDIA BEAUSE IT IS CHEApER. OUR INFORMATION TECHNOLy JOBS HAVE BEEN OUTSOURCED TO INDIA. CHINA WAITS UNTIL WE INVENT IT AND THEN THEy STEAL IT. WHy REINVENT THE WHEEL. ARABS FINANCIERS OWN OVER TWELVER pER CENT OF OUR ECONOMy AND IN RECENT MONTTHS HAVE "BAILED" OUT OUR BANKS. IN ADDITION, ARAB INTEREST FROM DUBAI AND KUWAIT HAVE FINANCED OUR pOLITICAL LEADERS ENDEVOURS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE pOLITICAL SpECTRUM.. IT IS TIME FOR A CHANGE. We have been fooled by our own government and there is no way any Republican is going to win this election. THE Middle class has had it with all this Bin LADEN terrorist crap. WE are now scared of our own government more than we are of the terrorist because the decisions this government is making on our behalf is not in our best interests and it is killing us. The government is now dominating our civil liberties. They are giving the states millions for Real ID Cards. This is just the start of government intrusion. Combine this with the misuse of the Patriot Act and the future Plans of insurance comPanies and corporations to have full access to our personal records and we have a real crisis. Credit Card companies have already started selling and sharing our personal information with the private sector. We really have to wake up and protect our constitution it is all we have to defend ourselves against interests that become too rich and powerful in this country. The government keeps expanding and is being predominantly controlled by special interest and lobbyist. The middle class is being weakened and our civil liberties are being threatened. Real ID Cards will not make "us safer" infacat terrorists can obtain fake ones and move about freely. The American people did not vote on Real ID Cards, we need a vote. Our constitution would have to be ammended in order for Real ID's to become legal. I do not know what has happened in Washington but it is getting out of hand. They know what they are doing is unconstitutional so they are trying to bribe the states by offering them money. I hope every state agrees with me and Prevents the federal govenment from imPosing THIS unconstitutional law. If the states allow the government to do this then they would have set a bad Precedent that could lead to further government violations. WHy IS THERE A NEED TO WIRE TAp EVERy CITIZEN. ARE yOU KIDDING ME. yOU NEED A WARRANT. THIS IS MADNESS. GOVERNMENT IS USING TERRORISM AS AN EXCUSE TO INTRUDE ON OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES. THIS IS INSANE. McCain will continue to implementt these misguided REpublian policies. McCain's ONE HUNDRED year agenda is not in AMERICA"s BEST INTEREST. Posted By: eddiewhere @ 02/28/2008 4:32:34 AM Comment: AND WHAT AN UGLy FACE IT IS. WE NEED TO CRUSH AL QUEDA IN PAKISTAN AND GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE. LET US REMEMBER BERG. I AM NOT JEWISH, HOWEVER I FEEL THAT WE MUST NEVER FORGET. IT IS WORTH THAT yOUNG ARABS AND JEWS FROM ALL BACKGROUNDS START FORMING GROUPS THAT ENCOURAGE THE INTERACTION BETWEEN JEWS ARABS MUSLIMS AND CHRISTIANS IN THE MIDDLE EAST. SOMETHING LIKE AN NGO. ANyONE FROM ANy BACKGROUND CAN CAN CONTRIBUTE. WITH ONE OBJECTIVE IN MIND. FRIENDLy RELATIONS. NO PRESSURE TO SET FOREIGN POLICy , JUST GETTING THE TWO ADVERSARIES IN THE SAME ROOM AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE WILL BE IN AMERICA'S AND THE WORLD'S BEST INTEREST. . THAT IS THE FIRST STEP . WHEN yOU TRy AND IMPOSE yOUR WILL "ALL OF A SUDDEN" ON THE MASSES, THEN ASSAASSINATIONS LIKE THOSOE OF RABIN AND BHUTTO WILL BE INEVITABLE. "WHEN ANy ONE INDIVIDUAL BEOMES LARGER THAN THE CAUSE THEy ARE CHAMPIONING THEN THEy THEMSELVES BECOME AN OBSTALE TO THEIR OWN CAUSE" EDDIWHERE 2008. EDDIEWHERE © 2008 Posted By: VoteResponsibly08 @ 02/27/2008 4:45:32 PM Comment: What is Obama going to do when he faces these people??? God Help us all..He does not have the know how and depending on advisers 100% is not my idea of a commander and chief! Do something! media, Press...you have given obama a Free Pass long enough! Posted By: CANDIDATE_REPUBLICAN @ 02/27/2008 4:27:53 PM Comment: democracies in usa and pakistan, both are in jeopardy in respect of we the people of the nations, superpower or allied nation.both entities must detour to achieve people's wishes entertained. for dr kamal karna roy a small time democratic strategist in efforts to revive themes of equities for all.released by an assistant to dr roy identified by e mail id 2.27. 2008 new york Posted By: Houlbelat @ 02/27/2008 11:16:25 AM Comment: Is it a democracy reborn in Pakistan or sham of the highest order? People in Pakistan voted in favor of Bhutto's party, not for Zardari, who was responsible for her twice ouster from the Premiership due to his shameful dirty roles of Mr.10%. Country's biggest grass root party preaching "Government of the People, by the People, for the People", which was founded on the basic principle of providing them respectable " Bread, Dress and Shelter", was created by Bhutto, hanged by a military dictator. Now, the party is orphaned in a bomb-blast death of his daughter during another military rule. Situation brings forth her rootless spouse, "Mr.Tenpercent Zardari", holding the People's mandate ( at ransom?), for endless exploits. Whatever the words mean, they cannot change the genes. The name "Zardari" literally means "Gold-Lord" and he lives his name literally. He was responsible for legislating and monopolizing gold import into Pakistan (through an Emirates based gold-tycoon of Pakistan origin) on a ridiculous 2% custom duty and made unfathomable ocean of fortune. If the US administration is ready," to let them have their rounds of discussions, still expecting the [Pakistani] Army to take the necessary military action, counting on an interesting transition", then the whole riddle is solved. The ongoing change in Pakistan is not a change of " act" in the drama being staged but, a "change of gear into a powerful all terrain drive", to move forward on the designed road-map, crossing effectively all rugged and bogging tracts en-route. Posted By: engal @ 02/27/2008 3:08:04 AM Comment: Comment:Chinese's a Literature of the YanYuHongChen is very reality for the economy,the Culture,the Education,the Politice ,the Philosophy and the Business,but i expecting who the Leaders in International that will be the best support us and it will be Might spread you and the Literature to the Golabl.' chengchengcheng123@yahoo.cn Posted By: CANDIDATE_REPUBLICAN @ 02/26/2008 3:06:30 PM Comment: Pakistan's elected leaders must be slow and very effective in democratic gains or the gains couod be reversed by internal forcesalien to ruling coalition in jeopady with foreign interests. jungle democracies have been most powerful mvirus which curbs democratic rights of citizens, that is what history tells us. see also below as relevant. the reverend dr kamal karna karuna roy author of electronic and hard copies publications which may give insights to living beings as known as human_animals may often behave in pure animal conducts to support their polluted rational feelings. interests, vested interests etc etc. rationality vs animality is the tug of war type emements of the living beings all over the Globe: Pakistan leaders be careful in your step ahead. as the powerfuls, nations, superpower or most entities give priorities to their own hidden agendas. native leaders could be in a privileged position to judge events those may cause them favor or pains: pl see below; dreams of freedom for people individual or national may not award any grants from external forces or native rulers, but steadfast demand and actions if orchestrated with pragmatic resolutions may succeed in demands of true liberty of coexistence. quotation from democratic strategist *** republican candidate U s presidential electoral competition 2008 by the rev ms lisa n r alston. 2.26. 2008 new york. Posted By: SAM08 @ 02/26/2008 11:50:41 AM Comment: The people in pakistan should have asked Zardari before woting for him if his going rate of kick backs will still be 15% or will it be more Posted By: eddiewhere @ 02/25/2008 8:42:42 AM Comment: AND WHAT AN UGLy FACE IT IS. WE NEED TO CRUSH AL QUEA IN PAKISTAN AND GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE. Posted By: shaista @ 02/25/2008 5:19:05 AM Comment: The newly retired General Musharraf has displayed no intention of leaving office despite his king party losing even after plenty of evidence that he had planned to rig the elections. The caretaker government was anything but neutral and the Election Commission was suspect. But pressure from Washington compelled him to change his plans. Had he still engaged in massive rigging, not only would he have drawn Washington???s ire but also evoked ugly street protests. He knew that if the ???agitators??? caused the country to come to a standstill, the army would distance itself from him. Without their protection, he would not last a day in office. The habitual offender Musharaf this time fail for not carrying out a full pleadge crime of rigging due to international observer existing These people will never be convinced that it is time for the ex-general to go. To them, he is the embodiment of truth, the doer of all good things, and the prince of enlightened moderation without whom Pakistan would return to the Dark Ages. It is time for Musharraf, to wake up and realise that the game is over. Everything Musharraf stood for was repudiated on Feb 18. The electoral results have made it clear, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the people do not wish to see Musharraf holding court on radio and television day in and day out. Aitzaz Ahsan spoke for millions when he said, ???Musharraf is the most hated & loathed man in Pakistan.??? During the last several months, poll after poll showed Musharraf???s popularity plummeting like a lead coin in a bottomless well. But he continued to reject the polls by saying that they only represented the views of a few thousand people and asserted vainly that he was vastly popular in the populous countryside. But even the King???s party was not taken in by the myths spun out by the monarch. It knew that once rigging was no longer an option, its fate was sealed. Why else would they seek to obtain the release of one of the key instigators of the Lal Masjid takeover, Abdul Aziz, just days prior to the vote? This was an obvious ploy designed to play on the religious sympathies of the people and to garner much needed votes. How else could one justify releasing a real and confirmed terrorist from jail while holding the nation???s eminent justices and barristers under house arrest? Musharraf had said not too long ago that he would step down when he saw that the people were no longer with him. He said he was continuing as president only because it was in the national interest. He would rather be playing golf or tennis, he noted, but the situation required him to sacrifice his personal interests. Well, the time has now come for him to do the nation a favour and quit as he is the only evil for this country. Posted By: democratic_reforms @ 02/24/2008 11:12:22 AM Comment: JUNGLE DEMOCRACY IN PAKISTAN. NO PAKISTANI PREMIER SHOULD ENGAGE IN DIRECT FIGHT WITH PERVEZ MASSAREF TO ENGAGE PAKISTAN AGAIN N VIOLENCES, AND/OR EMMERGENCY. tHIS IS BECAUSE MUSSAREF IS NOT ALONE BUT HE HAS SUPPORT FROM INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL POWERBLOCS. A SLOWER APPROACH TO DEMOCRATIC SOLUTION IN PAKISTAN MAY BE MORECORRECT FOR THE TIME SCALES. THE REV DR KAMAL KARNA K ROY, A US AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL _ REPUBLICAN HOPEFUL, NEW YORK 2.24.2008 Posted By: Mohdsheikh @ 02/24/2008 12:49:45 AM Comment: Washington's top ranks seem unworried about what the new civilian leaders might decide. The only worry Americans have about the moment to keep up Musharraf in Presidency because Musharraf has amended the constitution in such a way no one else can do any thing without his consent and authority. This is worrisome for the new elected politicians. They know very much the hard fact that they have not been elected on merits, it is the hatred against Musharraf they have en-cashed. Because Musharraf have destroyed the true democrative spirit of the Pakistan???s Constitution by extremely autocratic and extra constitutional way before conducting the general election so that he could do the post election rigging. If those powers are not taken away from the presidency then the politicians will be nothing more than tools in his hands. If the politicians failed to restore highest court judges that will mean they are empty handed. Moreover they won???t be able to face their voters who have sent them Islamabad to clean up the mess and deliver good to them. Mohammad S Sheikh, Advocate Supreme Court of Pakistan Islamabad - Rawalpindi Posted By: Martin123 @ 02/24/2008 12:08:02 AM Comment: My salutations to Dr. Rice for a job well done on the American side. Posted By: Martin123 @ 02/24/2008 12:07:07 AM Comment: Hats off to Ms Rice, never in the history of public service t America has so much been freely given. SPONSORED LINKS Pakistani Dating Site 1000's Pakistani's Chatting Join Free! SalaamLove.com Singapore Air to Pakistan Deluxe Flights to Pakistan Best Fare Guarantee! Book A Flight. www.SingaporeAir.com 6.9¢ to Pakistan Long Distance from Cell & Home no PIN, no monthly fee - Try Today www.startec.com/Pakistan Reply Comments: Enter Your Comment Report Abuse Enter comments if any for reporting abuse Comments: Report Abuse Project Green Enterprise Leadership Boomer Files Giving Globally CES Coverage Education INNOVATION Not Made In Japan Christian Caryl Once upon a time, the country was a leader in technology. Now it's struggling to find its place in the digital age. Can an entrenched corporate culture change? Preview Article | Comments Sponsored by Periscope News Politics Tech / Business Culture / Ideas Health Tip Sheet ROYALTY The Prince and The Taliban Sami Yousafzai Afghan militants claim they knew English royalty was in their midst. Preview Article | Comments Sponsored by
How many of you can't read this? The Unthinkable Thought "Jesus said, 'It is to those who are worthy of my Mysteries that I tell my Mysteries.'" The Gospel of Thomas On the site where the Vatican now stands there once stood a Pagan temple. Here Pagan priests observed sacred ceremonies which early Christians found so disturbing that they tried to erase all evidence of them ever having been practised. What were these shocking Pagan rites? Gruesome sacrifices or obscene orgies perhaps. This is what we have been led to believe. But the truth is far stranger than this fiction. Where today the gathered faithful revere their Lord Jesus Christ, the ancients worshipped another godman who, like Jesus, had been miraculously born on 25 December before three shepherds. In this ancient sanctuary Pagan congregations once glorified a Pagan redeemer who, like lesus, was said to have ascended to heaven and to have promised to come again at the end of time to judge the quick and the dead. On the same spot where the Pope celebrates the Catholic mass, Pagan priests also celebrated a symbolic meal of bread and wine in memory of their saviour who, just like Tesus, had declared: "He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation." When we began to uncover such extraordinary similarities between the story of Jesus and Pagan myth we were stunned. We had been brought up in a culture which portrays Paganism and Christianity as entirely antagonistic religious perspectives. How could such astonishing resemblances be explained? We were intrigued and began to search further. The more we looked, the more resemblances we found. To account for the wealth of evidence we were unearthing we felt compelled to completely review our understanding of the relationship between Paganism and Christianity, to question beliefs that we previously regarded as unquestionable and to imagine possibilities which at first seemed impossible. Some readers will find our conclusions shocking and others heretical, but for us they are merely the simplest and most obvious way of accounting for the evidence we have amassed. We have become convinced that the story of Jesus is not the biography of an historical Messiah, but a myth based on perennial Pagan stories. Christianity was not a new and unique revelation but actually a Jewish adaptation of the ancient Pagan Mystery religion. This is what we have called 'the Jesus Mysteries Thesis.' It may sound farfetched at first, just as it did initially to us. There is, after all, a great deal of unsubstantiated nonsense written about the 'real' Jesus, so any revolutionary theory should be approached with a healthy dose of scepticism. But although this book makes extraordinary claims, it is not just entertaining fantasy or sensational speculation. It is firmly based upon the available historical sources and the latest scholarly research. Whilst we hope to have made it accessible to the general reader, we have also included copious notes giving sources, references and greater detail for those who wish to analyse our arguments more thoroughly. Although still radical and challenging today, many of the ideas we explore are actually far from new. As long ago as the Renaissance, mystics and scholars saw the origins of christianity in the ancient Egyptian religion. Visionary scholars at the turn of the nineteenth century also made com-paxable conjectures to our own. In recent decades, modern academics have repeatedly pointed towards the possibilities we consider. Yet few have dared to boldly state the obvious conclusions which we have drawn. Why? Because to do so is taboo. For 2,000 years the West has been dominated by the idea that Christianity is sacred and unique, whilst Paganism is primitive and the work of the Devil. To even consider that they could be parts of the same tradition has been simply unthinkable. Therefore, although the true origins of Christianity have been obvious all along, few have been able to see them, because to do so requires a radical break with the conditioning of our culture. Our contribution has been to dare to think the unthinkable and to present our conclusions in a popular book rather than some dry academic tome. This is certainly not the last word on this complex subject, but we hope it may be a significant call for a complete reappraisal of the origins of Christianity. THE PAGAN MYSTERIES In Greek tragedies the chorus reveals the fate of the protagonists before the play begins. Sometimes it is easier to understand the journey if one is already aware of the destination and the terrain to be covered. Before diving deeper into detail, therefore, we would like to retrace our process of discovery and so provide a brief overview of the book. We had shared an obsession with world mysticism all our lives which recently had led us to explore spirituality in the ancient world. Popular understanding inevtitably lags a long way behind the cutting edge of scholarly research and, like most people, we initially had an inaccurate and out-dated view of Paganism. We had been taught to imagine a primitive superstition which indulged in idol worship and bloody sacrifice, and dry philosophers wearing togas stumbling blindly towards what we today call 'science.' We were familiar with various Greek myths which showed the partisan and capricious nature of the Olympian gods and goddesses. All in all, Paganism seemed primitive and fundamentally alien. After many years of study, however, our understanding has been transformed. Pagan spirituality was actually the sophisticated product of a highly developed culture. The state religions, such as the Greek worship of the Olympian gods, were little more than outer pomp and ceremony. The real spirituality of the people expressed itself through the vibrant and mystical 'Mystery religions.' At first underground and heretical movements, these Mysteries spread and flourished throughout the ancient Mediterranean, inspiring the greatest minds of the Pagan world, who regarded them as the very source of civilization. Each Mystery tradition had exoteric Outer Mysteries, consisting of myths which were common knowledge and rituals which were open to anyone who wanted to participate. There were also esoteric Inner Mysteries, which were a sacred secret only known to those who had undergone a powerful process of initiation. Initiates of the Inner Mysteries had the mystical meaning of the rituals and myths of the Outer Mysteries revealed to them, a process which brought about personal transformation and spiritual enlightenment. The philosophers of the ancient world were the spiritual masters of the Inner Mysteries. They were mystics and miracle-workers, more comparable to Hindu gurus than dusty academics. The great Greek philosopher Pythagoras, for example, is remembered today for his mathematical theorem, but few people picture him as he actually was a flamboyant sage who was believed to be able to miraculously still the winds and raise the dead. At the heart of the Mysteries were myths concerning a dying and resurrecting godman, who was known by many different names. In Egyp he was Osiris, in Greece Dionysus, in Asia Minor Attis, in Syria Adonis, in Italy Bacchus, in Persia Mithras. Fundamentally all these godmen are the same mythical being. As was the practice from as early as the third century BCE, in this book we will use the combined name "Osiris-Dionysus" to denote his universal and composite nature, and his particular names when referring to a specific Mystery tradition. From the fifth century BCE philosophers such as Xenophanes and Empedocles had ridiculed taking the stories of the gods and goddesses literally. They viewed them as allegories of human spiritual experience. The myths of Osiris-Dionysus should not be understood as just intriguing tales, therefore, but as a symbolic language which encodes the mystical teachings of the Inner Mysteries. Because of this, although the details were developed and adapted over time by different cultures, the myth of Osiris-Dionysus has remained essentially the same. The various myths of the different godmen of the Mysteries share what the great mythologist Joseph Campbell called 'the same anatomy', just as every human is physically unique yet it is possible to talk of the general anatomy of the human body, so with these different myths it is possible to see both their uniqueness and fundamental sameness. A helpful comparison may be the relationship between Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Bernstein's West Side Story. One is a sixteenth-century English tragedy about wealthy Italian families, whilst the other is a twentieth-century American musical about street gangs. On the face of it they look very different, yet they are essentially the same story. Similarly, the tales told about the godmen of the Pagan Mysteries are essentially the same, although they take different forms. The more we studied the various versions of the myth of Osiris-Dionysus, the more it became obvious that the story of Jesus had all the characteristics of this perennial tale. Event by event, we found we were able to construct Jesus' supposed biography from mythic motifs previousl3 relating to Osiris-Dionysus: - Osiris-Dionysus is God made flesh, the saviour and 'Son of God'. - His father is God and his mother is a mortal virgin. - He is born in a cave or humble cowshed on 25 December before three shepherds. - He offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites ot baptism. - He miraculously turns water into wine at a marriage ceremony. - He rides triumphantly into town on a donkey while people wave palm leaves to honour him. - He dies at Eastertime as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. - After his death he descends to hell, then on the third day he rises from the dead and ascends to heaven in glory. - His followers await his return as the judge during the Last Days. - His death and resurrection are celebrated by a ritual meal of bread and wine which symbolize his body and blood. These are just some of the motifs shared between the tales of Osiris-Dionysus and the 'biography' of Jesus. Why are these remarkable similarities not common knowledge? Because, as we were to discover later, the early Roman Church did everything in its power to prevent us perceiving them. It systematically destroyed Pagan sacred literature in a brutal programme of eradicating the Mysteries -- a task it performed so completely that today Paganism is regarded as a 'dead' religion. Although surprising to us now, to writers of the first few centuries CE these similarities between the new Christian religion and the ancient Mysteries were extremely obvious. Pagan critics of Christianity, such as the satirist Celsus, complained that this recent religion was nothing more than a pale reflection of their own ancient teachings. Early 'Church fathers,' such as Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Irenaeus, were understandably disturbed and resorted to the desperate claim that these similarities were the result of 'diabolical mimicry.' Using one of the most absurd arguments ever advanced, they accused the Devil of 'plagiarism by anticipation,' of deviously copying the true story of Jesus before it had actually happened in an attempt to mislead the gullible! These Church fathers struck us as no less devious than the Devil they hoped to incriminate. Other Christian commentators have claimed that the myths of the Mysteries were like pre-echoes of the literal coming of Jesus, somewhat like premonitions or prophecies. This is a more generous version of the'diabolical mimicry' theory, but seemed no less ridiculous to us. There was nothing other than cultural prejudice to make us see the Jesus story as the literal culmination of its many mythical precursors. Viewed impartially, it appeared to be just another version of the same basic story. The obvious explanation is that as early Christianity became the dominant power in the previously Pagan world, popular motifs from Pagan mythology became grafted onto the biography of Jesus. This is a possibility that is even put forward by many Christian theologians. The virgin birth, for example, is often regarded as an extraneous later addition that should not be understood literally. Such motifs were 'borrowed' from Paganism in the same way that Pagan festivals were adopted as Christian saints' days. This theory is common amongst those who go looking for the 'real' Jesus hidden under the weight of accumulated mythological debris. Attractive as it appears at first, to us this explanarion seemed inadequate.We had collated such a comprehensive body of similarities that there remained hardly any significant elements in the biography of Jesus that we did not find prefigured by the Mysteries. On top of this, we discovered that even Jesus' teachings were not original, but had been anticipated by the Pagan sages! If there was a 'real' Jesus somewhere underneath all this, we would have to acknowledge that we could know absolutely nothing about him, for all that remained for us was later Pagan accretions! Such a position seemed absurd. Surely there was a more elegant solution to this conundrum. THE GNOSTICS Whilst we were puzzling over these discoveries, we began to question the received picture of the early Church and have a look at the evidence for ourselves. We discovered that far from being the united congregation of saints and martyrs that traditiona! history would have us believe, the early Christian community was actually made up of a whole spectrum of different groups. These can be broadly categorized into two different schools. On the one hand there were those we will call 'Literalists', because what defines them is that they take the Jesus story as a literal account of historical events. It was this school of Christianity that was adopted by the Roman Empire in the fourth century CE, becoming Roman Catholicism and all its subsequent offshoots. On the other hand, however, there were also radically diffejent Christians known as 'Gnostics.' These forgotten Christians were later persecuted out of existence by the Literalist Roman Church with such thoroughness that until recently we knew little about them except through the writings of their detractors. Only a handful of original Gnostic texts survived, none of which were published before the nineteenth century. This situation changed dramatically, however, with a remarkable discovery in 1945 when an Arab peasant stumbled upon a whole library of Gnostic gospels hidden in a cave near Nag Hammadi in Egypt. This gave scholars access to many texts which were in wide circulation amongst early Christians, but which were deliberately excluded from the canon of the New Testament -- gospels attributed to Thomas and Philip, texts recording the acts of Peter and the 12 disciples, apocalypses attributed to Paul and James, and so on. It seemed to us extraordinary that a whole library of early Christian documents could be discovered, containing what purport to be the teachings of Christ and his disciples, and yet so few modem followers of Jesus should even know of their existence. Why hasn't every Christian rushed out to read these newly discovered words of the Master? What keeps them confined to the small number of gospels selected for inclusion in the New Testament? It seems that even though 2,000 years have passed since the Gnostics were purged, during which time the Roman Church has split into Protestantism and thousands of other alternative groups, the Gnostics are still not regarded as a legitimate voice of Christianity. Those who do explore the Gnostic gospels discover a form of Christianity quite alien to the religion with which they are familiar. We found ourselves studying strange esoteric tracts with titles such as Hypostasis of the Archons and The Thought of Norea. It felt as if we were in an episode of Star Trek -- and in a way we were. The Gnostics truly were 'psychonauts' who boldly explored the final frontiers of inner space, searching for the origins and meaning of life. These people were mystics and creative free-thinkers. It was obvious to us why they were so hated by the bishops of the Literalist Church hierarchy. To Literalists, the Gnostics were dangerous heretics. In volumes of anti-Gnostic works -- an unintentional testimony to the power and influence of Gnosticism within early Christianity -- they painted them as Christians who had 'gone native.' They claimed they had become contaminated by the Paganism that surrounded them and had abandoned the purity of the true faith. The Gnostics, on the other hand, saw themselves as the authentic Christian tradition and the orthodox bishops as an 'imitation church.' They claimed to know the secret Inner Mysteries of Christianity which the Literslists did not possess. As we explored the beliefs and practices of the Gnostics we became convinced that the Literalists had at least been right about one thing: the Gnostics were little different from Pagans. Like the philosophers of the Pagan Mysteries, they believed in reincarnation, honoured the goddess Sophia, and were immersed in the mystical Greek philosophy of Plato. 'Gnostics' means 'Knowers', a name they acquired because, like the initiates of the Pagan Mysteries, they believed that their secret teachings had the power to impart 'Gnosis' -- direct experiential 'Knowledge of God.' Just as the goal of a Pagan initiate was to become a god, so for the Gnostics the goal of the Christian initiate was to become a Christ. What particularly struck us was that the Gnostics were not concerned with the historical Jesus. They viewed the Jesus story in the same way that the Pagan philosophers viewed the myths of Osiris-Dionysus -- as an allegory which encoded secret mystical teachings. This insight crystallized for us a remarkable possibility. Perhaps the explanation for the similarities between Pagan myths and the biography of Jesus had been staring us in the face the whole time, but we had been so caught up with traditional ways of thinking that we had been unable to see it. THE JESUS MYSTERIES THESIS The traditional version of history bequeathed to us by the authorities of the Roman Church is that Christianity developed from the teachings of a Jewish Messiah and that Gnosticism was a later deviation. What would happen, we wondered if the picture were reversed and Gnosticism viewed as the authentic Christianity, just as the Gnostics themselves claimed? Could it be that orthodox Christianity was a later deviation from Gnosticism and that Gnosticism was a synthesis of Judaism and the Pagan Mystery religion? This was the beginning of the Jesus Mysteries Thesis. Boldly stated, the picture that emerged for us was as follows. We knew that most ancient Mediterranean cultures had adopted the ancient Mysteries, adapting them to their own national tastes and creating their own version of the myth of the dying and resurrecting godman. Perhaps some of the Jews had likewise adopted the Pagan Mysteries and created their own version of the Mysteries which we now know as Gnosticism. Perhaps initiates of the Jewish Mysteries had adapted the potent symbolism of the Osiris-Dionysus myths into a myth of their own, the hero of which was the Jewish dying and ~surreeting godman Jesus. If this was so, then the Jesus story was not a biography at all but a consciously crafted vehicle for encoded spiritual teachings created by Jewish Gnostics. As in the Pagan Mysteries, initiation into the Inner Mysteries would reveal the myth's allegorical meaning. Perhaps those uninitiated into the Inner Mysteries had mistakenly come to regard the Jesus myth as historical fact and in this way Literalist Christianity had been created. Perhaps the Inner Mysteries of Christianity, which the Gnostics taught but which the Literalists denied existed, revealed that the Jesus story was not a factual account of God's one and only visit to planet Earth, but a mystical teaching story designed to help each one of us become a Christ. The Jesus story does have all the hallmarks of a myth, so could it be that that is exactly what it is? After all, no one has read the newly discovered Gnostic gospels and taken their fantastic stories as literally true; they are readily seen as myths. It is only familiarity and cultural prejudice which prevent us from seeing tlae New Testament gospels in the same light. If those gospels had also been lost to us and only recently discovered, who would read these tales for the first time and believe they were historical accounts of a man born of a virgin, who had walked on water and returned from the dead? Why should we consider the stories of Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, Mithras and the other Pagan Mystery saviours as fables, yet come across essentially the same story told in a Jewish context and believe it to be the biography of a carpenter from Bethlehem? We had both been raised as Christians and were surprised to find that, despite years of open-minded spiritual exploration, it still felt somehow dangerous to even dare think such thoughts. Early indoctrination reaches very deep. We were in effect saying that Jesus was a Pagan god and that Christianity was a heretical product of Paganism! It seemed outrageous. Yet this theory explained the similarities between the stories of Osiris-Dionysus and Jesus Christ in a simple and elegant way. They are parts of one developing mythos. The Jesus Mysteries Thesis answered many puzzling questions, yet it also opened up new dilemmas. Isn't there indisputable historical evidence for the existence of Jesus the man? And how could Gnosticism be the original Christianity when St Paul, the earliest Christian we know about, is so vociferously anti-Gnostic? And is it really credible that such an insular and anti-Pagan people as the Jews could have adopted the Pagan Mysteries? And how could it have happened that a consciously created myth came to be believed as history? And if Gnosticism represents genuine Christianity, why was it Literalist Christianity that came to dominate the world as the most influential religion of all time? All of these difficult questions would have to be satisfactorily answered before we could wholeheartedly accept such a radical theory as the Jesus Mysteries Thesis. THE GREAT COVER UP Our new account of the origins of Christianity only seemed improbable because it contradicted the received view. As we pushed further with our research, the traditional picture began to completely unravel all around us. We found ourselves embroiled in a world of schism and power straggles, of forged documents and false identities, of letters that had been edited and added to, and of the wholesale destruction of historical evidence. We focused forensically on the few facts we could be confident of, as if we were detectives on the verge of cracking a sensational 'whodunnit', or perhaps more accurately as if we were uncovering an ancient and unacknowledged miscarriage of justice. For, time and again, when we critically examined what genuine evidence remained, we found that the history of Christianity bqueathed to us by the Roman Church was a gross distortion of the truth. Actually the evidence completely endorsed the Jesus Mysteries Thesis! It was becoming increasingly obvious that we had been deliberately deceived, that the Gnostics were indeed the original Christians, and that their anarchic mysticism had been hijacked by an authoritarian institution which had created from it a dogmatic religion - and then brutally enforced the greatest cover-up in history. One of the major players in this cover-up operation was a character called Eusebius, who, at the beginning of the fourth century, compiled from legends, fabrications and his own imagination the only early history of Christianity that still exists today. All subsequent histories have been forced to base themselves on Eusebins' dubious claims, because there has been little other information to draw on. All those with a different perspective on Christianity were branded as heretics and eradicated. In this way falsehoods compiled in the fourth century have come down to us as established facts. Eusebius was employed by the Roman Emperor Constantine, who made Christianity the state religion of the Empire and gave Literalist Christianity the power it needed to begin the final eradication of Paganism and Gnosticism. Constantine wanted 'one God, one religion' to consolidate his claim of 'one Empire, one Emperor.' He oversaw the creation of the Nicene creed -- the article of faith repeated in churches to this day -- and christians who refused to assent to this creed were banished from the Empire or otherwise silenced. This 'Christian' Emperor then returned home from Nicaea and had his wife suffocated and his son murdered. He deliberately remained unbaptized until his deathbed so that he could continue his atrocities and still receive forgiveness of sins and a guaranteed place in heaven by being baptized at the last moment. Although he had his 'spin doctor' Eusebius compose a suitably obsequious biography for him, he was actually a monster -- just like many Roman Emperors before him. Is it really at all surprising that a 'history' of the origins of Christianity created by an employee in the service of a Roman tyrant should turn out to be a pack of lies? Elaine PageIs, one of the foremost academic authorities on early Christianity, writes: "It is the winners who write history -- their way. No wonder, then, that the traditional accounts of the origins of Christianity first defined the terms (naming themselves "orthodox" and their opponents "heretics"); then they proceeded to demonstrate -- at least to their own satisfaction -- that their triumph was historically inevitable, or, in religious terms, "guided by the Holy Spirit." But the discoveries [of the Gnostic gospels] at Nag Hammadi reopen fundamental questions." History is indeed written by the victors. The creation of an appropriate history has always been part of the arsenal of political manipulation. The Roman Church created a history of the triumph of Literalist Christianity in much the same partisan way that, two millennia later, Hollywood created tales of 'cowboys and Indians' to relate 'how the West was won' not 'how the West was lost.' History is not simply related, it is created. Ideally, the motivation is to explain historical evidence and come to an accurate understanding of how the present has been created by the past. All too often, however, it is simply to glorify and justify the status quo. Such histories conceal as much as they reveal. To dare to question a received history is not easy. It is difficult to believe that something which you have been told is true from childhood could actually be a product of falsification and fantasy. It must have been hard for those Russians brought up on tales of kindly 'Uncle Joe' Stalin to accept that he was actually responsible for the deaths of millions. It must have strained credibility when those opposing his regime claimed that he had in fact murdered many of the heroes of the Russian revolution. It must have seemed ridiculous when they asserted that he had even had the images of his rivals removed from photographs and completely fabricated historical events. Yet all these things are true. It is easy to believe that something must be true because everyone else believes it. But the truth often only comes to light by daring to question the unquestionable, by doubting notions which are so commonly believed that they are taken for granted. The Jesus Mysteries Thesis is the product of such an openness of mind. When it first occurred to us, it seemed absurd and impossible. Now it seems obvious and ordinary. The Vatican was constructed upon the site of an ancient Pagan sanctuary because the new is always built upon the old. In the same way Christianity itself has as its foundations the Pagan spirituality that preceded it. What is more plausible than to posit the gradual evolution of spiritual ideas, with Christianity emerging from the ancient Pagan Mysteries in a seamless historical continuum? It is only because the conventional history has been so widely believed for so long that this idea could be seen as heretical and shocking. RECOVERING MYSTICAL CHRISTIANITY As the final pieces of the puzzle were falling into place, we came across a small picture tucked away in the appendices of an old academic book. It was a drawing of a third-century CE amulet. We have used it as the cover of this book. It shows a crucified figure which most people would immediately recognize as Jesus. Yet the Greek words name the figure 'Orpheus Bacchus,' one of the pseudonyms of Osiris-Dionysus. To the author of the book in which we found the picture, this amulet was an anomaly. Who could it have possibly belonged to? Was it a crucified Pagan deity or some sort of Gnostic synthesis of Paganism and Christianity? Either way it was deeply puzzling. For us, however, this amulet was perfectly understandable. It was an unexpected confirmation of the Jesus Mysteries Thesis. The image could be that of either Jesus or Osiris-Dionysus. To the initiated, these were both names for essentially the same figure. The 'chance' discovery of this amulet made us feel as though the universe itself was encouraging us to make our findings public. In different ways the Jesus Mysteries Thesis has been proposed by mystics and scholars for centuries, but has always ended up being ignored. It now felt like an idea whose moment had come. We did, however, have misgivings about writing this book. We knew that it would inevitably upset certain Christians, something which we had no desire to do. Certainly it has been hard to be constantly surrounded by lies and injustices without experiencing a certain amount of outrage at the negative misrepresentation of the Gnostics, and to have become aware of the great riches of Pagan culture without feeling grief that they were so wantonly destroyed. Yet we do not have some sort of anti-Christian agenda. Far from it. Those who have read our other works will know that our interest is not in further division, but in acknowledging the unity that lies at the heart of all spiritual traditions -- and this present book is no exception. Early Literalist Christians mistakenly believed that the Jesus story was different from other stories of Osiris-Dionysus because Jesus alone had been an historical rather than a mythical figure. This has left Christians feeling that their faith is in opposition to all others -- which it is not. We hope that by understanding its true origins in the ongoing evolution of a universal human spirituality, Christianity may be able to free itself from this self-imposed isolation. Whilst the Jesus Mysteries Thesis clearly rewrites history, we do not see it as undermining the Christian faith, but as suggesting that Christianity is in fact richer than we previously imagined. The Jesus story is a perennial myth with the power to impart the saving Gnosis which can transform each one of us into a Christ, not merely a history of events that happened to someone else 2,000 years ago. Belief in the Jesus story was originally the first step in Christian spirituality -- the Outer Mysteries. Its significance was to be explained by an enlightened teacher when the seeker was spiritually ripe. These Inner Mysteries imparted a mystical Knowledge of God beyond mere belief in dogmas. Although many inspired Christian mystics throughout history have intuitively seen through to this deeper symbolic level of understanding, as a culture we have inherited only the Outer Mysteries of Christianity. We have kept the form, but lost the inner meaning. Our hope is that this book can play some small part in reclaiming the true mystical Christian inheritance. The Pagan Mysteries "Blest is the happy man Who knows the Mysteries the gods ordain, And sanctifies his life, Joins soul with soul in mystic unity, And, by due ritual made pure Enters the ecstasy of mountain solitudes; Who observes the mystic rites Made lawful by the Great Mother; Who crowns his head with ivy, And shakes his wand in worship ot Dionysus." Euripides Paganism is a 'dead' religion -- or more accurately an 'exterminated' religion· It did not simply fade away into oblivion. It was actively suppressed and annihilated, its temples and shrines desecrated and demolished, and its great sacred books thrown onto bonfires. No living lineage has been left to explain its ancient beliefs. So, the Pagan worldview has to be reconstructed from the archaeological evidence and texts that have survived, like some giant metaphysical jigsaw puzzle. 'Pagan' was originally a derogatory term meaning 'country-dweller,' used by Christians to infer that the spirituality of the ancients was some primitive rural superstition. But this is not true. Paganism was the spirituality which inspired the unequalled magnificence of the Giza pyramids, the exquisite architecture of the Parthenon, the legendary sculptures of Phideas, the powerful plays of Euripides and Sophocles, and the sublime philosophy of Socrates and Plato. Pagan civilization built vast libraries to house hundreds of thousands of works of literary and scientific genius. Its natural philosophers speculated that human beings had evolved from animals. Its astronomers knew the Earth was a sphere which, along with the planets, revolves around the sun. They had even estimated its circumference to within one degree of accuracy? The ancient Pagan world sustained a population not matched again in Europe until the eighteenth century. In Greece, Pagan culture gave birth to the concepts of democracy, rational philosophy, public libraries, theatre and the Olympic Games, creating a blueprint for our modern world. What was the spirituality that inspired these momentous cultural achievements? Most people associate Paganism with either rustic witchcraft or the myths of the gods of Olympus as recorded by Hesiod and Homer. Pagan spirituality did indeed embrace both. The country people practised their traditional shamanic nature worship to maintain the fertility of the land and the city authorities propped up formal state religions, such as the worship of the Olympian gods, to maintain the power of the status quo. It was, however, a third, more mystical, expression of the Pagan spirit which inspired the great minds of the ancient world. The thinkers, artists and innovators of antiquity were initiates of various religions known as 'Mysteries.' These remarkable men and women held the Mysteries to be the heart and soul of their culture. The Greek historian Zosimos writes that without the Mysteries "life for the Greeks would be unlivable" for "the sacred Mysteries hold the whole human race together." The eminent Roman statesman Cicero enthuses: "These Mysteries have brought us from rustic savagery to a cultivated and refined civilisation. The rites of the Mysteries are called "initiations" and in truth we have learned trom them the first principles of life. We have gained the understanding not only to live happily but also to die with better hope." Unlike the traditional rituals of the official state religions, which were designed to aid social cohesion, the mysteries were an individualistic form of.spirituality which offered mystical visions and personal enlightenment. Initiates underwent a secret process of initiation which profoundly trans-r formed their state of consciousness. The poet Pindar reveals that an initiate into the Mysteries "knows the end of life and its God-given beginning." Lucius Apuleius, a poet-philosopher, writes of his experience of initiation as a spiritual rebirth which he celebrated as his birthday, an experience for which he felt a "debt of gratitude" that he "could never hope to repay." Plato, the most influential philosopher of all time, relates: "We beheld the beatific visions and were initiated into the Mystery which may be truly called blessed, celebrated by us in a state of innocence. We beheld calm, happy, simple, eternal visions, resplendent in pure light." The great Pagan philosophers were the enlightened masters of the Mysteries. Although they are often portrayed today as dry 'academic' intellectuals, they were actually enigmatic 'gurus.' Empedocles, like his master Pythagoras, was a charismatic miracle-worker. Socrates was an eccentric mystic prone to being suddenly overcome by states of rapture during which his friends would discover him staring off into space for hours. Heraclitus was asked by the citizens of Ephesus to become a lawmaker, but turned the offer down so that he could continue playing with the children in the temple. Anaxagoras shocked ordinary citizens by completely abandoning his farm to fully devote his life to "the higher philosophy." Diogenes owned nothing and lived in a jar at the entrance of a temple. The inspired playwright Euripides wrote his greatest tragedies during solitary retreats in an isolated cave. All of these idiosyncratic sages were steeped in the mysticism of the Mysteries, which they expressed in their philosophy. Olympiodorus, a follower of Plato, tells us that his master paraphrased the Mysteries everywhere. The works of Heraclitus were renowned even in ancient times for being obscure and impenetrable, yet Diogenes explains that they are crystal clear to an initiate of the Mysteries. Of studying Heraclitus he writes: "It is a hard road to follow, filled with darkness and gloom; but if an initiate leads you on the way, it becomes brighter than the radiance of the sun." At the heart of Pagan philosophy is an understanding that all things are One. The Mysteries aimed at awakening within the initiate a sublime experience of this Oneness. Sallustius declares: "Every initiation aims at uniting us with the World and with the Deity." Plotinus describes the initiate transcending his limited sense of himself as a separate ego and experiencing mystical union with God: "As if borne away, or possessed by a god, he attains to solitude in untroubled stillness, nowhere deflected in his being and unbusied with self, utterly at rest and become very rest. He does not converse with a statue or image but with Godhead itself. And this is no object of vision, but another mode of seeing, a detachment from self, a simplification and surrender of self, a yearning for contact, and a stillness and meditation directed towards transformation. Whoever sees himself in this way has attained likeness to God; let him abandon himself and find the end of his journeying ." No wonder the initiate Sopatros poertcally mused, "I came out of the Mystery Hall feeling like a stranger to myself." THE SACRED SPECTACLE AT ELEUSIS What were these ancient Mysteries that could inspire such reverent awe and heartfelt appreciation? The Mystery religion was practised for thousands of years, during which time it spread throughout the ancient worid, taking on many different forms. Some were frenzied and others meditative. Some involved bloody animal sacrifice, while others were presided over by strict vegetarians, At certain moments in history the Mysteries were openly practised by whole populations and were endorsed, or at least tolerated, by the state. At other times they were a small-scale and secretive affair, for fear of persecution by unsympathetic authorities. Central toall of these forms qf the Mysteries, however, was the myth of a dying and resurrecting godman. The Greek Mysteries celebrated at Eleusis in honour of the Great Mother goddess and the godman Dionysus were the most famous of all the Mystery cults. The sanctuary of Eleusis was finally destroyed by bands of fanatical Christian monks in 396 CE, but up until this tragic act of vandalism the Mysteries had been celebrated there for over 11 centuries. At the height of their popularity people were coming from all over the then known world to be initiated: men and women, rich and poor, slaves and emperors -- even a Brahmin priest from India. Each year some 30,000 Athenian citizens embarked on a 30-kilometre barefoot pilgrimage to the sacred site of Eleusis on the coast to celebrate the autumn Mysteries of Dionysus. For days they would have been preparing for this important religious event by fasting, offering sacrifices and undergoing ritual purification. As those about to be initiated danced along the 'Sacred Way' to Eleusis, accompanied by the frenzied beat of cymbals and tambourines, they were accosted by masked men who abused and insulted them, while others beat them with sticks. At the head of the procession was carried the statue of Dionysus himself, leading them ever onward. After ritual naked bathing in the sea and other purification ceremonies the crowd reached the great doors of the Telesterion, a huge purpose-built initiation hall. Only the chosen few who were already initiated or about to be initiated into the secret Mysteries could enter here. What awesome ceremony was held behind these closed doors that touched the great philosophers, artists, statesmen and scientists of the ancient world so deeply? All initiates were sworn to secrecy and held the Mysteries so sacred that they kept this oath. From large numbers of hints and clues, however, we know that they witnessed a sublime theatrical spectacle. They were awed by sounds and dazzled by lights. They were bathed in the blaze of a huge fire and trembled to the nerve-shattering reverberations of a mighty gong. The Hierophant, the high priest of the Mysteries, was quite literally a 'showman' who orchestrated a terrifyingly transformative dramatic reenactment of sacred myth. He himself was dressed as the central character - the godman Dionysus. A modern scholar writes: "A Mystery Religion was thus a divine drama which portrayed before the wondering eyes of the privileged observers the story of the struggles, sufferings, and victory of a patron deity, the travail of nature in which life ultimately triumphs over death, and joy is born of pain. The whole ritual of the Mysteries aimed especially at quickening the emotional life. No means of exciting the emotions was neglected in the passion-play, either by way of inducing careful predispositions or of supplying external stimulus. Tense mental anticipations heightened by a period of abstinence, hushed silences, imposing processions and elaborate pageantry, music loud and violent or soft and enthralling, delirious dances, the drinking of spirituous liquors, physical macerations, alternations of dense darkness and dazzling light, the sight of gorgeous ceremonial vestments, the handling of holy emblems, auto-suggestion and the promptings of the Hierophant -- these and many secrets of emotional exaltation were in vogue." This dramatization of the myth of Dionysus is the origin of tragedy and theatre. But the initiates were not a passive audience. They were participants who shared in the passion of the godman whose death and rebirth symbolically represented the death and spiritual rebirth of each one of them. As a modern authority explains: "Dionysus was the god of the most blessed ecstasy and the most enraptured love. But he was also the persecuted god, the suffering and dying god, and all whom he loved, all who attended him, had to share his tragic fate." By witnessing the awesome tragedy of Dionysus, the initiates at Eleusis shared in his suffering, death and resurrection, and so experienced a spiritual purification known as 'catharsis.' The Mysteries did not offer religious dogmas to simply be believed, but a myth to be entered into. Initiation was not about learning something, but about experiencing an altered state of awareness. Plutarch, a Pagan high priest, confesses that those who had been initiated could produce no proof of the beliefs that they acquired. Aristotle maintains, "It is not necessary for the initiated to learn anything, but to receive impressions and to be put in a certain frame of mind." The philosopher Produs talks of the Mysteries as evoking a "sympathy of the soul with the ritual in a way that is unintelligible to us and divine, so that some of the initiates axe stricken with panic, being filled with divine awe; others assimilate themselves to the holy symbols, leave their own identity, become at home with the gods, affd experience divine possession." Why did the myth enacted by the Mysteries have such a profound effect? ENCODED SECRET TEACHINGS In antiquity the word mythos did not mean something 'untrue't as it does ( for us today. Superficially a myth was an entertaining story, but to the initiated it was a sacred code that contained profound spiritual teachings. Plato comments, "It looks as if those also who established rites of initiation for us were no fools, but that there is a hidden meaning in their teachings." He explains that it is "those who have given their lives to true philosophy" who will grasp the "hidden meaning" encoded in the Mystery myths, and so become completely identified with the godman in an experience of mystical enlightenment. The ancient philosophers were not so foolish as to believe that the Mystery myths were literally true, but wise enough to recognize that they were an easy introduction to the profound mystical philosophy at the heart of the Mysteries. Sallustius writes: "To wish to teach all men the truth of the gods causes the foolish to despise, because they cannot learn, and the good to be slothful, whereas to conceal the truth by myths prevents the former from despising philosophy and compels the latter to study it." It was the role of the priests and philosophers of the Mysteries to decode the hidden depths of spiritual meaning contained within the Mystery myths. Heliodorus, a priest of the Mysteries, explains: "Philosophers and theologians do not disclose the meanings embedded in these stories to laymen but simply give them preliminary instruction in the form of a myth. But those who have reached the higher grades of the Mysteries they initiate into clear knowledge in the privacy of the holy shrine, in the light cast by the blazing torch of truth." The Mysteries were divided into various levels of initiation, which led an initiate step by step through ever deepening levels of understanding. The number of levels of initiation varied in different Mystery traditions, but essentially the initiate was led from the Outer Mysteries, in which the myths were understood superficially as religious stories, to the Inner Mysteries, in which the myths were revealed as spiritual allegories. First the initiate was ritually purified. Then they were taught the secret teachings on a one-to-one basis. The highest stage was when the initiate understood the true meaning of the teachings and finally experienced what Theon of Smyrna calls "friendship and interior communion with God." THE INTERNATIONAL MYSTERIES The Mysteries dominated the Pagan world. No other deity is represented on the monuments of ancient Greece and Italy as much as Dionysus, godman of the Eleusinian Mysteries. He is a deity with many names: Iacchos, Bassareus, Bromios, Euios, Sabazius, Zagreus, Yhyoneus, Lenaios, Eleuthereus, and so the list goes on. But these are just some of his Greek names! The godman is an omnipresent mythic figure throughout the ancient Mediterranean, known in different ways by many cultures. Five centuries before the birth of Christ, the Greek historian Herodotus, known as 'the father of history', discovered this when he travelled to Egypt. On the shores of a sacred lake in the Nile delta he witnessed an enormous festival, held every year, in which the Egyptians performed a dramatic spectacle before "tens of thousands of men and women," representing the death and resurrection of Osiris. Herodotus was an initiate into the Greek Mysteries and recognized that what he calls "the Passion of Osiris" was the very same drama that initiates saw enacted before them at Eleusis as the Passion of Dionysus. The Egyptian myth of Osiris is the primal myth of the Mystery godman and reaches back to prehistory. His story is so ancient that it can be found in pyramid texts written over 4,500 years ago! In travelling to Egypt Herodotus was following in the footsteps of another great Greek. Before 670 BCE Egypt had been a closed country, in the manner of Tibet, or Japan more recently, but in this year she opened her borders and one of the first Greeks who travelled there in search of ancient wisdom was Pythagoras. History remembers Pythagoras as the first 'scientist' of the Western world, but although it is true that he brought back many mathmatical theories to Greece from Egypt, to his contemporaries he would have seemed anything but 'scientific' in the modern sense. A wandering charismatic sage dressed in white robes and crowned with a gold coronet, Pythagoras was part scientist, part priest and part magician. He spent 22 years in the temples of Egypt, becoming an initiate of the ancient Egyptian Mysteries. On returning to Greece he began to preach the wisdom he had learned, performing miracles, raising the dead and giving oracles. Inspired by Pythagoras, his disciples created a Greek Mystery religion modelled on the Egyptian Mysteries. They took the indigenous wine god Dionysus, who was a minor deity all but ignored by Hesiod and Homer, and transformed him into a Greek version of the mighty Egyptian Osiris, godman of the Mysteries. This initiated a religious and cultural revolution that was to transform Athens into the centre of the civilized world. The followers of Pythagoras were models of virtue and learning, regarded as puritans by their neighbours. Strict vegetarians, they preached non-violence towards all living things and shunned the temple cults that practised the sacrifice of animals. This made it impossible for them to participate in the traditional Olympian religion of Athens. Forced to live on the fringes of acceptability, they often organized themselves into communities that shared all possessions in common, leaving them free to devote themselves to their mystical studies of mathematics, music, astronomy and philosophy. Nevertheless, the Mystery religion spread quickly amongst the ordinary people and within a few generations the Egyptian Mysteries of Osiris, now the Mysteries of Dionysus, inspired the glory of Classical Athens. In the same way that Osiris was synthesized by the Greeks with their indigenous god Dionysus to create the Greek Mysteries, other Mediterranean cultures which adopted the Mystery religion also transformed one of their indigenous deities into the dying and resurrecting Mystery godman. So, the deity who was known as Osiris in Egypt and became Dionysus in Greece was called Attis in Asia Minor, Adonis in Syria, Bacchus in Italy, Mithras in Persia, and so on. His forms were many, but essentially he was the same perennial figure, whose collective identity was referred to as Osiris-Dionysus. Because the ancients recognized that all the various Mystery godmen were essentially the same mythic being, elements from different myths and rites were continually combined and recombined to create new forms of the Mysteries. In Alexandria, for example, a charismatic sage called Timotheus consciously fused Osiris and Dionysus to produce a new deity for the city callled Serapis. He also gave an elaborate account of the myth of the Mystery godman Attis. Lucius Apuleius received his initiation into theMysteries from a high priest named after the Persian godman Mithras. Coins were minted with Dionysus represented on one side and Mithras on the other? One modern authority tells us that "possessed by the knowledge of his own secret rites," the initiate of the Mysteries "found no difficulty in conforming to any religion in vogue." Like the Christian religion which superseded it, the Mysteries reached across national boundaries, offering a spirituality which was relevant to all human beings, regardless of their racial origins or social status. Even as early as the fifth century CE philosophers such as Diogenes and Socrates called themselves "cosmopolitans' -- "citizens of the cosmos" -- rather than of any particular country or culture, which is testimony to the international nature of the Mysteries. One modern scholar, commenting on the merging and combining of different mystery traditions, writes: "This went a long way towards weaning the minds of men from the idea of separate gods from the different nations, and towards teaching them that all national and local deities were but different forms of one great Power. But for the rise of Christianity and other religions, there can be little doubt but that the whole of the Graeco-Roman deities would continually have merged into Dionysus." OSIRIS-DIONYSUS AND JESUS CHRIST Osiris-Dionysus had such universal appeal because he was seen as an 'Everyman' figure who symbolically represented each initiate. Through understanding the allegorical myth of the Mystery godman, initiates could become aware that, like Osiris-Dionysus, they were also 'God made flesh.' They too were immortal Spirit trapped within a physical body. Through sharing in the death of Osiris-Dionysus initiates symbolically 'died' to their lower earthly nature. Through sharing in his resurrection they were spiritually reborn and experienced their eternal and divine essence. This was the profound mystical teaching that the myth of Osiris-Dionysus encoded for those initiated into the Inner Mysteries, the truth of which initiates directly experienced for themselves. Writing of the Egyptian Mystery godman Osiris, Sir Wallis Budge, who was keeper of antiquities in the British Museum, explains: "The Egyptians of every period in which they are known to us believed that Osiris was of divine origin, that he suffered death and mutilation at the hands of the power of evil, that after great struggle with these powers he rose again, that he became henceforth the king of the underworld and judge of the dead, and that because he had conquered death the righteous might also conquer death. "He represented to men the idea of a man who was both God and man, and he typified to the Egyptians in all ages the being who by reason of his sufferings and death as a man could sympathise with them in their own sickness and death. The idea of his human personality also satisfied their cravings and yearnings for communion with a being who, though he was partly divine, yet had much in common with themselves. Originally they looked upon Osiris as a man who lived on the earth as they lived, who ate and drank, who suffered a cruel death, who by help of certain gods triumphed over death, and attained unto everlasting life. But what Osiris did they could also do." These are the key motifs that characterize the myths of all the Mystery godmen. What Budge writes of Osiris could equally be said of Dionysus, Attis, Adonis, Mithras and the rest. It also describes the Jewish dying and resurrecting godman Jesus Christ. Like Osiris-Dionysus, he is also God Incarnate and God of the Resurrection. He also promises his followers spiritual rebirth through sharing in his divine Passion. CONCLUSION The Mysteries were clearly an extremely powerful force in the ancient world. Let's review what we've discovered about them: - The Pagan Mysteries inspired the greatest minds of the ancient world. - They were practised in different forms by nearly every culture in the Mediterranean. - They comprised Outer Mysteries which were open to all and secret Inner Mysteries known only to those who had undergone a powerful process of mystical initiation. - At the heart of the Mysteries was the myth of a dying and resurrecting godman - Osiris-Dionysus. - The Inner Mysteries revealed the myths of Osiris-Dionysus to be spiritual allegories encoding spiritual teachings. The question which intrigued us was whether the Mysteries could have somehow influenced and shaped what we have inherited as the "biography" of Jesus? Unlike the various Pagan Mystery godmen, Jesus is traditionally viewed as an historical rather than a mythical figure, literally a man who was an incarnation of God, who suffered, died and resurrected to bring salvation to all humankind. But could these elements of the Jesus story actually be mythical stories inherited from the Pagan Mysteries? We began investigating the myths of Osiris-Dionysus more closely, searching for resemblances with the Jesus story. We were not prepared for the overwhelming number of similarities that we uncovered. Diabolical Mimicry "Having heard it proclaimed through the prophets that the Christ was to come and that the ungodly among men were to be punished by fire, the wicked spirits put forward many to be called Sons of God, under the impression that they would be able to produce in men the idea that the things that were said with regard to Christ were merely marvellous tales, like the things that were said by the poets." Justin Martyr Although the remarkable similarities between the myths of Osiris-Dionysus agd the supposed "biography" of Jesus Christ are generally unknown today, in the first few centuries CE they were obvious to Pagans and Christians alike. The Pagan philosopher and satirist Celsus criticized Christians for tryingto pass off the Jesus story as a new revelation when it was actually an inferior imitation of Pagan myths. He asks: "Are these distinctive happenings unique to the Christians -- and if so, how are they unique? Or are ours to be accounted myths and theirs believed? What reasons do the Christians give for the distinctiveness of their beliefs? In truth there is nothing at all unusual about what the Christians believe, except that they believe it to the exclusion of more comprehensive truths about God." The early Christians were painfully aware of such criticisms. How could Pagan myths which predated Christianity by hundreds of years have so much in common with the biography of the one and only saviour Jesus? Desperate to come up with an explanation, the Church fathers resorted to one of the most absurd theories ever advanced. From the time of Justin Martyr in the second century onwards, they declared that the Devil had plagiarized Christianity by anticipation in order to lead people astray? Knowing that the true Son of God was to literally come and walk the Earth, the Devil had copied the story of his life in advance of it happening and created the myths of Osiris-Dionysus. The Church father Tertullian writes of the Devil's "diabolical mimicry" in creating the Mysteries of Mithras: "The devil, whose business is to pervert the truth, mimics the exact circumstances of the Divine Sacraments. He baptises his believers and promises forgiveness of sins from the Sacred Fount, and thereby initiates them into the religion of Mithras. Thus he celebrates the oblation of bread, and brings in the symbol of the resurrection. Let us therefore acknowledge the craftiness of the devil, who copies certain things of those that be Divine." Studying the myths of the Mysteries it becomes obvious why these early Christians resorted to such a desperate explanation. Although no single Pagan myth completely parallels the story of Jesus, the mythic motifs which make up the story of the Jewish godman had already existed for centuries in the various stories told of Osiris-Dionysus and his greatest prophets. Let's make a journey through the 'biography' of Jesus and explore some of these extraordinary similarities. SON OF GOD Despite Christianity's claim that Jesus is the "only begotten Son of God." Osiris-Dionysus, in all his many forms, is also hailed as the Son of God. Jesus is the Son of God, yet equal with the Father. Dionysus is the "Son of Zeus, in his full nature God, most terrible, although most gentle to mankind." Jesus is "Very God of Very God." Dionysus is "Lord God of God born." Jesus is God in human form. St John writes of Jesus as "the Word made flesh." St. Paul explains that "God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh? Dionysus was also known as Bacchus, hence the title of Euripides' play The Bacchae, in which Dionysus is the central character. In this play, Dionysus explains that he has veiled his "Godhead in a mortal shape" in order to make it "manifest to mortal men.. He tells his disciples, "That is why I have changed my immortal form and taken the likeness of man." Like Jesus, in many of his myths the Pagan godman is born of a mortal virgin mother. In Asia Minor, Attis' mother is the virgin Cybele. In Syria, Adonis' virgin mother is called Myrrh. In Alexandria, Aion is born of the virgin Kore. In Greece, Dionysus is born of a mortal virgin Semele who wishes to see Zeus in all his glory and is mysteriously impregnated by one of his bolts of lightning. It was a popular tradition, recorded in the most quoted non-canonical text of early Christianity, that Jesus spent only seven months in Mary's womb. The Pagan historian Diodorus relates that Dionysus' mother Semele likewise was said to have also had only a seven-month pregnancy. Justin Martyr acknowledges the similarities between Jesus' virgin birth and Pagan mythology, writing: "In saying that the Word was born for us without sexual union as Jesus Christ our teacher, we introduce nothing beyond what is said of those called the Sons of Zeus." Nowhere was the myth of the 'Son of God' more developed than in Egypt, the ancient home of the Mysteries. Even the Christian Lactantius acknowledged that the legendary Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus had "arrived in some way at the truth, for on God the Father he had said everything, and on the Son." In Egypt, the Pharaoh had for thousands of years been regarded as an embodiment of the godman Osiris and praised in hymns as the Son of God. As an eminent Egyptologist writes, "Every Pharaoh had to be the Son of God and a human mother in order that he should be the Incarnate God, the Giver of Fertility to his country and people." In many legends the great prophets of Osiris-Dionysus are also portrayed as saviours and sons of God. Pythagoras was said to be the son of Apollo and a mortal woman called Parthenis, whose name derives from the word parthenos, meaning "virgin." Plato was also posthumously believed to be the son of Apollo. Philostratus relates in his biography of Apollonius that the great Pagan sage was regarded as the "Son of Zeus." Empedocles was thought to be a godman and saviour who had come down to this world to help confused souls, becoming "like a madman, calling out to people at the top of his voice and urging them to reject this realm and what is in it and go back to their own original, sublime, and noble word." Mythic motifs from the Mysteries even became associated with Roman Emperors who, for political reasons, cultivated legends about their divine nature which would link them to Osiris-Dionysus. Julius Caesar, who did not himself even believe in personal immortality, was hailed as "God made manifest, the common saviour of human life." His successor, Augustus, was likewise the "saviour of the universal human race." and even the tyrannical Nero is addressed on an altar piece as "God the deliverer for ever." In 40 BCE, drawing on Mystery myths, the Roman poet and initiate Virgil wrote a mystical 'prophesy' that a virgin would give birth to a divine child. In the fourth century CE Literalist Christians would claim that it foretold the coming of ]esus, but at the time this myth was interpreted as referring to Augustus, said to be the "Son of Apollo," preordained to rule the Earth and bring peace and prosperity. In his biography of Augustus, Suetonius offers a cluster of 'signs' that indicated the Emperor's divine nature. One modern authority writes: &am
all that in the bible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!? Pope or Kissinger? This Reverend gentleman was expounding Biblical prophecies. He went on to prove that the Christian Bible foretold the rise of Soviet Russia, and the Last Days. At one stage he went to the extent of proving that his Holy Book did not leave even the Pope out of its predictions. He expatiated vigorously in order to convince his audience that the "Beast 666" mentioned in the Book of Revelation the last book of the New Testament was the POPE, who was the Vicar of Christ on earth. It is not befitting for us Muslims to enter into this controversy between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants. By the way, the latest Christian exposition of the "Beast 666" of the Christian Bible is Dr.Henry Kissinger1. Christian scholars are ingenious and indefatigable in their efforts to prove their case. Rev. Hiten's lectures led me to ask that if the Bible foretold so many things - not even excluding the "Pope" and "Israel" - then surely it must have something to say about the greatest benefactor of mankind2, the Holy Prophet Muhammed (may the peace of Allah be upon him). As a youngster I set out to search for an answer. I met priest after priest, attended lectures, and read everything that I could lay my hands relating to the fields of Bible prophecies. Tonight I am going to narrate to you one of these interviews with a dominee3 of the Dutch Reformed Church. 1. Christian exegesists give progressive numerical values by sixes, to the English alphabet and add up to get the total 666. i.e.A=6,B=12,C=18, D=24 and so on. Progression by 6's because the number of the Beast in the Bible is "666". Try it for Dr.Kissinger. 2. The writer has just delivered another talk in the City Hall, Durban on the 10th December, 1975 on the subject "Muhummed the Greatest". 3. "Dominee" is the Afrikaans equivalent of priest, parson and predikant. Lucky Thirteen I was invited to the Transvaal1 to deliver a talk on the occasion of Birthday celebration of the Holy Prophet Muhammed. Knowing that in that province of the Republic, the Afrikaans language is widely spoken, even by my own people, I felt that I ought to acquire a smattering of this language so a s to feel a little "at home" with the people. I opened the telephone directory and began phoning the Afrikaans-speaking Churches. I indicated my purpose to the priests that I was interested in having a dialogue with them, but they all refused my request with "Plausible" excuses. No.13 was my lucky number. The thirteenth call brought me pleasure and relief. A dominee Van Heerden agreed to meet me at his home on the Saturday afternoon that I was to leave for Transvaal. He received me on his verandah with a friendly welcome. He said if I did not mind, he would like his father-in-law from the Free State (a 70 year old man) to join us in the discussion. I did not mind. The three of us settled down in the dominee's library. 1. One of the Provinces of the Republic of South Africa. Why nothing? I posed the question: "What does the Bible say about Muhummed?" Without hesitation he answered, "Nothing!" I asked: "Why nothing? According to your interpretation the Bible have so many things to say about the rise of Soviet Russia and about the Last Days and even about the Pope of the Roman Catholics?" He said, "Yes, but there was nothing about Muhummed!" I asked again, "Why nothing? Surely this man Muhummed who had been responsible for the bringing into being a world-wide community of millions of Believers who, on his authority, believe in: (1) the miraculous birth of Jesus, (2) that Jesus is the Messiah,1 (3) that he gave life to the dead by God's permission, and that he healed those born blind and the lepers by God's permission. Surely this book (the Bible) must have something to say about this great Leader of men who spoke so well of Jesus and his mother Mary?" (Peace be upon them both). The old man from the Free State replied. "My son, I have been reading the Bible for the past 50 years, and if there was any mention of him, I would have known it." 1. The word "Messiah" comes from the Arabic and Hebrew word masaha which means to rub, to massage, to annoint. The religious significance is "the one who is anointed" - priests and kings were anointed in consecration to their offices. Messiah translated Christ does not mean God. Even the heathen Cyrus is called "Christ" in the Bible, (Isaiah 45:1) Not One by name! I enquired: "According to you, are there not hundreds of prophecies regarding the coming of Jesus in the Old Testament." The dominee interjected: "Not hundreds, but thousands!" I said, "I am not going to dispute the 'thousand and one' prophecies in the Old Testament regarding the coming of Jesus Christ, because the whole Muslim-world has already accepted him without the testimony of any Biblical prophecy. We Muslims have accepted the de facto Jesus on the authority of Muhummed alone, and there are in the world today no less than 900,000,0001 followers of Muhummed who love, respect and revere this great Messenger of God -Jesus Christ- without having the Christians to convince them by means of their Biblical dialectics. Out of the 'thousands' of prophecies referred to, can you please give me just one single prophecy where Jesus is mentioned by name? The term 'Messiah', translated as 'Christ', is not a name but a title. Is there a single Prophecy where it says that the name of the Messiah will be JESUS, and that his mother's name will be MARY, that his supposed father will be JOSEPH THE CARPENTER; that he will be born in the reign of HEROD THE KING, etc. etc.? No! There are no such details! Then how can you conclude that those 'thousand' Prophecies refer to Jesus (Peace be upon him)?" 1. This was first written in 1976. What is Prophecy? The dominee replied: "You see, prophecies are word-pictures of something that is going to happen in the future. When that thing actually comes to pass, we see vividly in these prophecies the fulfilment of what had been predicted in the past." I said: "What you actually do is that you deduce, you reason, you put two and two together." He said: "Yes." I said: "If this is what you have to do with a 'thousand' prophecies to justify your claim with regards to the genuineness of Jesus, why should we not adopt the very same system for Muhummed?"1 The dominee agreed that it was a fair proposition , a reasonable way of dealing with the problem. I asked him to open up Deuteronomy, chapter 18, verse 18, which he did. I read from memory the verse in Afrikaans, because this was my purpose in having a little practice with the language of the ruling race in South Africa.2 'N PROFEET SAL EK VIR HULLE VERWEK UIT DIE MIDDE VAN HULLE BROERS, SOOS JY IS, EN EK SAL MY WOORDE IN SY MOND LE, EN HY SY SAL AAN HULLE SE ALLE WAT EK HOM BEVEEL. Deut.18: 18. The English translation reads as follows:- "I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and I will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him." (HOLY BIBLE) Deuteronomy 18:18. 1. Muhummed is mentioned by name in the Song of Solomon 5:16. The Hebrew word used there is Muhammuddim. The end letters IM is plural of respect majesty and grandeur. Minus "im" the name would be Muhamud translated as "altogether lovely" in the Authorised Version of the Bible or 'The Praised One' 'the one worthy of Praise' i.e. MUHUMMED!(P.B.U.H) 2. If this booklet is translated into any language, please change the Afrikaans words into the local dialect; and do not try a free hand translation of the Biblical quotation. Obtain a Bible in the language in which translation is being made and transcribe exactly as the words occur in that Bible. Prophet Like Moses Having recited the verse in Afrikaans, I apologised for my uncertain pronunciation, The dominee assured me that I was doing fine. I enquired: "To whom does this prophecy refer?" Without the slightest hesitation he answered: "JESUS!" I asked: "Why Jesus?... his name is not mentioned here." The dominee replied: "Since prophecies are word-pictures of something that is going to happen in the future, we find that the wordings of this verse adequately describe him. You see the most important words of this prophecy are 'SOOS JY IS' (like unto thee), - LIKE YOU - like Moses, and Jesus is like Moses. I questioned: "In which way is Jesus like Moses?" The answer was: "In the first place Moses was a JEW and Jesus was also a JEW; secondly, Moses was a PROPHET and Jesus was also a PROPHET - therefore Jesus is like Moses and that is exactly what God had foretold Moses - "SOOS JY IS". "Can you think of any other similarities between Moses and Jesus?" I asked. The dominee said that he could not think of any. I replied: "If these are the only two criteria for discovering a candidate for this prophecy of Deuteronomy 18:18, then in that case the criteria could fit any one of the following Biblical personages after Moses:- Solomon, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Malachi, John the Baptist etc., because they were also ALL "Jews" as well as "Prophets". Why should we not apply this prophecy to any one of these prophets, and why only to Jesus? Why should we make fish of one and fowl of another?" The dominee had no reply. I continued: "You see, my conclusions are that Jesus is most unlike Moses, and if I am wrong I would like you to correct me." Three Unlikes So saying, I reasoned with him: "In the FIRST place Jesus is not like Moses, because, according to You - 'JESUS IS A GOD', but Moses is not God. Is this true?" He said: "Yes." I said: "Therefore, Jesus is not like Moses! "SECONDLY, according to You - 'JESUS DIED FOR THE SINS OF THE WORLD', but Moses did not have to die for the sins of the world. Is this true?" He again said: "Yes." I said: "Therefore Jesus is not like Moses!" "THIRDLY, according to You - 'JESUS WENT TO HELL FOR THREE DAYS', but Moses did not have to go there. Is this true?" He answered meekly: "Y-e-s." I concluded: "Therefore Jesus is not like Moses!" "But dominee," I continued: "these are not hard facts, solid facts, they are mere matters of belief over which the little ones can stumble and fall. Let us discuss something very simple, very easy that if your little ones are called in to hear the discussion, would have no difficulty in following it, shall we?" The dominee was quiet happy at the suggestion. CHAPTER TWO Eight Irrefutable Arguments Father and Mother (1) "Moses had a father and a mother. Muhummed also had a father and a mother. But Jesus had only a mother, and no human father. Is this true?" He said: "Yes." I said: "DAAROM IS JESUS NIE SOOS MOSES NIE, MAAR MUHUMMED IS SOOS MOSES!" Meaning: "Therefore Jesus is not like Moses, but Muhummed is like Moses!" (By now the reader will realise that I was using the Afrikaans language only for practice purposes. I shall discontinue its use in this narration). Miraculous Birth (2) "Moses and Muhummed were born in the normal, natural course, i.e. the physical association of man and woman; but Jesus was created by a special miracle. You will recall that we are told in the Gospel of St. Matthew 1:18 ".....BEFORE THEY CAME TOGETHER,(Joseph the Carpenter and Mary) SHE WAS FOUND WITH CHILD BY THE HOLY GHOST." And St.Luke tells us that when the good news of the birth of a holy son was announced to her, Mary reasoned: "...HOW SHALL THIS BE, SEEING I KNOW NOT A MAN? AND THE ANGEL ANSWERED AND SAID UNTO HER, THE HOLY GHOST SHALL COME UPON THEE, AND THE POWER OF THE HIGHEST SHALL OVERSHADOW THEE..." (Luke 1:35). The Holy Qur'an confirms the miraculous birth of Jesus, in nobler and sublimer terms. In answer to her logical question: " O MY LORD! HOW SHALL I HAVE A SON WHEN NO MAN HATH TOUCHED ME? " The angel says in reply: "EVEN SO: ALLAH CREATETH WHAT HE WILLETH: WHEN HE HATH DECREED A PLAN, HE BUT SAITH TO IT "BE," AND IT IS " 1 (HOLY QUR'AN, 3:47). It is not necessary for God to plant a seed in man or animal. He merely wills it and it comes into being. This is the Muslim conception of the of birth of Jesus. (When I compared the Qur'an and the Biblical versions of the birth of Jesus to the head of the Bible Society in our largest City, and when I enquired: "Which version would you prefer to give your daughter, the QUR'ANIC version or the BIBLICAL version?" The man bowed his head and answered: "The Qur'anic.") In short, I said to the dominee: "Is it true that Jesus was born miraculously as against the natural birth of Moses and Muhummed?" He replied proudly: "Yes!" I said: "Therefore Jesus is not like Moses, but Muhummed is like Moses. And God says to Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy 18:18 "LIKE UNTO THEE" (Like You, Like Moses) and Muhummed is like Moses." 1. Please open the Holy Qur'an 3:42 and 19:16 where the birth of Jesus is spoken about; read it with the commentry, note the high position which Jesus and his mother occupy in Islam. Marriage Ties (3) "Moses and Muhummed married and begat children, but Jesus remained a bachelor all his life. Is this true?" The dominee said: "Yes." I said: "Therefore Jesus is not like Moses, but Muhummed is like Moses." Jesus Rejected by his People (4) "Moses and Muhummed were accepted as prophets by their people in their very lifetime. No doubt the Jews gave endless trouble to Moses and they murmured in the wilderness, but as a nation, they acknowledged that Moses was a Messenger of God sent to them. The Arabs too made Muhummed's life impossible. He suffered very badly at their hands. After 13 years of preaching in Mecca, he had to emigrate from the city of his birth. But before his demise, the Arab nation as a whole accepted him as the Messenger of Allah. But according to the Bible: 'He (Jesus) CAME UNTO HIS OWN, BUT HIS OWN RECEIVED HIM NOT.' (John 1:11). And even today, after two thousand years, his people- the Jews, as a whole, have rejected him. Is this true?" The dominee said: "Yes." I said: "THEREFORE JESUS IS NOT LIKE MOSES, BUT MUHUMMED IS LIKE MOSES." "Other-Wordly" Kingdom (5) "Moses and Muhummed were prophets as well as kings. A prophet means a man who receives Divine Revelation for the Guidance of Man and this Guidance he conveys to God's creatures as received without any addition or deletion. A king is a person who has the power of life and death over his people. It is immaterial whether the person wears a crown or not, or whether he was ever addressed as king or monarch: if the man has the prerogative of inflicting capital punishment - HE IS A KING. Moses possessed such a power. Do you remember the Israelite who was found picking up firewood on Sabbath Day, and Moses had him stoned to death? (Numbers- 15:13). There are other crimes also mentioned in the Bible for which capital punishment was inflicted on the Jews at the behest of Moses. Muhummed too, had the power of life and death over his people. There are instances in the Bible of persons who were given gift of prophecy only, but they were not in a position to implement their directives. Some of these holy men of God who were helpless in the face of stubborn rejection of their message, were the prophets lot, Jonah, Daniel, Ezra, and John the Baptist. They could only deliver the message, but could not enforce the Law. The Holy Prophet Jesus (Peace p.b.u.h) also belonged to this category. The Christian Gospel clearly confirms this: when Jesus was dragged before the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, Charged for sedition, Jesus made a convincing point in his defence to refute the false charge: JESUS ANSWERED, "MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD': IF MY KINGDOM WERE OF THIS WORLD, THEN WOULD MY SERVANTS FIGHT, THAT I SHOULD NOT BE DELIVERED TO THE JEWS; BUT NOW IS MY KINGDOM NOT FROM HENCE" (John 18:36) This convinced Pilate (A Pagan) that though Jesus might not be in full possession of his mental faculty, he did not strike him as being a danger to his rule. Jesus claimed a spiritual Kingdom only; in other words he only claimed to be a Prophet. Is this true?" The dominee answered: "Yes." I said: "Therefore Jesus is not like Moses but Muhummed is like Moses." No New Laws (6) "Moses and Muhummed brought new laws and new regulations for their people. Moses not only gave the Ten Commandments to the Israelites, but a very comprehensive ceremonial law for the guidance of his people. Muhummed comes to a people steeped in barbarism and ignorance. They married their step-mothers; they buried their daughters alive; drunkenness, adultery, idolatry, and gambling were the order of the day. Gibbon describe the Arabs before Islam in his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", THE HUMAN BRUTE, ALMOST WITHOUT SENSE, IS POORLY DISTINGUISHED FROM THE REST OF THE ANIMAL CREATION.' There was hardly anything to distinguish between the "man" and the "animal" of the time; they were animals in human form. "From this abject barbarism, Muhummed elevated them, in the words of Thomas Carlysle, "into torch-bearers of light and learning.' 'TO THE ARAB NATION IT WAS AS A BIRTH FROM DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. ARABIA FIRST BECAME ALIVE BY MEANS OF IT. A POOR SHEPHERD PEOPLE, ROAMING UNNOTICED IN ITS DESERTS SINCE THE CREATION OF THE WORLD. SEE, THE UNNOTICED BECOMES WORLD NOTABLE, THE SMALL HAS GROWN WORLD-GREAT. WITHIN ONE CENTURY AFTERWARDS ARABIA WAS AT GRANADA ON ONE HAND AND AT DELHI ON THE OTHER. GLANCING IN VALOUR AND SPLENDOUR, AND THE LIGHT OF GENIUS, ARABIA SHINES OVER A GREAT SECTION OF THE WORLD. ..." The fact is that Muhummed gave his people a Law and Order they never had before. As regards Jesus, when the Jews felt suspicious of him that he might be an impostor with designs to pervert their teachings, Jesus took pains to assure them that he had not come with a new religion - no new laws and no new regulations. I quote his own words: 'THINK NOT THAT I AM COME TO DESTROY THE LAW, OR THE PROPHETS: I AM NOT COME TO DESTROY, BUT TO FULFIL. FOR VERILY I SAY UNTO YOU, TILL HEAVEN AND EARTH PASS, ONE JOT OR ONE TITLE SHALL IN NO WISE PASS FROM THE LAW, TILL ALL BE FULFILLED.'(Mathew 5:17-18). In other words he had not come with any new laws or regulation he came only to fulfil the old law. This what he gave the Jews to understand- unless he was speaking with the tongue in his cheek trying to bluff the Jews into accepting him as a man of God and by subterfuge trying to ram a new religion down their throats. No! This Messenger of God would never resort to such fo ul means to subvert the Religion of God. He himself fulfilled the laws. He observed the commandments of Moses, and he respected the Sabbath. At no time did a single Jew point a finger at him to say, 'why don't you fast' or 'why don't you wash your hands before you break bread',which charges they always levied against his disciples, but never against Jesus. This is because as a good Jew he honoured the laws of the prophets who preceded him. In short, he had created no new religion and had brought no new law like Moses and Muhummed. Is this true?" I asked the dominee, and he answered: "Yes." I said: "Therefore, Jesus is not like Moses but Muhummed is like Moses." How they Departed (7) "Both Moses and Muhummed died natural deaths, but according to Christianity, Jesus was violently killed on the cross.1 Is this true?" The dominee said: "Yes." I averred: "Therefore Jesus is not like Moses but Muhummed is like Moses." Heavenly Abode (8) "Moses and Muhummed both lie buried in earth, but according to you, Jesus in heaven. Is this true?" The dominee agreed. I said: "Therefore Jesus is not like Moses but Muhummed is like Moses." 1. For a full exposition of this topic, see "CRUCIFIXION OR CRUCI-FICTION?". CHAPTER THREE Further Proofs Ishmael The First Born Since the dominee was helplessly agreeing with every point, I said, "Dominee, so far what I have done is to prove only one point out of the whole prophecy- that is proving the phrase 'LIKE UNTO THEE' - 'Like You' - 'Like Moses'. The Prophecy is much more than this single phrase which reads as follows : "I WILL RAISE THEM UP A PROPHET FROM AMONG THEIR BRETHREN LIKE UNTO THEE......." The emphasis is on the words- "From among their brethren." Moses and his people, the Jews, are here addressed as a racial entity, and as such their 'brethren' would undoubtedly be the Arabs. You see, the Holy Bible speaks of Abraham as the "Friend of God". Abraham had two wives - Sarah and Hagar. Hagar bore Abraham a son - HIS FIRST-BORN- '......And Abraham1 called HIS SON'S name, which Hagar bare Ishmael.' (Genesis 16:15). 'And Abraham took Ishmael HIS SON......" (Genesis 17:23). 'And Ishmael HIS SON was thirteen years old, when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin.'(Genesis 17:25). Up to the age of THIRTEEN Ishmael was the ONLY son and seed of Abraham, when the covenant was ratified between God and Abraham. God grants Abraham another son through Sarah, named Isaac, who was very much the junior to his brother Ishmael. 1. According to the Bible, Abraham's name was Abram before it was changed by God to Abraham. Arabs and Jews If Ishmael and Isaac are the sons of the same father Abraham, then they are brothers. And so the children of the one are the BRETHREN of the children of the other. The children of Isaac are the Jews and the Children of Ishmael are the Arabs - so they are BRETHREN to one another. The Bible affirms, 'AND HE (ISHMAEL) SHALL DWELL IN THE PRESENCE OF ALL HIS BRETHREN.' (Genesis 16:12). 'AND HE (ISHMAEL) DIED IN THE PRESENCE OF ALL HIS BRETHREN.(Genesis 25:18). The children of Isaac are the brethren of the Ishmaelites. In like manner Muhummed is from among the brethren of the Israelites because he was a descendant of Ishmael the son of Abraham. This exactly as the prophecy has it- 'FROM AMONG THEIR BRETHREN'.(Deut.18:18). There the prophecy distinctly mentions that the coming prophet who would be like Moses, must arise NOT from the 'children of Israel' or from 'among themselves', but from among their brethren. MUHUMMED THEREFORE WAS FROM AMONG THEIR BRETHREN! Words in the Mouth "The prophecy proceeds further:'.......AND I WILL PUT MY WORDS INTO HIS MOUTH.......' What does it mean when it is said 'I will put my words in your mouth'? You see, when I asked you (the dominee) to open Deuteronomy chapter 18, verse 18, at the beginning, and if I had asked you to read, and if you had read: would I be putting my words into your mouth?" The dominee answered: "No." "But," I continued: "If I were to teach you a language like Arabic about which you have no knowledge, and if I asked you to read or repeat after me what I utter i.e. ( I read them in Arabic ) Would I not be putting these unheard words of a foreign tongue which you utter, into your mouth?" The dominee agreed that it was indeed so. In an identical manner, I said, the words of the Holy Qur'an, the Revelation vouchsafed by the Almighty God to Muhummed, were revealed. History tells us that Muhummed was forty years of age. He was in a cave some three miles north of the City of Mecca. It was the 27th night of the Muslim month of Ramadaan. In the cave the Archangel Gabriel commands him in his mother tongue: 'IQRA' which means READ! or PROCLAIM! or RECITE! Muhummed is terrified and in his bewilderment replies " MA ANA BEQARA which means I AM NOT LEARNED! The angel commands him a second time with the same result. For the third time the angel continues. Now Muhummed, grasps, that what was required of him was to repeat! to rehearse! And he repeats the words as they were put into his mouth: These are the first five verses which were revealed to Muhummed which now occupy the beginning of the 96th chapter of the Holy Qur'an. The Faithful Witness Immediately the angel had departed, Muhummed rushed to his home. Terrified and sweating all over he asked his beloved wife Khadija to 'cover him up!' He lay down, and she watched by him. When he had regained his composure, he explained to her what he had seen and heard. She assured him of her faith in him and that Allah would not allow any terrible thing to happen to him. Are these the confessions of an impostor? Would impostors confess that when an angel of the Lord confronts them with a Message from on High, they get fear-stricken, terrified, and sweating all over, run home to their wives? Any critic can see that his reactions and confessions are that of an honest, sincere man, the man of Truth- 'AL-AMIN' - THE Honest, the Upright, the Truthful. During the next twenty-three years of his prophetic life, words were 'Put into his mouth', and he uttered them. They made an indeliable impression on his heart and mind: and as the volume of the Sacred Scripture (Holy Qur'an) grew, they were recorded on palm-leaf fibre, on skins and on the shoulder-blades of animals; and in the hearts of his devoted disciples. Before his demise these words were arranged according to his instructions i n the order in which we find them today in the Holy Qur'an. The words (revelation) were actually put into his mouth, exactly as foretold in the prophecy under discusion: 'AND I WILL PUT MY WORDS IN HIS MOUTH.' (Deut. 18:18). Un-lettered Prophet Muhummed's experience in the cave of Hira, later to be known as Jabal-un Noor - The Mountain of Light, and his response to that first Revelation is the exact fulfilment of another Biblical Prophecy. In the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 29, verse 12, we read: "AND THE BOOK" (al-Kitaab,al-Quran the 'Reading', the 'Recitation') "IS DELIVERED TO HIM THAT IS NOT LEARNED," (Isaiah 29:12) "THE UNLETTERED PROPHET " (Holy Qur'an 7:158) and the biblical verse continues : "SAYING, READ THIS, I PRAY THEE:" (the words "I pray thee", are not in the Hebrew manuscripts; compare with the Roman Catholics' "Douay Version and also with the "Revised Standard Versions") "AND HE SAITH, I AM NOT LEARNED." ("I am not learned." is the exact translation of the Arabic words MA ANA BEQARA which Muhummed uttered twice to the Holy Ghost - the Archangel Gabriel, when he was commanded : IQRAA "READ!"). Let me quote the verse in full without a break as found in the "King James Version," or the "Authorised version" as it is more popularly known "AND THE BOOK IS DELIVERED TO HIM THAT IS NOT LEARNED, SAYING, READ THIS I PRAY THEE: AND HE SAITH, I AM NOT LEARNED." (Isaiah 29:12). Important note : It may be noted that there were no Arabic Bibles in existence in the 6th Century of the Christian Era when Muhummed lived and preached! Besides, he was absolutely unlettered and unlearned. No human had ever taught him a word. His teacher was his Creator: Without any human learning, 'he put to shame the wisdom of the learned'." (12) There are today Arabic Bibles in Fourteen different scripts and dialects for the Arabs alone. See "The Gospels in many tongues". Grave Warning "See!" I told the dominee, "how the prophecies fit Muhummed like a glove. We do not have to stretch prophecies to justify their fulfilment in Muhummed." The dominee replied, "All your expositions sound very well, but they are of no real consequence, because we Christians have Jesus Christ the "incarnate" God, who has redeemed us from the Bondage of Sin!" I asked, "Not important?" God didn't think so! He went to a great deal of trouble to have His warnings recorded. God knew that there would be people like you who will flippantly, light-heartedly discount his words, so he followed up Deuteronomy 18:18 with a dire warning: "AND IT SHALL COME TO PASS, " (it is going to happen) "THAT WHOSOEVER WILL NOT HEARKEN UNTO MY WORDS WHICH HE SHALL SPEAK IN MY NAME, I WILL REQUIRE IT OF HIM. (in the Catholic Bible the ending words are - "I will be the revenger", I will take vengeance from him - I will take revenge!) "Does not this terrify you? God Almighty is threatening revenge! We shake in our pants if some hoodlum threathens us, yet you have no fear of God's warning?" "Miracle of Miracles! in the verse 19 of Deuteronomy chapter 18, we have a further fulfilment of the prophecy in Muhummed! Note the words-'.....MY WORDS WHICH HE SHALL SPEAK IN MY NAME," In whose name is Muhummed speaking?" I opened Yusuf Ali's translation of the Holy Qur'an, at chapter 114- 'Sura Nas', or Mankind - the last chapter, and showed him the formula at the head of the chapter: and the meaning: "IN THE NAME OF GOD, MOST GRACIOUS, MOST MERCIFUL." And the heading of chapter 113: and the meaning: "IN THE NAME OF GOD, MOST GRACIOUS, MOST MERCIFUL". And every chapter downwards 112 , 111, 110.......was the same formula and the same meaning on every page, because the end SURAS (chapters) are short and take about a page each. "And what did the prophecy demand?' ......WHICH HE SHALL SPEAK IN MY NAME and in whose name does Muhummed speak? 'IN THE NAME OF GOD, MOST GRACIOUS MOST MERCIFUL.' The Prophecy is being fulfilled in Muhummed to the letter "Every chapter of the Holy Qur'an except the 9th begin with the formula: IN THE NAME OF GOD, MOST GRACIOUS, MOST MERCIFUL.' The Muslim begins his every lawful act with the Holy formula. But the Christian begins: "In the name of the Father, son and holy ghost.'"1 Concerning Deuteronomy chapter eighteen, I have given you more than 15 reasons as to how this prophecy refers to Muhummed and NOT to Jesus. 1. The Christian theologians are ignorant of even the "name of God. Because "God" is not a name, and "Father" is also not a name. See "WHAT IS HIS NAME?". CHAPTER FOUR New Testament Also Confirms Baptist Contradicts Jesus In New Testament times, we find that the Jews were still expecting the fulfilment of the prophecy of 'ONE LIKE MOSES', refer John 1:19-25. When Jesus claimed to be the Messiah of the Jews, the Jews began to enquire as to where was Elias? The Jews had a parallel prophecy that before the coming of the Messiah, Elias must come first in his second coming. Jesus confirms this Jewish belief: ".......ELIAS TRULY SHALL FIRST COME, AND RESTORE ALL THINGS. BUT I SAY UNTO YOU, THAT ELIAS IS COME ALREADY, AND THEY KNEW HIM NOT,...THEN THE DISCIPLES UNDERSTOOD THAT HE SPAKE UNTO THEM OF JOHN THE BAPTIST." (Matthew 17:11-13). According to the New Testament the Jews were not the ones to swallow the words of any would-be Messiah. In their investigations they underwent intense difficulties in order to find their true Messiah. And this the Gospel of John confirms: "AND THIS IS THE RECORD OF JOHN,"(the Baptist) "WHEN THE JEWS SENT PRIESTS AND LEVITES FROM JERUSALEM TO ASK HIM, WHO ART THOU? AND HE CONFESSED AND DENIED NOT; BUT CONFESSED, I AM NOT THE CHRIST." (This was only natural because there can't be two Messiahs1 at the same time. If Jesus was the Christ then John couldn't be the Christ!) "AND THEY ASKED HIM, WHAT THEN? ART THOU ELIAS? AND HE SAITH, I AM NOT." (Here John the Baptist contradicts Jesus! Jesus says that John is "Elias" and John denies that he is what Jesus ascribes him to be. One of the TWO (Jesus or John), God forbid!, is definitely not speaking the TRUTH! On the testimony of Jesus himself, John the Baptist was the greatest of the Israelite prophets: "VERILY I SAY UNTO YOU, AMONG THEM THAT ARE BORN OF WOMEN THERE HAS NOT RISEN A GREATER THAN JOHN THE BAPTIST:... "(Matthew 11:11). We Muslims know John the Baptist as Hazrut YAHYAA Alai-his-salaam (peace be upon him). We revere him as a true prophet of Allah. The Holy Prophet Jesus known to us as Hazrut ISAA Alai-his-salaam (peace be upon him), is also esteemed as one of the mightiest messenger of the Almighty. How can we Muslims impute lies to either of them? We leave this problem between Jesus and John for the Christians to solve, for their "sacred scriptures" abound in discrepancies which they have been glossing over as the "dark sayings of Jesus"(15). We Muslims are really interested in the last questions posed to John the Baptist by the Jewish elite- "ART THOU THAT PROPHET? AND HE ANSWERED, NO." (John 1:21) 1. The Jews were expecting a single Messiah not two. 2. See the "TIMES" Magazine December 30th, 1974, article "How true is the Bible?" And also see "50,000 Errors in the Bible?" a reproduction from the Christian Magazine "AWAKE!" September 8, 1957. Three Questions! Please note that three different and distinct questions were posed to John the Baptist and to which he gave three emphatic "NO'S" as answers. To recapitulate:- 1) ART THOU THE CHRIST? 2) ART THOU ELIAS? 3) ART THOU THAT PROPHET? But the learned men of Christendom somehow only see two questions implied here. To make doubly clear that the Jews definitely had T-H-R-E-E separate prophecies in their minds when they were interrogating John the Baptist, let us read the remonstrance of the Jews in the verses following: "AND THEY ASKED HIM, AND SAID UNTO HIM, WHY BAPTIZEST THOU THEN, IF THOU BE a) NOT THAT CHRIST, b) NOR ELIAS, c) NEITHER THAT PROPHET?" (John 1:25) The Jews were waiting for the fulfilment of THREE distinct prophecies: One, the coming of CHRIST. Two the coming of ELIAS, and Three, the coming of THAT PROPHET. "That Prophet" If we look up any Bible which has a concordance or cross-references, the we will find in the marginal note where the words "the Prophet", or "that Prophet" occur in John 1:25, that these words refer to the prophecy of Deuteronomy 18:15 and 18. And that 'that prophet' - 'the prophet like Moses' - "LIKE UNTO THEE", we have proved through overwhelming evidence that he was MUHUMMED and not Jesus! We Muslims are not denying that Jesus was the "Messiah", which word is translated as "Christ".1 We are not contesting the "thousand and one prophecies" which the Christians claim abound in the Old Testament foretelling the coming of the Messiah. What we say is that Deuteronomy 18:18 does NOT refer to Jesus Christ but it is an explicit prophecy about the Holy Prophet MUHUMMED!" The dominee, very politely parted with me by saying that it was a very interesting discussion and he would like me very much to come one day and address his congregation on the subject. A decade and half has passed since then but I am still awaiting that privilege. I believe the dominee was sincere when he made the offer, but prejudices die hard and who would like to loose his sheep? 1. How the word Messiah was transmuted to Christ?. See "Christ in Islam" The Acid Test To the lambs of Christ I say, why not apply that acid test which the Master himself wanted you to apply to any would be claimant to prophethood? He had said: "BY THEIR FRUITS YE SHALL KNOW THEM. DO MEN GATHER GRAPES FROM THE THORNS, OR FIGS FROM THE THISTLES? EVERY GOOD TREE WILL BEAR GOOD FRUIT AND EVERY EVIL TREE WILL BEAR EVIL FRUIT....BY THEIR FRUITS YE SHALL KNOW THEM. (Matthew 7:16-20). Why are you afraid to apply this test to the teachings of Muhummed? You will find in the Last Testament of God - the Holy Qur'an - the true fulfilment of the teachings of Moses and Jesus which will bring to the world the much-needed peace and happiness. "IF A MAN LIKE MOHAMED WERE TO ASSUME THE DIC TATORSHIP OF THE MODERN WORLD, HE WOULD SUCCEED IN SOLVING ITS PROBLEMS THAT WOULD BRING IT THE MUCH NEEDED PEACE AND HAPPINESS." (George Bernard Shaw) The Greatest! The Weekly Newsmagazine "TIME" dated July 15, 1974, carried a selection of opinions by various historians, writers, military men, businessmen and others on the subject: "Who Were History's Great Leaders?" Some said that it was Hitler; others said - Gandhi, Buddha, Lincoln and the like. But Jules Masserman, a United States psychoanalyst put the standards straight by giving the correct criteria wherewith to judge. He said: "LEADERS MUST FULFIL THREE FUNCTIONS:- (1) Provide for the well-being of the led, (2) Provide a social organization in which people feel relatively secure and (3) Provide them with one set of beliefs." With the above three criteria he searches history and analyses - Hitler, Pasteur, Gaesar, Moses, Confucius and the lot, and ultimately concludes: "PEOPLE LIKE PASTEUR AND SALK ARE LEADERS IN THE FIRST SENSE. PEOPLE LIKE GANDHI AND CONFUCIUS, ON ONE HAND, AND ALEXANDER, CAESAR AND HITLER ON THE OTHER, ARE LEADERS IN THE SECOND AND PERHAPS THE THIRD SENSE. JESUS AND BUDDHA BELONG IN THE THIRD CATEGORY ALONE. PERHAPS THE GREATEST LEADER OF ALL TIMES WAS MOHAMMED, WHO COMBINED ALL THREE FUNCTIONS. To a lesser degree, MOSES DID THE SAME." According to the objective standards set by the Professor of the Chicago University, whom I believe to be Jewish, - JESUS and BUDDHA are now - here in the picture of the "Great Leaders of Mankind", but by a queer coincidence groups Moses and Muhummed together thus adding further weight to the argument that JESUS is not like MOSES, but MUHUMMED is like MOSES: Deut.18:18 "LIKE UNTO THEE" - Like MOSES! Reverend James L. Dow in Collins Dictionary of the Bible gives further proof, that JESUS is not like MOSES, but MUHUMMED is like Moses: "AS A STATESMAN AND LAWGIVER MOSES IS THE CREATOR OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. HE FOUND A LOOSE CONGLOMERATION OF SEMITIC PEOPLE, NONE OF ...... *Also in "THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF RELIGION", Moses is looked upon in the different traditions. Under Moses in Islam; we read "MOSES IS HIGHLY REGARDED IN ISLAM AS THE GREAT PROPHET WHO FORETOLD THE COMING OF MUHAMMAD, HIS SUCCESSOR...THERE IS MUCH IN THE LIFE OF MUHAMMAD THAT IS IMPLICITLY REMINISCENT OF THE MOSES TRADITION. P121, THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF RELIGION, Mircea Eliade (EDITOR IN CHIEF) Volume 10, Macmillean Publishing Company In conclusion, I end with a quotation of a Christian Reverend the commentator of the Bible, followed by that of his Master: "THE ULTIMATE CRITERION OF A TRUE PROPHET IS THE MORAL CHARACTER OF HIS TEACHING." (Prof. Dummelow.) "BY THEIR FRUITS YE SHALL KNOW THEM." (Jesus Christ) COME LET US REASON TOGETHER SAY:"O PEOPLE OF THE BOOK! COME TO COMMON TERMS AS BETWEEN US AND YOU: THAT WE WORSHIP NONE BUT GOD; THAT WE ASSOCIATE NO PARTNERS WITH HIM; THAT WE ERECT NOT, FROM AMONG OURSELVES, LORDS AND PATRONS OTHER THAN GOD." IF THEN THEY TURN BACK, SAY:"BEAR WITNESS THAT WE (AT LEAST) ARE MUSLIMS (BOWING TO GOD'S WILL)." (SURA AL-I-'IMRAN) Holy Qur'an 3:64 "PEOPLE OF THE BOOK" is the respectful title given to the Jews and the Christians in the Holy Qur'an. The Muslims is here commanded to invite - "O People of the Book!" - O Learned People! O People who claim to be the recipients of Divine Revelation, of a Holy Scripture; let us gather together onto a common platform - "that we worship none but God", because none but God is worthy of worship, not because "THE LORD THY GOD IS A JEALOUS GOD VISITING THE INIQUITY OF THE FATHERS UPON THE CHILDREN UNTO THE THIRD AND FOURTH GENERATION OF THEM THAT HATE ME." (Exodus 20:25). But because He is our Lord and Cherisher, our Sustainer and Evolver, worthy of all praise, prayer and devotion. In the abstract the Jews and the Christians would agree to all the three propositions contained in this Qur'anic verse. In practice they fail. Apart from doctrinal lapses from the unity of the One True God, (ALLAH Subhanahu wa ta-ala) there is the question of a consecrated Priesthood (among the Jews it was hereditary also), as if a mere human being - Cohen or Pope, or Priest, or Brahman, - could claim superiority apart from his learning and the purity of his life, or could stand between man and God in some special sense. ISLAM DOES NOT RECOGNISE PRIESTHOOD! The Creed of Islam is given to us here in a nutshell from Holy Qur'an: Say ye: "We believe in Allah, And the revelation given to us, And to Abraham, Isma'il, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, And that given to Moses and Jesus And that given to (all) Prophets from their Lord: We make no difference Between one and another of them: And we bow to Allah (in Islam)." (SURA BAQARA) Holy Qur'an 2:136. The Muslim position is clear. The Muslim does not claim to have a religion peculiar to himself. Islam is not a sect or an ethnic religion. In its view all Religion is one, for the Truth is one. IT WAS THE SAME RELIGION PREACHED BY ALL THE EARLIER PROPHETS. (Holy Qur'an 42:13). It was the truth taught by all the inspired Books. In essence it amounts to a consciousness of the Will and Plan of God and a joyful submission to that Will and Plan. IF ANYONE WANTS A RELIGION OTHER THAN THAT, HE IS FALSE TO HIS OWN NATURE, AS HE IS FALSE TO GOD'S WILL AND PLAN. Such a one cannot expect guidance, for he has deliberately renounced guidance.
Is anti-Americanism a new phenomenon. Or did the WOT just bring out the haters that were always there? I have read much on the issue and I am convinced that the people who hate America today also hated America 20 years ago. Obviously younger generations will learn their hatred of America from their parents, teachers and the spiteful media. - I posted an interesting article on the subject below. The Falseness of Anti-Americanism Pollsters report rising anti-Americanism worldwide. The United States, they imply, squandered global sympathy after the September 11 terrorist attacks through its arrogant unilateralism. In truth, there was never any sympathy to squander. Anti-Americanism was already entrenched in the world's psyche—a backlash against a nation that comes bearing modernism to those who want it but who also fear and despise it. By Fouad Ajami Want to Know More? Suggested Readings “America is everywhere," Italian novelist Ignazio Silone once observed. It is in Karachi and Paris, in Jakarta and Brussels. An idea of it, a fantasy of it, hovers over distant lands. And everywhere there is also an obligatory anti-Americanism, a cover and an apology for the spell the United States casts over distant peoples and places. In the burning grounds of the Muslim world and on its periphery, U.S. embassies and their fate in recent years bear witness to a duality of the United States as Satan and redeemer. The embassies targeted by the masters of terror and by the diehards are besieged by visa-seekers dreaming of the golden, seductive country. If only the crowd in Tehran offering its tired rhythmic chant "marg bar amrika" ("death to America") really meant it! It is of visas and green cards and houses with lawns and of the glamorous world of Los Angeles, far away from the mullahs and their cultural tyranny, that the crowd really dreams. The frenzy with which radical Islamists battle against deportation orders from U.S. soil— dreading the prospect of returning to Amman and Beirut and Cairo— reveals the lie of anti-Americanism that blows through Muslim lands. The world rails against the United States, yet embraces its protection, its gossip, and its hipness. Tune into a talk show on the stridently anti-American satellite channel Al-Jazeera, and you'll behold a parody of American ways and techniques unfolding on the television screen. That reporter in the flak jacket, irreverent and cool against the Kabul or Baghdad background, borrows a form perfected in the country whose sins and follies that reporter has come to chronicle. In Doha, Qatar, Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, arguably Sunni Islam's most influential cleric, at Omar ibn al-Khattab Mosque, a short distance away from the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, delivers a khutba, a Friday sermon. The date is June 13, 2003. The cleric's big theme of the day is the arrogance of the United States and the cruelty of the war it unleashed on Iraq. This cleric, Egyptian born, political to his fingertips, and in full mastery of his craft and of the sensibility of his followers, is particularly agitated in his sermon. Surgery and a period of recovery have kept him away from his pulpit for three months, during which time there has been a big war in the Arab world that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq with stunning speed and effectiveness. The United States was "acting like a god on earth," al-Qaradawi told the faithful. In Iraq, the United States had appointed itself judge and jury. The invading power may have used the language of liberation and enlightenment, but this invasion of Iraq was a 21st-century version of what had befallen Baghdad in the middle years of the 13th century, in 1258 to be exact, when Baghdad, the city of learning and culture, was sacked by the Mongols. The preacher had his themes, but a great deal of the United States had gone into the preacher's art: Consider his Web site, Qaradawi.net, where the faithful can click and read his fatwas (religious edicts)— the Arabic interwoven with html text— about all matters of modern life, from living in non-Islamic lands to the permissibility of buying houses on mortgage to the follies of Arab rulers who have surrendered to U.S. power. Or what about his way with television? He is a star of the medium, and Al-Jazeera carried an immensely popular program of his. That art form owes a debt, no doubt, to the American "televangelists," as nothing in the sheik's traditional education at Al Azhar University in Cairo prepared him for this wired, portable religion. And then there are the preacher's children: One of his daughters had made her way to the University of Texas where she received a master's degree in biology, a son had earned a Ph.D. from the University of Central Florida in Orlando, and yet another son had embarked on that quintessential American degree, an MBA at the American University in Cairo. Al-Qaradawi embodies anti-Americanism as the flip side of Americanization. A NEW ORTHODOXY Of late, pollsters have come bearing news and numbers of anti-Americanism the world over. The reports are one dimensional and filled with panic. This past June, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press published a survey of public opinion in 20 countries and the Palestinian territories that indicated a growing animus toward the United States. In the same month, the BBC came forth with a similar survey that included 10 countries and the United States. On the surface of it, anti-Americanism is a river overflowing its banks. In Indonesia, the United States is deemed more dangerous than al Qaeda. In Jordan, Russia, South Korea, and Brazil, the United States is thought to be more dangerous than Iran, the "rogue state" of the mullahs. There is no need to go so far away from home only to count the cats in Zanzibar. These responses to the United States are neither surprising nor profound. The pollsters, and those who have been brandishing their findings, see in these results some verdict on the United States itself— and on the performance abroad of the Bush presidency— but the findings could be read as a crude, admittedly limited, measure of the foul temper in some unsettled places. The pollsters have flaunted spreadsheets to legitimize a popular legend: It is not Americans that people abroad hate, but the United States! Yet it was Americans who fell to terrorism on September 11, 2001, and it is of Americans and their deeds, and the kind of social and political order they maintain, that sordid tales are told in Karachi and Athens and Cairo and Paris. You can't profess kindness toward Americans while attributing the darkest of motives to their homeland. The Pew pollsters ignored Greece, where hatred of the United States is now a defining feature of political life. The United States offended Greece by rescuing Bosnians and Kosovars. Then, the same Greeks who hailed the Serbian conquest of Srebrenica in 1995 and the mass slaughter of the Muslims there were quick to summon up outrage over the U.S. military campaign in Iraq. In one Greek public opinion survey, Americans were ranked among Albanians, Gypsies, and Turks as the most despised peoples. Takis Michas, a courageous Greek writer with an eye for his country's temperament, traces this new anti-Americanism to the Orthodox Church itself. A narrative of virtuous and embattled solitude and alienation from Western Christendom has always been integral to the Greek psyche; a fusion of church and nation is natural to the Greek worldview. In the 1990s, the Yugoslav wars gave this sentiment a free run. The church sanctioned and fed the belief that the United States was Satan, bent on destroying the "True Faith," Michas explains, and shoring up Turkey and the Muslims in the Balkans. A neo-Orthodox ideology took hold, slicing through faith and simplifying history. Where the Balkan churches— be they the Bulgars or the Serbs— had been formed in rebellion against the hegemony of the Greek priesthood, the new history made a fetish of the fidelity of Greece to its Orthodox "brethren." Greek paramilitary units fought alongside Bosnian Serbs as part of the Drina Corps under the command of indicted war criminal Gen. Ratko Mladic. The Greek flag was hoisted over the ruins of Srebenica's Orthodox church when the doomed city fell. Serbian war crimes elicited no sense of outrage in Greece; quite to the contrary, sympathy for Serbia and the identification with its war aims and methods were limitless. Beyond the Yugoslav wars, the neo-Orthodox worldview sanctified the ethnonationalism of Greece, spinning a narrative of Hellenic persecution at the hands of the United States as the standard-bearer of the West. Greece is part of NATO and of the European Union (EU), but an old schism— that of Eastern Orthodoxy's claim against the Latin world— has greater power and a deeper resonance. In the banal narrative of Greek anti-Americanism, this animosity emerges from U.S. support for the junta that reigned over the country from 1967 to 1974. This deeper fury enables the aggrieved to glide over the role the United States played in the defense and rehabilitation of Greece after World War II. Furthermore, it enables them to overlook the lifeline that migration offered to untold numbers of Greeks who are among the United States' most prosperous communities. Greece loves the idea of its "Westernness"— a place and a culture where the West ends, and some other alien world (Islam) begins. But the political culture of religious nationalism has isolated Greece from the wider currents of Western liberalism. What little modern veneer is used to dress up Greece's anti-Americanism is a pretense. The malady here is, paradoxically, a Greek variant of what plays out in the world of Islam: a belligerent political culture sharpening faith as a political weapon, an abdication of political responsibility for one's own world, and a search for foreign "devils." Lest they be trumped by their hated Greek rivals, the Turks now give voice to the same anti-Americanism. It is a peculiar sentiment among the Turks, given their pragmatism. They are not prone to the cluster of grievances that empower anti-Americanism in France or among the intelligentsia of the developing world. In the 1920s, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk gave Turkey a dream of modernity and self-help by pointing his country westward, distancing it from the Arab-Muslim lands to its south and east. But the secular, modernist dream in Turkey has fractured, and oddly, anti-Americanism blows through the cracks from the Arab lands and from Brussels and Berlin. The fury of the Turkish protests against the United States in the months prior to the war in Iraq exhibited a pathology all its own. It was, at times, nature imitating art: The protesters in the streets burned American flags in the apparent hope that Europeans (real Europeans, that is) would finally take Turkey and the Turks into the fold. The U.S. presence had been benign in Turkish lands, and Americans had been Turkey's staunchest advocates for coveted membership in the EU. But suddenly this relationship that served Turkey so well was no longer good enough. As the "soft" Islamists (there is no such thing, we ought to understand by now) revolted against Pax Americana, the secularists averted their gaze and let stand this new anti-Americanism. The pollsters calling on the Turks found a people in distress, their economy on the ropes, and their polity in an unfamiliar world beyond the simple certainties of Kemalism, yet without new political tools and compass. No dosage of anti-Americanism, the Turks will soon realize, will take Turkey past the gatekeepers of Europe. WE WERE ALL AMERICANS The introduction of the Pew report sets the tone for the entire study. The war in Iraq, it argues,"has widened the rift between Americans and Western Europeans" and "further inflamed the Muslim world." The implications are clear: The United States was better off before Bush's "unilateralism." The United States, in its hubris, summoned up this anti-Americanism. Those are the political usages of this new survey. But these sentiments have long prevailed in Jordan, Egypt, and France. During the 1990s, no one said good things about the United States in Egypt. It was then that the Islamist children of Egypt took to the road, to Hamburg and Kandahar, to hatch a horrific conspiracy against the United States. And it was in the 1990s, during the fabled stock market run, when the prophets of globalization preached the triumph of the U.S. economic model over the protected versions of the market in places such as France, when anti-Americanism became the uncontested ideology of French public life. Americans were barbarous, a threat to French cuisine and their beloved language. U.S. pension funds were acquiring their assets and Wall Street speculators were raiding their savings. The United States incarcerated far too many people and executed too many criminals. All these views thrived during a decade when Americans are now told they were loved and uncontested on foreign shores. Much has been made of the sympathy that the French expressed for the United States immediately after the September 11 attacks, as embodied by the famous editorial of Le Monde's publisher Jean-Marie Colombani, "Nous Sommes Tous Américains" ("We are all Americans"). And much has been made of the speed with which the United States presumably squandered that sympathy in the months that followed. But even Colombani's column, written on so searing a day, was not the unalloyed message of sympathy suggested by the title. Even on that very day, Colombani wrote of the United States reaping the whirlwind of its "cynicism"; he recycled the hackneyed charge that Osama bin Laden had been created and nurtured by U.S. intelligence agencies. Colombani quickly retracted what little sympathy he had expressed when, in December of 2001, he was back with an open letter to "our American friends" and soon thereafter with a short book, Tous Américains? le monde après le 11 septembre 2001 (All Americans? The World After September 11, 2001). By now the sympathy had drained, and the tone was one of belligerent judgment and disapproval. There was nothing to admire in Colombani's United States, which had run roughshod in the world and had been indifferent to the rule of law. Colombani described the U.S. republic as a fundamentalist Christian enterprise, its magistrates too deeply attached to the death penalty, its police cruel to its black population. A republic of this sort could not in good conscience undertake a campaign against Islamism. One can't, Colombani writes, battle the Taliban while trying to introduce prayers in one's own schools; one can't strive to reform Saudi Arabia while refusing to teach Darwinism in the schools of the Bible Belt; and one can't denounce the demands of the sharia (Islamic law) while refusing to outlaw the death penalty. Doubtless, he adds, the United States can't do battle with the Taliban before doing battle against the bigotry that ravages the depths of the United States itself. The United States had not squandered Colombani's sympathy; he never had that sympathy in the first place. Colombani was hardly alone in the French intellectual class in his enmity toward the United States. On November 3, 2001, in Le Monde, the writer and pundit Jean Baudrillard permitted himself a thought of stunning cynicism. He saw the perpetrators of September 11 acting out his own dreams and the dreams of others like him. He gave those attacks a sort of universal warrant: "How we have dreamt of this event," he wrote, "how all the world without exception dreamt of this event, for no one can avoid dreaming of the destruction of a power that has become hegemonic . . . . It is they who acted, but we who wanted the deed." Casting caution and false sympathy aside, Baudrillard saw the terrible attacks on the United States as an "object of desire." The terrorists had been able to draw on a "deep complicity," knowing perfectly well that they were acting out the hidden yearnings of others oppressed by the United States' order and power. To him, morality of the U.S. variety is a sham, and the terrorism directed against it is a legitimate response to the inequities of "globalization." In his country's intellectual landscape, Baudrillard was no loner. A struggle had raged throughout the 1990s, pitting U.S.-led globalization (with its low government expenditures, a "cheap" and merciless Wall Street-Treasury Department axis keen on greater discipline in the market, and relatively long working hours on the part of labor) against France's protectionist political economy. The primacy the United States assigned to liberty waged a pitched battle against the French commitment to equity. To maintain France's sympathy, and that of Le Monde, the United States would have had to turn the other cheek to the murderers of al Qaeda, spare the Taliban, and engage the Muslim world in some high civilizational dialogue. But who needs high approval ratings in Marseille? Envy of U.S. power, and of the United States' universalism, is the ruling passion of French intellectual life. It is not "mostly Bush" that turned France against the United States. The former Socialist foreign minister, Hubert Védrine, was given to the same anti-Americanism that moves his successor, the bombastic and vain Dominique de Villepin. It was Védrine, it should be recalled, who in the late 1990s had dubbed the United States a "hyperpower." He had done so before the war on terrorism, before the war on Iraq. He had done it against the background of an international order more concerned with economics and markets than with military power. In contrast to his successor, Védrine at least had the honesty to acknowledge that there was nothing unusual about the way the United States wielded its power abroad, or about France's response to that primacy. France, too, he observed, might have been equally overbearing if it possessed the United States' weight and assets. His successor gave France's resentment highly moral claims. Villepin appeared evasive, at one point, on whether he wished to see a U.S. or an Iraqi victory in the standoff between Saddam Hussein's regime and the United States. Anti-Americanism indulges France's fantasy of past greatness and splendor and gives France's unwanted Muslim children a claim on the political life of a country that knows not what to do with them. THE BURDEN OF MODERNITY To come bearing modernism to those who want it but who rail against it at the same time, to represent and embody so much of what the world yearns for and fears— that is the American burden. The United States lends itself to contradictory interpretations. To the Europeans, and to the French in particular, who are enamored of their laïcisme (secularism), the United States is unduly religious, almost embarrassingly so, its culture suffused with sacred symbolism. In the Islamic world, the burden is precisely the opposite: There, the United States scandalizes the devout, its message represents nothing short of an affront to the pious and a temptation to the gullible and the impressionable young. According to the June BBC survey, 78 percent of French polled identified the United States as a "religious" country, while only 10 percent of Jordanians endowed it with that label. Religious to the secularists, faithless to the devout— such is the way the United States is seen in foreign lands. So many populations have the United States under their skin. Their rage is oddly derived from that very same attraction. Consider the Saudi realm, a place where anti-Americanism is fierce. The United States helped invent the modern Saudi world. The Arabian American Oil Company— for all practical purposes a state within a state— pulled the desert enclave out of its insularity, gave it skills, and ushered it into the 20th century. Deep inside the anti-Americanism of today's Saudi Arabia, an observer can easily discern the dependence of the Saudi elite on their U.S. connection. It is in the image of the United States' suburbs and urban sprawl that Saudi cities are designed. It is on the campuses of Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford that the ruling elite are formed and educated. After September 11, 2001, the Saudi elite panicked that their ties to the United States might be shattered and that their world would be consigned to what they have at home. Fragments of the United States have been eagerly embraced by an influential segment of Saudi society. For many, the United States was what they encountered when they were free from home and family and age-old prohibitions. Today, an outing in Riyadh is less a journey to the desert than to the mall and to Starbucks. An academic in Riyadh, in the midst of an anti-American tirade about all policies American, was keen to let me know that his young son, born in the United States, had suddenly declared he no longer wanted to patronize McDonald's because of the United States' support of Israel. The message was plaintive and unpersuasive; the resolve behind that "boycott" was sure to crack. A culture that casts so long a shadow is fated to be emulated and resented at the same time. The United States is destined to be in the politics— and imagination— of strangers even when the country (accurately) believes it is not implicated in the affairs of other lands. In a hauntingly astute set of remarks made to the New Yorker in the days that followed the terrorism of September 11, the Egyptian playwright Ali Salem— a free spirit at odds with the intellectual class in his country and a maverick who journeyed to Israel and wrote of his time there and of his acceptance of that country— went to the heart of the anti-American phenomenon. He was thinking of his own country's reaction to the United States, no doubt, but what he says clearly goes beyond Egypt: People say that Americans are arrogant, but it's not true. Americans enjoy life and they are proud of their lives, and they are boastful of their wonderful inventions that have made life so much easier and more convenient. It's very difficult to understand the machinery of hatred, because you wind up resorting to logic, but trying to understand this with logic is like measuring distance in kilograms….These are people who are envious. To them, life is an unbearable burden. Modernism is the only way out. But modernism is frightening. It means we have to compete. It means we can't explain everything away with conspiracy theories. Bernard Shaw said it best, you know. In the preface to 'St. Joan,' he said Joan of Arc was burned not for any reason except that she was talented. Talent gives rise to jealousy in the hearts of the untalented. This kind of envy cannot be attenuated. Jordanians, for instance, cannot be talked out of their anti-Americanism. In the BBC survey, 71 percent of Jordanians thought the United States was more dangerous to the world than al Qaeda. But Jordan has been the rare political and economic recipient of a U.S. free trade agreement, a privilege the United States shares only with a handful of nations. A new monarch, King Abdullah II, came to power, and the free trade agreement was an investment that Pax Americana made in his reign and in the moderation of his regime. But this bargain with the Hashemite dynasty has not swayed the intellectual class, nor has it made headway among the Jordanian masses. On Iraq and on matters Palestinian, for more than a generation now, Jordanians have not had a kind thing to say about the United States. In the scheme of Jordan's neighborhood, the realm is benign and forgiving, but the political life is restrictive and tight. When talking about the United States, Jordanians have often been talking to their rulers, expressing their dissatisfaction with the quality of the country's public life and economic performance. A pollster venturing to Jordan must understand the country's temper, hemmed in by poverty and overshadowed by more resourceful powers all around it: Iraq to the east, Israel to the west, and Syria and Saudi Arabia over the horizon. A sense of disinheritance has always hung over Jordan. The trinity of God, country, and king puts much of the political life of the land beyond scrutiny and discussion. The anti-Americanism emanates from, and merges with, this political condition. With modernism come the Jews. They have been its bearers and beneficiaries, and they have paid dearly for it. They have been taxed with cosmopolitanism: The historian Isaac Deutscher had it right when he said that other people have roots, but the Jews have legs. Today the Jews have a singular role in U.S. public life and culture, and anti-Americanism is tethered to anti-Semitism. In the Islamic world, and in some European circles as well, U.S. power is seen as the handmaiden of Jewish influence. Witness, for instance, the London-based Arab media's obsession with the presumed ascendancy of the neoconservatives— such as former chairman of the Defense Policy Board Richard Perle and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz— in the making of U.S. foreign policy. The neocons had been there for the rescue of the (Muslim) Bosnians and Kosovars, but the reactionaries in Muslim lands had not taken notice of that. Left to itself, the United States would be fair-minded, this Arab commentary maintains, and it would arrive at a balanced approach to the Arab-Islamic world. This narrative is nothing less than a modernized version of the worldview of that infamous forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. But it is put forth by men and women who insist on their oneness with the modern world. A century ago, in a short-story called "Youth," the great British author Joseph Conrad captured in his incomparable way the disturbance that is heard when a modern world pushes against older cultures and disturbs their peace. In the telling, Marlowe, Conrad's literary double and voice, speaks of the frenzy of coming upon and disturbing the East. "And then, before I could open my lips, the East spoke to me, but it was in a Western voice. A torrent of words was poured into the enigmatical, the fateful silence; outlandish, angry words mixed with words and even whole sentences of good English, less strange but even more surprising. The voice swore and cursed violently; it riddled the solemn peace of the bay by a volley of abuse. It began by calling me Pig . . . ." Today, the United States carries the disturbance of the modern to older places— to the east and to the intermediate zones in Europe. There is energy in the United States, and there is force. And there is resistance and resentment— and emulation— in older places affixed on the delicate balancing act of a younger United States not yet content to make its peace with traditional pains and limitations and tyrannies. That sensitive French interpreter of his country, Dominique Moïsi, recently told of a simple countryman of his who was wistful when Saddam Hussein's statue fell on April 9 in Baghdad's Firdos Square. France opposed this war, but this Frenchman expressed a sense of diminishment that his country had sat out this stirring story of political liberation. A society like France with a revolutionary history should have had a hand in toppling the tyranny in Baghdad, but it didn't. Instead, a cable attached to a U.S. tank had pulled down the statue, to the delirium of the crowd. The new history being made was a distinctly American (and British) creation. It was soldiers from Burlington, Vermont, and Linden, New Jersey, and Bon Aqua, Tennessee— I single out those towns because they are the hometowns of three soldiers who were killed in the Iraq war— who raced through the desert making this new history and paying for it. The United States need not worry about hearts and minds in foreign lands. If Germans wish to use anti-Americanism to absolve themselves and their parents of the great crimes of World War II, they will do it regardless of what the United States says and does. If Muslims truly believe that their long winter of decline is the fault of the United States, no campaign of public diplomacy shall deliver them from that incoherence. In the age of Pax Americana, it is written, fated, or maktoob (as the Arabs would say) that the plotters and preachers shall rail against the United States— in whole sentences of good American slang. Fouad Ajami is the Majid Khadduri professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report. http://www.travelbrochuregraphics.com/extra/the_falseness_of_antiamericanism.htm
The Beginning of the Call? Just save it ? read it ? The Beginning of the Call -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This chapter will present a brief account of the life of the Messenger of Allah (Allah's blessings and peace be upon him and the people of his household) from the time of his call until his migration to Medina. It will indicate the time when he was commanded to fight, and will present some of the signs and miracles which were wrought at his hands during that period. It consists of eight sections. The Beginning Of His Call 'Ali ibn Ibrahim [al-Qummi, who is one of our most respected traditionists, related that when the Prophet was thirty-seven years of age, a person used to come to him in his dreams, addressing him and saying: "O Apostle of Allah ! ", but he used to ignore this. After a long time had passed, and as he was among the hills grazing the sheep of his uncle Abu Talib, he saw and heard a person addressing him: "O Messenger of Allah ! " He asked: "Who are you?" "I am Gabriel", the person answered; "Allah has sent me to you so that He may take you for a messenger." The Messenger of Allah told Khadijah of what happened. Khadijah had already been informed of the accounts of the Jews and Bahira', and what Muhammad's mother Aminah had also recounted. Thus, she answered: "O Muhammad, I do hope that it is true!" The Prophet used to hide all this, until one day Gabriel came to him with heavenly water and said: "O Muhammad, rise and perform your ablutions for prayers! " Gabriel taught him the ablutions - washing the face and the two hands from the elbows down, rubbing the head and the two feet to the two heels. He also taught him prostration (sujud) and kneeling (ruku'). When the Prophet attained his fortieth year, Gabriel commanded him to perform the prayers and taught him their rites, except their prescribed times. The Messenger of Allah used to pray two rak`ahs every time he prayed. 'Ali ibn Abi Talib was very much attached to the Prophet, accompanying him wherever he went. One day he saw him praying. He asked: "O Abu 'l-Qasim, what is this that you are doing?" The Prophet answered: "It is the prayer which Allah commanded me to perform." He then called 'Ali to Islam; he accepted, and used to pray with him. Khadijah also entered into Islam. Thus at that time only the Messenger of Allah, 'Ali and Khadijah used to pray. After a few days, Abu Talib came in to see the Messenger of Allah, accompanied by Ja'far (the Prophet's cousin). He saw the Prophet and `Ali standing beside him in prayer. Abu Talib said to Ja'far, "Stand by the side of your cousin." As he stood at the other side of the Prophet, the Messenger of Allah stepped forward and stood in front of the two men (as prayer leader). Seeing them, Abu Talib recited the following verses: In truth, Ali and Ja`far are my trust, In times of hardship and sorrow. By Allah, I shall never abandon the Prophet, Nor would any of my sons of high birth abandon him - Do not abandon, but rather support your cousin, The son of my brother from my mother as well as my father. Al-Qummi related further that the Prophet used to trade for Khadijah before he married her. When he was working for her, she sent him with a caravan belonging to the people of Quraysh to Syria. He was accompanied by a servant of hers called Maysarah. They encamped one day beneath a hermitage belonging to one of the monks living in the area. The monk came down from his cell and looked intently at the Messenger of Allah. He then asked: "Who is this man?" The people answered: "He is the son of `Abdu'l-Muttalib." The monk retorted: "His father could not be alive." Then looking at his eyes and between his shoulders, he exclaimed: "This is the Prophet of the people! This is the Prophet sent with the sword!" When Maysarah returned, he told Khadijah what happened and what had convinced her to offer herself to the Prophet in marriage. Khadijah gained a thousand dinars from that caravan. One day the Prophet went into a market of the Arabs where he saw Zayd [ibn al-Harithah]. Zayd was a smart youth; the Prophet thus bought him for Khadijah. When, however, the Prophet married her, she gave him Zayd as a gift. When the Messenger of Allah received the call to Prophethood, and 'Ali accepted Islam, Zayd also became a Muslim after him. Thus `Ali, Ja'far, Zayd and Khadijah used to pray behind the Messenger of Allah. Ash-Shaykh Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn al-Hasan al-Bayhaqi reported in his book Dala'ilu'n-Nubuwwah on the authority of `Ali, who said: "We were with the Messenger of Allah in Mecca when he went out into its suburbs. He did not pass by a tree or mountain but that it met him with the greeting `Peace be upon you O Apostle of Allah.' " [31] It is reported that 'Ali said: "I remember when I used to go with the Prophet into the valley, how he did not pass by a stone or tree but that it exclaimed, `Peace be upon you O Apostle of Allah', while I stood and listened." A man called `Afif [al-Kindi] related that, "I was a merchant; I came to Mina one day during the hajj (pilgrimage) season. al-`Abbas ibn `Abdi'l-Muttalib was also a merchant. I therefore came to trade with him.. As we were thus occupied, a man came out of a tent to pray: He faced the Ka'bah, and soon a woman came out and likewise stood in prayer. A youth also came out to pray with them. I exclaimed, `O `Abbas, what is this religion? We do not know what this religion is.' He answered, `This is Muhammad ibn `Abdillah, who claims that Allah called him to be a messenger, and that the treasures of Kisra (Khusraw, the Sasanid Persian Emperor) and Qaysar (Caesar, the Byzantine Emperor) will be opened for him. This is his wife Khadijah, daughter of Khuwaylid, who has believed in him. The youth is his cousin 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, who also believed in him.' " `Afif then concluded: "Would that I had believed in him on that day so that I would have been the second man to follow him." Ibn Ishaq reported that when the Prophet came out of the tent he looked at the sky, and when he saw the sun had inclined, he rose up to pray. Ibn Ishaq also mentioned Khadijah's standing in prayer behind him. It is related on the authority of Mujahid ibn Jabr ( a well-known Qur'an interpreter and traditionist), who said: "Among the favors which Allah bestowed upon 'Ali ibn Abi Talib and the great good He willed for him, was this: The people of Quraysh suffered a great shortage of food. Abu Talib had many children. Thus the Messenger of Allah said one day to his uncle `Abbas, who was one of the wealthiest men among the sons of Hashim, `O `Abbas, your brother Abu Talib is a man with many children, and you can see for yourself how people are suffering as a result of this crisis. Come let us go and relieve him and his children.' They thus went to him and discussed the matter. He answered: `Leave `Aqil (a brother of 'Ali) .and take whomever you wish.' The Messenger of Allah took . 'Ali into his home, and `Ali remained with the Messenger of Allah until Allah called him to be a prophet. `Ali then followed him, believed in him and assented to him." 'Ali ibn Ibrahim [al-Qummi] related that three years after this, Allah revealed to the Apostle of Allah: Declare openly what you have been commanded and be not concerned with the Associators [Quran S : 94] . The Messenger of Allah therefore went out, stood up at al-Hijr [that space which encompasses the Ka'bah on the north] and proclaimed: "O people of Quraysh and you Arab people, I call you all to the worship of Allah alone, and call you to reject all partners with Him, and all idols. I call you all to bear witness that there is no god but Allah and that I am the Messenger of Allah. Heed my call that you may through it have dominion over all the Arabs. Through it also would non-Arabs submit to your authority. Through it you would be kings in Paradise." But they mocked and laughed at him, exclaiming: "Muhammad son of `Abdullah has gone mad!" They caused him much hurt with their tongues. Abu Talib asked: "O son of my brother, what is this?" He answered: "Uncle, this is Allah's religion which He chose for His angels and prophets. It is the religion of Abraham and the prophets after him. Allah has sent me also as a messenger to humankind." Abu Talib said: "O son of my brother, surely your people will not accept this from you! Desist, therefore, from proclaiming it to them." "I shall not do so", the Prophet answered, "because Allah has commanded me to call (people to Islam)." Thus, Abu Talib left him alone. The Messenger of Allah intensified his effort in calling the people and warning them at all times. Those among the People of the Book who heard the news accepted Islam. When, however, the people of Quraysh saw people entering Islam, they were alarmed. They thus went to Abu Talib and demanded: "Restrain your nephew from us, for he has declared our mind to be foolish, and has insulted our gods! He has corrupted our youths, and has dissolved our unity!" Abu Talib then called him and said: "O my brother's son, the people have come to me asking that you desist from insulting their gods." The Prophet answered: "O uncle, I cannot disobey the command of my Lord." Thus he used to call them and warn them of the impending divine punishment. The people of Quraysh gathered in assembly and enquired: "To what does Muhammad call us?" He answered: "I call you to bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and to reject all associates with Him." They protested: "Shall we then abandon three hundred and sixty gods and worship only one God?" Thus Allah mentions in the Qur'an their saying: They marvel that a warner from among them came to them, and the rejecters of faith said, "He is a magician, a liar. Does he wish to render all gods one? This, indeed is a strange thing". . ., and so on to His saying, No! But they have not yet tasted the torment [Qur'an 38: 4 - 8] . The people then came together to Abu Talib and said: "O Abu Talib, if poverty is the cause of your nephew's action, then we will gather so much wealth for him that he would be the wealthiest man of Quraysh." Abu Talib called him and informed him of their offer. The Messenger of Allah, however, said: "Uncle, I have no need of wealth! Heed my call, so that you may be kings in this world and in the world to come! Then will both Arabs and non-Arabs submit to your authority." They dispersed, but soon returned to Abu Talib and said: "O Abu Talib, you are one of our foremost notables! You see that your nephew has declared us to be of foolish mind. He has cursed our gods and dissolve our unity! Let us give you `Umarah ibn al-Walid, the most handsome and bright youth of Quraysh, the freshest youth and the noblest of lineage to be your son - on condition that you turn over Muhammad to us that we may kill him." He answered: "You have not dealt justly with me! Would you give me your son that I may bring him up, and yet take my son to kill him?" Finally, despairing of convincing him, they desisted. Al-Hafiz (al-Bayhaqi) related in his book Dala'ilu'n-Nubuwwah on the authority of Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn Talhah, that Talhah ibn `Ubaydillah said: "I was present one day at the market of Busra, where I heard a monk who lived in a cell say: `Enquire of the people of this fair if there is anyone among them of the people of the Sanctuary (that is, Mecca).' I replied: `Yes, I am.' He asked: `Has Ahmad come forth yet?' `Who is Ahmad?' I asked. He replied: `The son of `Abdullah ibn `Abdi 'l-Muttalib. This is the month in which he should come forth. He is the last of the prophets. The place of his appearance is the Sanctuary, and that of his migration is a place of date-palms and black stones (that is, Medina). Beware lest anyone accept him before you do.' " Talhah continued: "I kept what he said in my heart, and .hastened to Mecca. I enquired if anything unusual had happened, and was told that, 'Muhammad ibn `Abdillah al-Amin has declared himself a prophet. Ibn Abi Quhafah (that is, Abu Bakr) has followed him.' I thus went to Abu Bakr and said: `Have you really become a follower of this man?' `Yes', he answered. `You too go to him and follow him, for he invites men to the truth.' " Talhah then told Abu Bakr what the monk had said. Abu. Bakr took Talhah to the Apostle of Allah, whereupon Talhah became a Muslim. He told the Messenger of Allah what the monk had said, which gladdened the Apostle of Allah. [32] When both Abu Bakr and Talhah had accepted Islam, a man called Nawfal ibn Khuwaylid ibn al-`Adawiyyah took them and tied them together with one rope. The people of Taym (the tribe to which Abu Bakr belonged) did not protect them. Nawfal ibn Khuwaylid was known as the harshest man of the Quraysh. The Quraysh Admit The Miraculous Qualities Of The Qur'an The Messenger of Allah never ceased to insult the gods of the Associators, nor did he cease reciting the Qur'an to them. But they used to say: "This is only the poetry of Muhammad." Some of them also said: "It is rather oratory discourse." There was an old man called al-Walid ibn al-Mughirah who was a judge among the Arabs, whom they brought difficult cases. They likewise used to recite their poems to him in order that he might judge among them. Whatever he judged to be good, that was chosen by all. He had many sons, who never left Mecca. He also possessed ten slaves, every one of whom had one thousand dinars to use as capital in trade. At that time he alone owned a qintar, [the skin of a bull filled with gold]. al-Walid was one of those who mocked the Messenger of Allah and he was the uncle of Abu Jahl ibn Hisham. The people went to al-Walid and asked: "O Abu `Abd ash-Shams, what is this which Muhammad is uttering? Is it magic, soothsaying, or oratory?" He replied: "Let me hear his words." He thus came to the Messenger of Allah while he was sitting in the Ka'bah and said: "O Muhammad, recite for me some of your poetry! " He answered: "It is not poetry, but rather the word of Allah, with which He sent His prophets and apostles." al-Walid insisted: "Recite some of it to me." The Messenger of Allah then recited: "In the name of Allah, the All-merciful, the Compassionate. " When al-Walid heard the name ar-Rahman (the All-merciful), he mockingly said: "Do you call us to follow a man of Yamamah who is called ar-Rahman?" The Prophet answered: "No, rather I call men to Allah, Who is the All-merciful, the Compassionate." He then recited the beginning of "Ha mim: as-Sajdah ", (Surah 41) until he reached verse (13) But if they turn back, say: "I have warned you of a great catastrophe like the catastrophe of Ad and Thamud. " When al-Walid heard this, he trembled and every hair on his head and in his beard stood on end. He then rose and went to his home, and did not return to the people of Quraysh. The people said to Abu Jahl, "O Abu 'l-Hakam, (that is, al-Walid) has abandoned his religion for the religion of Muhammad! Do you not see that he has not returned to us? He must have, therefore, accepted his claim and gone to his home." The people of Quraysh became exceedingly saddened by this. Abu Jahl went to al-Walid the next day and said: "O uncle, you have brought low our heads and disgraced us!" He answered: "How have I done that, O son of my brother?" "Have you turned to the religion of Muhammad?" he asked. "No", answered al-Walid, "I did not do so. Rather, I stand by the religion of my people and my forefathers. I have, however, heard great words which cause skins to shudder." Abu Jahl asked: "Is it poetry?" "No, it is not poetry", answered his uncle. Abu Jahl asked further: "Is it oratory discourse?" al-Walid answered: "No, for oratory discourse is of connected rhymed prose; yet this is free prose whose different parts do not resemble one another. It is possessed of great beauty." Abu Jahl insisted: "So it is oratory." "No", answered his uncle. Abu Jahl asked: "What is it then?" al-Walid said: "Let me think about it for a while." The next day, the people asked al-Walid: "O Abu `Abd ash-Shams, what do you say?" He answered: "Say it is magic, for it has truly attracted the hearts of the people." Thus, Allah sent down concerning him in the Qur'an - Leave me to deal with him whom I have alone created, and whom I have granted great wealth and sons, constantly present with him . . . and so on to Allah's saying: Over it (that is, Hell) stand nineteen (angels) [Qur.74:11-30]. In a tradition related by Hammad ibn Zayd on the authority of `Ikrimah (a slave and pupil of Ibn `Abb5s and a well-known traditionist), he reported that al-Walid ibn al-Mughirah came to the Messenger of Allah and asked him to recite some verses of the Qur'an. He recited: "Allah surely commands justice and doing good, and giving (of one's wealth) to near relatives. He likewise forbids lewdness, indecency and insolence. He thus admonishes you, that perhaps you may remember" [Qur'an. 16:90] . al-Walid said: "Recite the verse once more!" He did, and al-Walid exclaimed: "By Allah, it indeed is possessed of great sweetness and adorned with great beauty. Its top is indeed fruitful, and its bottom is like a palm-tree laden with fruits! Nor can any mortal utter such speech." How Allah Protected Muhammad Against The Mockers It is related that those who mocked the Messenger of Allah were five: al-Walid ibn al-Mughirah, al-`As ibn Wail as-Sahmi, al-Aswad ibn al-Muttalib, who was also known as Abu Zama'ah, al-Aswad ibn `Abd Yaghuth of the tribe of Zuhrah and al-Harith ibn at-Tulatilah al-Khuza`i. It is said that al-Walid ibn al-Mughirah passed one day by the Messenger of Allah, while the angel Gabriel was with him. Gabriel addressed the Prophet, saying: "Here comes al-Walid ibn al-Mughirah, who is one of the mockers." "Yes", he answered. Then al-Walid passed by a man of the tribe of Khuza'ah, sharpening his arrows at the door of the mosque. He accidentally stepped on some of them, a silver went into the bottom of his foot, and blood gushed out. Gabriel pointed to that spot, and blood continued to flow until it stained the bed of his daughter. Frightened, the girl cried out: "O maid, the mouth of the water skin has come untied! " "This is not the water of the water skin", said al-Walid, "it is the blood of your father. Call together for me my sons and the sons of my brother, for I am about to die." When they all gathered, he made his will, and immediately breathed his last. Al-Aswad ibn al-Muttalib passed one day by the Messenger of Allah. Gabriel pointed to his eyes and he became blind, and soon after died. al-Aswad ibn `Abd Yaghuth also passed by the Prophet one day; Gabriel pointed to his stomach, and he drank so much water that his belly swelled until it burst. al-`As ibn Wail passed also by the Prophet, and Gabriel pointed to his foot. Soon a splinter went into the bottom of his foot and came out of the top. His foot swelled up, and soon he died. at-Tulatilah passed by the Prophet, and Gabriel spat in his face. The man then went out into the Tihamah mountains (in the vicinity of Mecca), where he was hit by a burning sand storm. He was burnt and turned black. When he returned home. his family would not let him in, saying, "You are not of this family." He went away and was afflicted with great thirst. He thus drank until his stomach burst, and he died. All this happened in fulfilment of Allah's saying: We have surely protected you against the mockers [Qur'an. 15:95]. The Migration To Abyssinia And An-Naiashi's Assent To Muhammad's Prophethood When the people of Quraysh intensified their harsh treatment of the Messenger of Allah and his Companions, he ordered some of his Companions to migrate to Abyssinia. He delegated Ja'far son of Abu Talib to take charge of them, and he set out with seventy men until they took to sea. When the people of Quraysh knew of their departure, they sent `Amr ibn al-`As as-Sahmi and `Umarah ibn al-Walid to an-Najashi (Negus) .of Abyssinia, requesting him to return the men to the people of Quraysh. They were also instructed to tell the King that these men had gone against the wishes and traditions of their people. `Umarah was a handsome and wealthy man. `Amr ibn al`As set out with his wife. When they boarded the ship, they became intoxicated with wine. `Umarah then said to `Amr ibn al-`As : "Tell your wife to kiss me!" The latter answered: "Glorified be Allah! Is this possible?" `Umarah waited until `Amr got drunk, then he pushed him overboard. `Amr was on the edge of the ship; thus he held on to the edge, and people rushed to his rescue. When `Amr saw what `Umarah had done to him, he said to his wife, "Kiss him! ", which she did. When they reached Abyssinia, they went straight to an-Najashi bearing presents for him. `Amr addressed him saying: "O King, these people have gone against our religion and sought refuge with you. Return them, therefore, to us! " The King sent for Ja'far and said to him: "These men are requesting that I return you all to them." He answered: "O King, ask them, are we their slaves?" "No", answered `Amr, "rather they are free and noble men." "Ask them," Ja'far continued, "do we then owe them debts which they have come to claim from us?" `Amr answered: "They owe us no debts which we have come to claim." Ja'far continued: "Have they come then to avenge any blood of theirs that we had wrongfully shed?" `Amr answered: "They have shed no blood for which we come to exact vengeance or blood money." Ja'far asked: "What then do you want from us?" `Amr said: "They have opposed us in our religion and the religion of our forefathers and insulted our gods. They have corrupted our youths and spread dissension among us. Return them to us, therefore, that our unity might be restored." Ja'far then addressed the King saying: "O King, we have opposed them in order to follow a prophet whom Allah has raised among us. He commands us to repudiate equals to Allah, and that we abandon chance games by means of arrows. He enjoins prayers and almsgiving upon us. He has prohibited wrongdoing, oppression and the unlawful shedding of blood. He has prohibited adultery, usury, and eating the flesh of dead animals which have not been properly slaughtered, as well as eating blood. He has enjoined decency and good works upon us, and that we show kindness to near relatives. He forbids grave immorality, indecency and insolence." The King said: "It is with such (teachings) that Allah also sent Jesus son of Mary! " Then addressing Ja`far, he continued: "Do you know by heart any of the revelations which Allah sent down to your prophet?" "Yes", he answered. "Recite then! " the King demanded. Ja'far recited the Surah of Maryam (Surah 19). When he reached the words - Shake down towards you the branch of the palm-tree, and it shall drop down before you ripened dates ready to be picked. Eat and drink, therefore, and be of good cheer [Qur'an. 19 : 25 - 26 ] - an-Najashi wept and exclaimed: "By Allah this is the truth!" `Amr protested: "O King, this man has abandoned our religion; give him to us that we may take him back to our country! " an-Najashi lifted his hand and slapped him saying: "If you utter any evil against him, I will kill you!" `Amr finally said: "O King, if this is what you say, then we shall not interfere with him." A young maid stood by an-Najashi keeping flies away from him. She kept her eyes on `Umarah ibn al-Walid, as he was a handsome young man. When they went to their lodgings, `Amr said to him: "Why do you not send a message to the King's maid?" `Umarah sent a message to her, and she answered him. `Amr said: "Tell her to bring you with her some of the King's perfumes. She did so, and `Amr ibn al`As took the perfume. He had kept in his heart what `Umarah had done to him when he attempted to throw him overboard. Thus, he took the perfume and went to an-Najashi, and said to him: "O King, it is fitting that we take cognition of the King's honour and magnanimity toward us, and that we do not betray him in his own realm. Yet, my companion who is with me has sent messages to your maid and tempted her. She even brought him some of your perfumes." He then showed the King the perfume. an-Najashi was exceedingly angry and was about to kill `Umarah. But he changed his mind and said: "It is not right that I kill him, for they entered our realm under a pledge of protection." He thus called his magicians and said to them: "Do something to him that would be worse than death! " They took him and injected mercury into his generative organ. He lost his mind, so that he lived with the wild beasts and shunned human company. [33] The people of Quraysh sent men to bring `Umarah back home. The men lay in wait for him until he came with wild beasts to drink at a spring. Thus they caught him, but he continued to struggle and scream in their hands until he expired. `Amr, however, returned to the people of Quraysh and recounted to them his story. As for Ja'far, he remained in Abyssinia enjoying the best of hospitality and honour. He remained there until he heard that the Messenger of Allah had established a truce with the people of Quraysh and that peace had prevailed between them and the Muslims. He then returned with a large company of people. He arrived to find that the Messenger of Allah had conquered Khaybar (a Jewish settlement near Medina). A son was born to Ja'far by Asma', daughter of `Umays. an-Najashi also had a son, whom he called Muhammad. Asma' gave an-Najashi's son of her own milk to drink (thus making him a nursing brother of her own son). Abu Talib recited these verses urging an-Najashi to support the Prophet and his followers: Know, O King of the Ethiopians, that Muhammad is a prophet like Moses and Jesus son of Mary. He came with guidance such as they brought, for each of them was by Allah's command well -protected. Concerning him, you recite verses in your own scriptures; a true account it is, not a fantastic tale. Do not, therefore, set up equals with Allah; rather become Muslims, for the way of truth is not obscured in darkness. The traditionist Abu `Abdillah (al-Bayhaqi) transmitted on the authority of Muhammad ibn Ishaq that the Messenger of Allah sent `Amr ibn Umayyah ad-Damri to an-Najashi regarding Ja'far ibn Abi Talib and his Companions. He sent a letter with him which read thus: "In the name of Allah, the All-merciful, the Compassionate - From Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah to the Negus, the King of Abyssinia - I convey to you the praises of Allah the King, the Holy, the Accepter of Faith, the Guardian [Qur.59:23]. I furthermore bear witness that Jesus son of Mary is the Spirit of Allah and His Word, which He sent down to Mary [Qur'an. 4 : 171) , the pure and chaste virgin who then conceived Jesus, whom Allah created of His Spirit which he breathed into him -just as he created Adam with His Hand and breathed of His Spirit into him. I thus call you to the worship of the One and only Allah alone Who has no associate, and that you obey Him, follow me and believe in me and the message which was vouchsafed me. For I indeed am the Messenger of Allah. I have, moreover, sent to you my cousin Ja'far with a company of the Muslims. When they come to you, show hospitality to them and do not be arrogant. I call you and your hosts to Allah! I have conveyed my message to you and given good counsel. Peace be with those who follow true guidance." An-Najashi wrote in answer to the Messenger of Allah: "In the name of Allah, the All-merciful, the Compassionate - to Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah - from the Negus al-Ashamah ibn Abhar: peace be upon you O Prophet of Allah and Allah's mercy and blessings - there is no god but He Who guided me to Islam. I have received your letter, O Messenger of Allah, concerning the importance you give in the case of Jesus. By the Lord of the heaven and earth, Jesus does not exceed what you have mentioned concerning him. We acknowledge what you have written to us, and have thus shown hospitality to your cousin and Companions. I bear witness that you are the Messenger of Allah truly and that you tell the truth. I have, therefore, given allegiance (bay `ah) to you and your cousin. I have accepted Islam to Allah, the Lord of all beings at his hands. I have sent to you, O Messenger of Allah, Arijan ibn Ashamah ibn Abhar, I have-indeed no authority except over myself alone. If, therefore, you wish that I come to you, I would come, O Messenger of Allah. For I bear witness that what you say is the truth." An-Najashi then sent presents to the Prophet. He sent him also Mariyah the Copt, the mother of the Prophet's son Ibrahim. He sent him much clothing and aromatics, and a mare. He also sent him thirty learned men to hear his words and observe his conduct. When they arrived in Medina, the Messenger of Allah called them to. Islam, and they accepted Islam and returned to the Negus. Jabir ibn `Abdillah al-Ansari reported that, "When an-Najashi died, the Messenger of Allah prayed over Ashamah, the Negus." The Prophet Is Persecuted By The Associators And Hamzah Accepts Islam The people of Quraysh redoubled their efforts in troubling the Messenger of Allah. The harshest of men toward him was his uncle Abu Lahab. One day the Prophet was sitting in the precincts of the Ka'bah, when the people sent for a birth sack of a sheep and threw it at him.[ According to al-Jazari, the well-known lexicographer and traditionist, this happened while the Prophet was praying. (ed. )] The Messenger of Allah was greatly saddened by this, and went to Abu Talib to complain, saying: "O uncle, how is my status among you?" Abu Talib asked: "What is the matter O son of my brother?" He replied: "The people of Quraysh threw a birth sack at me." Abu Talib then said to Hamzah: "Take up the sword!" The people of Quraysh were assembled in the Mosque. Both Hamzah and Abu Talib went in with their swords. Abu Talib ordered Hamzah, saying: "Rub the birth sack over their moustaches, and if anyone resists, cut off his head!" But no one moved while he rubbed the birth sack over their moustaches.. He then turned to the Messenger of Allah, and said: "O son of my brother, this is your status among us!" In the book Dala'ilu'n-Nubuwwah (of al-Bayhaqi) [34], it is reported on the authority of Abu Dawud who reported from Shu'bah who reported from Abu Ishaq (as-Sabi`i), who heard `Amr ibn Maymun relate on the authority of `Abdullah (ibn Mas'ud), who said: "While the Messenger of Allah was prostrating in prayer one day, with some men of Quraysh sitting all around him, and the birth sack of a she-camel lying around, some dared others men saying: `Who would take this birth sack and throw it at his back?' A man called `Uqbah ibn Abi Mu'ayt took up the birth sack and threw it at the Prophet's back. Fatimah (the Prophet's daughter) came and took the camel's birth sack off the Prophet's back, and cursed those who did that to him." `Abdullah continued: "I never saw the Messenger of Allah invoke Allah against them except on that day. He said: "O Allah, I leave to you the people of Quraysh! O Allah to you do I leave Abu Jahl ibn Hisham, `Utbah ibn Rabi `ah, Shaybah ibn Rabi `ah, `Uqbah ibn Abi Mu'ayt, Umayyah ibn Khalaf or Ubayy ibn Khalaf (Shu'bah was confused). The Prophet enumerated seven men in all." `Abdullah went on: "I saw them all slain in the Battle of Badr and thrown into a well. Umayyah ibn Khalaf, however, was a very fat man. His body disintegrated as it was dragged along before reaching the well.' " [35] It is related on the authority of Khabbab (a well-known Companion), who said: "I came one day to the Messenger of Allah, while he lay in the shade of the Ka` bah using his mantle as a pillow. We had endured much suffering at the hands of the people of Quraysh. Thus I asked: `O Messenger of Allah, would you not invoke Allah on our behalf?' He sat up, red in the safe, and said: `Those who were before you -often were their flesh and nerves scraped with sharp iron combs. Yet they did not turn away from their faith. A man would be sawed in half from his head down, yet he would not be turned away from his faith. But Allah shall indeed bring this affair to fruition, so that a horseman would travel all the way between San'a and Hadramawt fearing no one but Allah, or the wolf that may attack his sheep.' " [36] It is also related on the authority of Jabir (son of the famous Companion, `Abdullah al-Ansari) that the Messenger of Allah passed one day by `Ammar ibn Yasir and his family while they were being tortured for Allah's sake. He said: "Be of good cheer, O family of `Ammar, for you shall soon enter Paradise! " It is reported on the authority of Mujahid [ ibn Jabr] (a well-known traditionist of the second generation) that the first martyr in Islam was Sumayyah, the mother of `Ammar, whom Abu Jahl stabbed in the heart. 'Ali ibn Ibrahim al-Qummi reported that Abu Jahl met the Messenger of Allah one day and spoke harsh words to him. All the men of the Hashimite clan angrily assembled. Hamzah had just returned from hunting, when he saw the crowd and enquired about the commotion. A woman called down to him from one of the roof-tops saying: "O Abu Ya'la, `Amr ibn Hisham (i.e., Abu Jahl) confronted Muhammad and insulted him." Hamzah enraged, went to Abu Jahl hit him with his bow on the head and picked him up and beat him hard against the ground. People crowded around them, and it was feared that great conflict might ensue. People then asked Hamzah: "O Abu Ya'la, have you then turned to the religion of your nephew?" "Yes", he answered: "I bear witness that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Apostle of Allah." He said this only as a result of anger and feeling of support for his nephew. When, however, he returned to his home, he regretted his decision. Thus he went to the Messenger of Allah and asked: "O son of my brother, is what you say the truth?" The Messenger of Allah recited to him a Surah of the Qur'an, and Hamzah saw the truth and stood firm in the faith of Islam. The Messenger of Allah was exceedingly happy. Abu Talib also was glad to learn of Hamzah's Islam, and recited the following verses: Be steadfast, O Abu Ya`la in the faith of Ahmad; Show forth your faith; may you be strengthened in your resolve! Follow the footsteps of him who came with true' faith from his Lord; Do not, O Hamzah, be a rejecter of faith! It made me glad when you said that you are a man of faith; Be then a true supporter of the Messenger of Allah in Allah's cause. Call openly the people of Quraysh to that which you yourself have been given; Proclaim to them that Ahmad is indeed not a magician! The Prophet's Night Journey To Jerusalem And His Hiding In A Ravine Belonging To Abu Talib The Messenger of Allah was transported by Allah from Mecca to Jerusalem, (see Qur'an. 17 :1) . Gabriel carried him thither on al-Buraq (a celestial horse), and showed him the prayer chambers of the prophets before him. After the Prophet had led them all in prayer, Gabriel brought him back to Mecca. On his way back, the Prophet passed by a caravan belonging to the people of Quraysh. They had with them water in a vessel, from which he drank, and poured out the rest. They also lost one of their camels and went out in search of it. Next morning Muhammad recounted to the people of Quraysh: "Allah transported me by night to Jerusalem where He showed me the signs and stations of the prophets. I have also passed by a caravan in such and such a place, where they lost one of their camels. I drank from a vessel of water which they had, and poured out the rest of the water." Abu Jahl said: "You have now an opportune moment; ask him, therefore, how many columns and lamps are in Jerusalem! " They thus said to him: "O Muhammad, here is someone who has been to Jerusalem! " Describe for us its columns, lamps, and prayer chambers! " Gabriel came and suspended an image of Jerusalem before the Prophet's eyes, and he told them whatever they wished to know about the holy city. When he had informed them, they said: "Let us wait until the caravan returns and we question the people about what you have told us:" "The sign of the truth of what I have said is that the caravan will appear at sunrise led by a red camel carrying two white sacks", the Prophet said. Next morning, they went out looking towards the hill outside the city and saying: "The sun shall soon rise." As they were thus wondering, the caravan appeared, led by a red camel, just as the disk of the sun was becoming visible. They asked the men with the caravan about the things which the Messenger of Allah had told them. The men answered: "It is true, it was as he said. We lost a camel in such and such a place; we left water by night, but when we woke up next morning, the water was all poured out." Yet, all this only increased the people of Quraysh in their stubbornness. They then all gathered in their assembly hall and prepared a written pledge neither to share food with the sons of Hashim, nor to speak to them. Nor would they transact any trade with them, or intermarry with them. They would not even socialize with them in any way, until they turned Muhammad over to them that they might kill him. They agreed to be as one hand against Muhammad, either to assassinate him, or kill him openly. When Abu Talib learned of all this, he gathered the sons of Hashim, forty men in all, and went into a secret ravine. Abu Talib swore to them by the Ka'bah, the haram, the rukn and the station (maqam of Abraham) that if even a thorn was to prick Muhammad, "I will steadfastly fight against you all, 0 sons of Hashim." Abu Talib fortified the ravine and set up guards over it night and day. At night he kept guard himself with his sword, while the Messenger of Allah slept. Then he had him get up and sleep in another spot, guarded by his own sons and the sons of his brother. They watched over the Prophet during the day as well. In the end, they endured much hardship. Thus it was that no one of the Arabs entering Mecca dared buy from or sell anything to the family of Hashim, for fear that his wealth would be seized. To that end, Abu Jahl, al-`As ibn Wail as-Sahmi, an-Nadr ibn al-Harith ibn Kaladah and `Uqbah ibn Abi Mu'ayt used to go out to the roads leading to Mecca, and anyone they saw carrying goods, they forbade to trade with the sons of Hashim. Otherwise they threatened to seize his wealth. Khadijah, however, had much wealth, which she spent in caring for the Messenger of Allah while he was in the ravine. Mut'im ibn `Adiyy ibn Nawfal ibn `Abdi'lMuttalib refused to sign the pledge, saying: "This is wrongdoing." The document was, nonetheless, sealed with forty seals, representing all the notables of Quraysh. They then hung it in the Ka'bah. Abu Lahab also concurred with them in this action. During the special seasons (when fighting was banned), the Messenger of Allah would go around the Arab tribes and plead with them: "If you would protect me, I would recite to you the Book of my Lord, and your reward with Allah shall be Paradise." Abu Lahab would follow close behind him and say: "Do not accept his offer! He is my brother's son. He is a magician and a liar." Thus it went on, and the sons of Hashim remained in the ravine for four years, having no security except during special seasons, nor could they buy or sell anything except during these seasons. There were two seasons held in Mecca every year: that of the `umrah (lesser pilgrimage) during Rajab, and the pilgrimage season in Dhi'l-Hijjah (the 7th and 12th months respectively). Hence, only when either of these two special seasons come did the sons of Hashim leave their ravine to buy and sell. Then no one of them dared venture out till the next season. They therefore suffered much hardship and hunger. The people of Quraysh sent a message to Abu Talib, saying: "Turn Muhammad over to us that we may kill him; then we would make you king over us." In response, Abu Talib recited a long poem, in which he says: When I saw that these people had no love, having cut off all ties and means of friendship; (I said): Do you not know that we do not regard our son as a liar, Nor does he utter vain words. Pure is he, that for the sake of his face prayers for rain are answered; Generous towards orphans is he, and a protection for widows. The errant of the clan of Hashim crowd around him; For with him they find bounty and generous gifts. You lie, by Allah's house! We shall never abandon Muhammad; Rather we shall wield the sword and strive to protect him. We shall never betray him, until we fall slain before him; For his sake we shall neglect our sons and wives. By my life! I have been charged with great affection for Ahmad! I loved him with the love of a faithful lover. I have sacrificed willingly my soul for him and protected him; I have defended him with all that is precious, Even the bones of my breast! He remains an object of beauty in this world for its inhabitants; A harsh match to anyone showing enmity toward him is he, and the ornament of every assembly. He is clement, wise, unwavering and not foolish; Friend of the Lord of Truth, never indulging in vain disputation. Thus the Lord of human servants has strengthened him with His victory; He caused a religion to prevail whose truth knows no falsehood. When they heard this poem, they despaired of convincing Abu Talib. Abu 'l-`As ibn Rabi', who was the Messenger of Allah's son-in-law, used to bring by night camels laden with wheat and dates to the entrance of the ravine and call out loudly to them, so that they would rush in, and the sons of Hashim would have provisions. The Messenger of Allah used to say: "Abu 'l-`As has established a tie of marriage with us and has honoured well this marriage relation. He brought laden camels to us when we were besieged and delivered them to our ravine by night." When the Messenger of Allah had spent four years in the ravine, Allah sent against the hostile document of the Quraysh an earthworm which licked clean all words of unkindness to next of kin, and all wrongdoing and oppression. It only spared the name of Allah. Gabriel came down to the Messenger of Allah and told him about it. The Messenger of Allah then told Abu Talib, who went to the men of Quraysh as they assembled in the mosque. When they saw him they said: "Abu Talib has finally given in; he has now come to turn his nephew in." He drew near and greeted them with the salutation of peace. They all rose up and received him with deference. They then said: "O Abu Talib, we know that you wish our friendship and return to our society! You will turn your nephew over to us." He answered: "No, by Allah, it is not for this that I have come to you. Rather my nephew tells me - and he utters no lies - that Allah has told him that He sent an earthworm against your hostile document, which ate every word of unkindness to next of kin, of wrongdoing and oppression. It only spared the name of Allah. Bring your document, and if what he says is true, then fear Allah and abandon your wrongdoing, oppression and unkindness toward blood relations. If, on the other hand, what he says is false, I will turn him over to you. If you wish, you may kill him, or if you wish you may spare his life." They brought the document down from the Ka'bah, still bearing forty seals. When it was brought before them, every man saw his seal. When, however, they .opened it, they found no letters except the phrase: `in your name, O Allah.' Abu Talib then pleaded with them saying: "O people, fear Allah and desist from what you are doing! " But the people dispersed, and no one spoke a word. Abu Talib then returned to the ravine and recited his poem rhyming with the letter `b' and which begins as follows: Who shall endure standing on guard till night's end, Or the retreat which your divided people have decreed. In the document there was indeed a lesson; Anyone knowing about it would surely marvel. Allah had Himself erased from it their rejection of faith and insolence, As well as their hostility toward him who proclaimed the truth openly. Thus what they said came to nought, For anyone inventing falsehood only tells lies. Yet the son of Abdullah has been truthful among us, in spite of our people's wrath. Do not think that we shall betray Muhammad; For neither our honour nor fidelity would permit it! A strong Hashimite hand shall protect him; He whose deeds among men are the best of deeds. Then some of the sons of `Abd Manaf and the sons of Qusayy, as well as other men of Quraysh who were born to women of the sons of Hashim - among whom was Mut'im ibn `Adiyy ibn `Amir ibn Lu'ayy, an old man of great wealth and many children, and Abu 'l-Bakhtari ibn Hisham and Zuhayr ibn (Abi) Umayyah al-Makhzumi and other of their notables - said: "We dissociate ourselves from this document." Abu Jahl likewise said: "This is a matter which was decided in the dark." Thus the Prophet and those who were with him were able to leave the ravine. Two months later, Abu Talib died. Khadijah also died soon after. These were two grave occurrences which the Messenger of Allah had to endure, and he was greatly saddened. He went in to see Abu Talib while he was breathing his last. He said: "O uncle, you cared for a child until he grew up. You supported him when he was a grown man, and cared for him as an orphan. May Allah, therefore, reward you on my behalf with the best reward. Give me a word (that is, the shahadah) that I may intercede with it on your behalf with my Lord." Abu Talib replied: "O son of my brother, were I not to fear the reproach of people after me, I would have gladdened your heart." Saying this he died. Muhammad ibn Ishaq reported that Khadijah daughter of Khuwaylid, and Abu Talib died in the same year. [37] Thus afflictions followed one another for the Messenger of Allah after the death of Khadijah and Abu Talib - for she was a true helper (wazir) to him in Islam, and he found comfort in her. Abu `Abdillah ibn Mandah reported in the Kitabu'l-Ma`rifah that Khadijah died three days after Abu Talib. [38] al-Waqidi claimed that they all left the ravine three years before the Migration. In that year Khadijah and Abu Talib died within the space of thirty-five nights. The Prophet Offers Himself To Neighboring Arab Tribes. The Allegiance Of The Ansar To Him, And The Event Of Al-`Aqabah It is reported in the book entitled Dala'ilu'n-Nubuwwah [39] on the authority of az-Zuhri (a well-known traditionist), that the Messenger of Allah used to offer himself as a prophet to the Arab tribes every year during the pilgrimage season. He used to speak to the chief of every tribe, requesting only that they give him shelter and protection. He said: "I shall not ask anyone of you to do anything he does not wish to do. For anyone of you who accepts what I have come to call you to, it is well. But I shall not compel anyone who would refuse. I only ask that you protect me from those who wish to kill me, so that I might convey the messages of my Lord - and Allah decrees what He wills for me and those who will follow him." Yet no one of them accepted him. Everyone he spoke to of these tribes would say: "The people of this man know best his claims. Do you think that a man can reform us when he has corrupted his own people, and who have therefore, abandoned him? " When Abu Talib died, trials increased greatly as never before for the Messenger of Allah. He thus turned to the tribe of Thaqif in the city of at-Ta'if in the hope that they might give him shelter. He sought three men, who were the notables of Thaqif in those days. They were brothers: `Abd Yalayl ibn `Amr, Habib ibn `Amr and Mas'ud ibn `Amr. He offered himself to them and told them of the trials that had afflicted him at the hands of his people. One of them exclaimed: "I swear that I would even steal the curtains of the Ka'bah, if Allah had truly sent you with anything! " The other said: "Could not Allah send someone other than you?" The third exclaimed: "By Allah, I shall never speak to you henceforth. By Allah, if you are truly the Messenger of Allah, you would be of too great honour for me even to speak to you. If, on the other hand, you lie concerning Allah, you would be too evil for me to speak to you." They mocked him and revealed to their people their conversation with him. The men then placed people in two lines in his way. When the Messenger of Allah passed between the two lines, he did not lift his feet or put them down but that they pelted them with stones. They repeated this until his feet bled. He escaped from them with his feet gushing blood, and ran to one of their gardens and took shelter under a tree, sad and suffering much pain. `Utbah ibn Rabi `ah and Shaybah ibn Rabi `ah were in the garden. He therefore did not wish to remain with them, as he knew their great hostility to Allah and His Messenger. When they saw him, they sent to him a servant of theirs called `Addas who was of the people of Naynawa (Nineveh), with grapes. When `Addas came to him, the Messenger of Allah asked: "From which land are you?" He answered: "I am of the people of Nineveh." He said to him: "So you are from the city of the righteous man Yunus (Jonah) son of Mitts (Matthew)." `Addas asked him: "How do you know who Yunus was? " The Messenger of Allah, who never looked down at anyone so much as not to convey to him the message of his Lord, answered: "I am the Messenger of Allah. Allah, exalted be He, informed me of the account of Yunus ibn Mitts." When he had told him what Allah had revealed to him concerning Yunus ibn Mitts, `Addas fell prostrate before Allah and began to kiss the Prophet's feet while they continued to gush blood. When `Utbah and Shaybah saw what their servant was doing, they kept silent. But when he returned to them they asked: "Why did you prostrate yourself before Muhammad and kiss his feet, while we never saw you do so to any of us?" He answered: "He is a righteous man who told me things which I recognized concerning a messenger whom Allah had sent to us, whose name was Yunus ibn Mitts." They laughed and said "Let him not tempt you away from your Christianity, for he is a deceitful man." The Messenger of Allah then returned to Mecca. `Ali ibn Ibrahim ibn Hashim (al-Qummi) reports that when the Messenger. of Allah returned from the city of at-Ta'if and approached Mecca with the intention of performing the `umrah (lesser pilgrimage), he did not wish to enter Mecca where he had no protector. He saw a man of the Quraysh who had secretly embraced Islam and said to him: "Go to al-Akhnas ibn Shurayq and tell him that Muhammad asks you to protect him until he performs the circumambulations ( tawaf , around the Ka'bah) and the running (sa`i) between the two hills of as-Safa and al-Marwa, for he has come to perform the `umrah." The man went to al-Akhnas and conveyed to him what the Messenger of Allah had said. al-Akhnas answered: "I am not of the Quraysh, but only an ally, and an ally cannot offer protection. I fear that they would violate my protection, and that would be an insult." The man returned to the Messenger of Allah and told him. The Messenger of Allah was hiding in the ravine of Harra' with Zayd ibn al-Harithah. He said to the man: "Go to Suhayl ibn `Amr and ask him to protect me only until I circumambulate the House (that is, the Ka'bah) and perform the sa`i (running between as-Safa and al-Marwa)." The man went and told Suhayl, but he answered: "No, I will not." The Messenger of Allah sent the man to Mut'im ibn `Adiyy (ibn `Amir) to make the same request. When the man went to him he asked: "Where is Muhammad?" The man, however, did not wish to tell him where the Prophet was. He rather answered: "He is nearby." Mut'im said: "Go to him and say that I shall give you protection. Come, therefore, and circumambulate and run as you wish." The Messenger of Allah entered the city. Mut'im said to his sons, his sister, and to his brother, who was called Tu'aymah ibn `Adiyy: "Take up your arms, for I have offered Muhammad protection! Stay around the Ka'bah until he performs the circumambulation and running." There were ten men in all who took up arms. Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, then came in to the mosque. Abu Jahl saw him and said: "O people of Quraysh, here is Muhammad alone. His supporter has died; do with him, therefore, as you please." Tu'aymah ibn `Adiyy said to him: "O uncle, do not speak, for Abu Wahb (that is, Mut'im) has offered Muhammad protection." Abu Jahl went to Mut`im and asked: "Are you a protector, or one who has abandoned his religion for another?" He answered: "I am only a protector." Abu Jahl said: "In that case your protection will not be violated." When the Messenger of Allah had finished his circumambulation and running, he came to Mut'im and said: "O Abu Wahb, you have protected and done well! Release me now from your protection." Mut'im replied: "What would prevent you from remaining in my protection?" He answered: "I detest remaining in the protection of an Associator for more than one day." Mut'im then exclaimed: "O people of Quraysh, Muhammad has released himself from my protection! " 'Ali ibn Ibrahim (al-Qummi) reported that As'ad ibn Zurarah and Dhakwan ibn `Abd Qays, both of whom were of the Khazraj tribe of Medina, came to Mecca during one of the pilgrimage seasons. At that time a state of war, which had already lasted for a long time, existed between the Aws and Khazraj (both of which were Medinan tribes). The people did not lay down their arms by day or night. In the last engagement between them on the day of Bu'ath [40], the Aws tribe had prevailed over the Khazraj. As'ad ibn Zurarah and Dhakwan came to Mecca for the `umrah of the sacred month of Rajab seeking an alliance against the Aws tribe. As'ad ibn Zurarah was a friend of `Utbah ibn Rabi `ah. He thus came to him as a guest and said: "A long period of war has prevailed between us and our people. We have come, therefore, seeking alliance against them." `Utbah answered: "Your dwellings are far from ours, and we have an important preoccupation which prevents us from undertaking any other." As'ad asked: "What is your preoccupation, when you live securely in your sacred city? " "A man has appeared among us who claims that he is the Messenger of Allah", answered `Utbah. He continued: "This man has declared our minds foolish, and insulted our gods. He has also corrupted our youths and dissolved our unity." "Who is he?" As'ad asked. `Utbah replied: "He is the son of `Abdullah son of `Abdu 'l-Muttalib. He is of a family that is of high honour and status among us." As'ad and Dhakwan as well as all the people of the Aws and Khazraj tribes used to hear from the Jews of an-Nadir, Qurayzah and Qaynuqa' - who lived among them - that: "The time has come when a prophet shall appear in Mecca, whose migration shall be to Medina. With him we shall slay you all, O people of the Arabs! " When As'ad heard all this from `Utbah, the things which he had heard from the Jews came back into his mind. He thus asked: "Where is he?" `Utbah answered: "He is sitting in the Ka'bah. They do not come out of their ravine except during the pilgrimage season. As for you, do not listen to him or speak to him, for he is a sorcerer who would bewitch you with his words." All this took place at the time when the men of Hashim were besieged in the ravine. As'ad said: "What shall I do when I have come for the `umrah and it is necessary for me to circumambulate the House? " He answered: "Plug your ears up with cotton." As'ad then went into the sanctuary, having stuffed his ears with cotton. He circumambulated the House while the Messenger of Allah was sitting in the sanctuary with some of the men of Hashim. He looked at the Prophet and passed him by. As he passed by, however, performing the second circumambulation, he said to himself: "Truly, there is no one more foolish than I ! Should all this occur in Mecca, and I know not what it is so that I might go back to my people and tell them? " He thus took the cotton out of his ears, threw it away and addressed the Messenger of Allah, saying: "Have a happy morning!" This was the greeting of the Arabs before Islam. The Messenger of Allah turned to him and said: "Allah has given us another greeting instead which is better than this one; it is the greeting of the people of Paradise: `as-Salamu `alaykum' [peace be upon you] ." As'ad said: "You must have come recently to this! What do you call men to, O Muhammad?" He replied: "To the witness (shahadah) that there is no god but Allah, and that I am the Messenger of Allah! I enjoin upon you that: `You associate nothing with Him, and that you act kindly towards your parents. Do not kill your children for fear of poverty, for We shall provide both for you and them. Do not come near vile transgressions, be they disclosed or hidden, and do not kill a soul, which Allah has made unlawful except with justice. With all this you have been charged that perhaps you may understand. Do not come near the wealth of an orphan except in the fairest manner, until he reaches the age of discretion. Give full and just measure and weight. Yet We do not charge a soul except in accordance with its capacity. When you speak, speak justly, even if it be against one who is nearest of kin. Fulfil Allah's covenant. You are enjoined to all this, that perhaps you may recollect.' " [41] When As'ad heard this, he exclaimed: "I bear witness that there is no god but Allah alone, having no associate, and that you are the Messenger of Allah! O Messenger of Allah, may my father and my mother be a ransom for you! I am of the city of Yathrib (Medina), of the Khazraj tribe. All relations between us and our brothers of the Aws tribe are cut off. If Allah were to re-establish them by means of you, I would find no one more honoured than you. Another man of my people is accompanying me. I trust that he too will enter into this matter, and that Allah will set our affairs right through you. By Allah, 0 Messenger of Allah, we often heard reports of you from the Jews. They used to announce to us your coming forth and inform us of your characteristics. I trust that our abode shall be the abode of your migration, and that with us shall be your dwelling. The Jews have informed us of this. Praise be to Allah Who led me to you! By Allah, I came only to seek some alliance against our opponents. Yet Allah has given us something better than the purpose for which I came." Dhakwan then came, and As'ad told him: "This is the Messenger of Allah whom the Jews announced and of whose characteristics they informed us. Come, therefore, and declare your Islam." Dhakwan thus accepted Islam and said: "O Messenger of Allah, send with us a man who would teach us the Qur'an and call the people to your message." The Messenger of Allah sent Mus'ab ibn `Umayr, a youth who had lived in luxury with his parents, who preferred him over all their other children, and who had never left Mecca. But when Mus'ab became a Muslim, his parents disowned him, and he remained with the Messenger of Allah in the ravine until the signs of exhaustion were visible on his changed face. The Messenger of Allah ordered him to go with As'ad, as he had learned much of the Qur'an. Dhakwan then left for Medina with As'ad accompanied by Mus'ab ibn `Umayr. When As'ad and Dhakwan came to their people, they told them about the Messenger of Allah and his message. From every family one or two men accepted Islam. Mus'ab lived with As'ad ibn Zurarah, and every day he would go around the assemblies of the men of Khazraj calling them to Islam, but only the youths would accept his call. There was a man called `Abdullah ibn Ubayy who was a notable of the Khazraj tribe. They all agreed to appoint him as king over them because of his honourable status and generosity. They had made a crown for him which they then presented to him, seeking by this mediation in their long hostilities, for he had not fought on the side of his people of the Khazraj in the war of Bu'ath, nor had he supported them against the Aws tribe. He had said, rather, "You commit wrongdoing towards the Aws tribe, and I will not support wrongdoing." Thus both the Aws and Khazraj accepted him. When As'ad returned, `Abdullah ibn Ubayy did not like what he and Dhakwan brought back with them. He was, for this reason, indifferent. As'ad then said to Mus'ab: "My maternal uncle Sa'd ibn Mu'adh is one of the chiefs of the Aws tribe. He is a wise and honourable man, and is well respected among the people of `Amr ibn `Awf. If he were to enter into Islam, our cause would triumph. Let us, therefore, go to their dwellings." Thus, Mus'ab went with As'ad to the quarter of Sa'd ibn Mu'adh and sat at one of their wells. A number of their youths gathered around him (Mus'ab), while he recited the Qur'an to them. When Sa'd ibn Mu'adh learnt of this, he said to Usayd ibn Hudayr, who was also one of their notables: "I have heard that Abu Umamah, As'ad ibn Zurarah has returned with a man of Quraysh to corrupt our youths. Go, therefore, to him and order him to desist." Usayd ibn Hudayr went to them, and As'ad, looking at him, said to Mus'ab: "This is an honourable man, and if he joins our cause, I have hope that it will be strengthened. Exert yourself with him in the cause of Allah." When Usayd came near them, he said: "O Abu Umamah, your uncle says that you should not come to our assembly, nor should you corrupt our youths. Beware of the men of the Aws, for your own safety! &
some interseting bible tidbits.? SOURCE OF INFO: http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_otb1.htm horizontal rule Books of the Law; The Pentateuch: These are the five foundational books of the Hebrew Scriptures: bulletGenesis describes: bulletGod's creation of the earth, its life forms and the rest of the universe in 6 days. God rested on the 7th day. bulletVarious Christian authorities have estimated the year of creation between 6000 BCE and 3963 BCE. bulletMany modern-day conservative Christians accept the date of 4004 BCE -- the estimate prepared by Bishop James Ussher, a 17th century Irish archbishop. bulletAncient Jewish scholars placed creation at 3761 BCE; this became the basis of the Jewish Calendar. bulletScientists and religious progressives generally agree that the universe started with a "big bang" circa 15 billion years ago, and that the Earth coalesced about 4.5 billion years ago. It may help visualize the difference between these beliefs by noting that the ratio between 4.5 billion years and 6,008 years is almost the ratio of the full length of a football field to the thickness of a piece of paper. bulletThere is a disturbing translation error found in Genesis 1:28 for many versions of the Bible: For example, the Jewish Publication Society's Tanakh, the King James Version, American King James Version, American Standard Version, English Revised Version, and Webster's Bible Translation all translate Genesis 1:28 as: "... Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth ..." or similar. The English word "replenish" implies that the earth people had existed prior to the creation of Adam and Eve, that the human race had largely or completely died out, and that the latter's task was to refill the Earth with humans. The Hebrew word translated as "replenish" is "male'" or "mala.' It has several meanings: to fill, refill, or replenish, to be fenced, and to satisfy. From the context, it is obvious that "to fill" is the correct meaning. The American Standard Bible, Bible in Basic English, Douay-Rheims Bible, Darby Bible Translation, GOD'S WORD® Translation, World English Bible, and Young's Literal Translation all use the word "fill." It seems that the translators of the King James Version and others simply made an error in translation. bulletThe first humans, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden, committed an act of disobedience towards God by eating some magical fruit. It somehow altered their mental capacities so that they became able to differentiate between good and evil. That is, they developed a moral sense for the first time. Most conservative Christians regard this as the fall of mankind, when sin first entered the world -- an event of overwhelming importance without which Jesus' role would be meaningless. Some liberal Christians regard this as as a myth describing the elevation of two imaginary proto-humans, Adam and Eve, to full human status. bulletAdam and Eve had three sons, Cain, Abel, and Seth. Eve presumably had daughters, or the human race would have died out at the second generation. The daughters' paternity is unknown. bulletCain murdered Abel. It is not surprising that the first recorded murder in the Bible was over a religious dispute. People have been committing mass murder and genocide ever since on the same grounds. bulletGod's second judgment on humanity; the genocide of almost the entire human race by drowning, saving only Noah and his family in a great flood. bulletHow God called Abraham, a resident of Ur of the Chaldees. He traveled to Haran and thence to Canaan. God issued to him and his descendents the Abrahamic Covenant, which guaranteed that his descendants would rule over the land. bulletThe experiences of Abraham's son Isaac, his grandson Jacob, and great-grandson Joseph who became the Prime Minister of Egypt. bulletHow Jacob and about 70 males in his family moved from Canaan to Egypt in the 17th century BCE because of a famine. bulletExodus describes: bulletAbsolutely nothing about the several generations between the death of Joseph at the close of Genesis and the birth of Moses at the beginning of Exodus. During this short interval, the Hebrews are reported as having experienced an unprecedented growth, becoming a group of over 600,000 males and their families totaling millions of persons. bulletThe terrible suffering of the Hebrews who were reduced to slavery, working in the Nile delta area. bulletGod's call to Moses to lead his people out of Egypt and into Canaan. Many conservative Christians place the Exodus from Egypt during the 15th century BCE. The Scofield Bible dates it at 1491 BCE. Other estimates have placed it in the 13th century BCE. here is a growing consensus among archaeologists that the lack of archeological evidence of the four decades of the Exodus shows that the event never happened. bulletGod "hardened the heart" of the Pharaoh so that he would make every effort to keep the Hebrews in Egypt as slaves. bulletGod sent a series of terrible plagues to Egypt, culminating with another genocide. This one killed every first born (human and animal) in Egypt who had not been protected by a ritual animal sacrifice and specific blood ritual. bulletThe Pharaoh finally allowed the Hebrews to leave. They were guided by a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. bulletThe Hebrews became trapped between the Red Sea and the advancing Egyptian army. God parted the water so that the Hebrews could walk across the sea bed on dry land. The pursuing soldiers drowned. bulletThree months later, Moses and his flock had completed a major detour to Mount Sinai. God delivered the Law to Moses , including the Ten Commandments and the Civil Law. A description was also given to Moses of the Tabernacle, a portable worship structure, that the Hebrews were to build. bulletLeviticus describes: bulletHow the priest is to perform the ritual sacrifice of male animals, the spreading of its blood on the altar, its skinning, chopping into pieces, and burning on the altar. Burnt offerings were used to make atonement for (literally "to cover") the people's sin. bulletThe descriptions of a number of other types of offerings for different purposes. bulletMoses anointed (literally "set apart") Aaron and his sons to serve as priests. Two of his sons, Nadab and Abihu, made an error in the ritual. God killed both of them in the temple. bulletThe Holiness Code is introduced. This includes practices that the people were to follow: foods to avoid, the ritual of circumcision on male infants, the purification of a woman who has given birth, sexual activities to avoid, and how to treat your neighbors. bulletRituals for the Day of Atonement when the combined sin of the nation was to be atoned for. bulletThe importance and eternal nature of the Sabbath day of rest every Saturday was emphasized. bulletA number of annual seasonal feasts were created: of Feast of Unleavened Bread, Feast of Weeks, the New Year, Day of Atonement and Feast of Booths. bulletEvery 7th year was to be a Sabbath Year: the land is to lie fallow, and male Hebrew slaves are to be set free. However, female slaves were owned as property forever. bulletEvery 50 year was to be a Jubilee Year: the land is to lie fallow, and the ownership of all purchased land was to revert to its original owner. bulletA series of promises and warnings were given to Israel. bulletNumbers describes: bulletA census was taken of the adult males bulletSome members of the tribe of Levi was chosen to form the priesthood bulletThe tribes stayed about a year at Mount Sinai, then left. bulletTwelve spies went into Canaan to determine its fertility and to assess the difficulty of possessing it. Most of them concluded that it would be impossible for Israel to drive the Canaanites out of their land. Many Israelites rebelled against Moses. bulletBecause of this lack of faith, God required Israel to wander, mostly aimlessly, for 40 years through the desert, bullet250 leaders of Israel challenged Moses' leadership, wishing to introduce an element of democracy into the group. God opened up the earth and killed all of them. bulletThere was a lack of water during their travels. God commanded Moses to speak to a rock in order to create a spring. In anger, he struck the rock instead. Because of his disobedience, God decided that Moses would never enter into the promised land of Canaan. bulletIsrael arrived on the East bank of the Jordan River, attacked its inhabitants and seized the land. Conservative Christians accept this description as literally true. Some liberal Christians and archaeologists suggest that the ancient Israelite's slavery in Egypt, the Exodus, and the invasion of Canaan never happened. Rather, the Israelites arose as a small group of Canaanites who were isolated from the rest, grew in size over a long period of time, and lived in peace with the Canaanites. bulletA second census was taken of male adults bulletJoshua was selected as the next leader of Israel bulletDeuteronomy describes: bulletWhile in the Plains of Moab, Moses reviewed the recent history of Israel with the generation that had been born since the tribes had left Sinai. He described God's promises and involvement; he described Israel's lack of faith and their rebellion. bulletThe role of the priests and parents to teach the law bulletThe expected genocide against the Canaanites; all men, women, children, infants, and newborns in the cities and surrounding land were to be exterminated without exception. bulletThere was to be no inter-marrying with the Canaanites; this instruction seems to have been redundant, because all of the Canaanites were to be killed on sight. bulletGod could be relied upon to bring regular rains to assure fertility of the land, as long as the people obeyed the Him. bulletMoses discussed God's Palestinian Covenant It deeded all of Canaan to them. This included parts of present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt and areas currently controlled by the Palestinians. It includes Damascus, Sidon, Tyre, Jerusalem, Gaza and a section of the Nile River. Although future sin by Israel might result in them being temporarily driven from the land, they could feel certain that it would eventually belong to them. [Although this contract between God and the ancient Israelites is commonly called the Palestinian Covenant, the name is an anachronism. The area involved was not called Palestine until the Roman era; it was derived from the Roman name for the Philistines -- a group who probably originated in Crete and perhaps from Cyprus. It is also a confusing term because it is easily confused with the modern Palestinian National Covenant created by the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1964.] bulletMoses died. God buried him in an undisclosed location. horizontal rule Authorship of the Pentateuch Jesus and the Gospel writers said that the Law was given by Moses, and the uniform tradition of the Jewish scribes and early Christian fathers, and the conclusion of conservative scholars to the present day, is that Genesis was written by Moses. Conservative Theologians generally believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, the first 5 books of the Bible. The Hebrew Scriptures state this. Jesus Christ believed this to be true. Some conservative Christians believe that he wrote all of the Pentateuch, except for Deuteronomy 34, which describes his own death and burial. Moses is believed to have written the books after the Israelite's exodus from Egypt, but before they entered Canaan. This would date the writing to the 40 year period when the Israelites were wandering through the desert, circa 1450 BCE. There are about two dozen verses in the Hebrew Scriptures and one dozen in the Christian Scriptures which state that Moses was the author. Since conservatives believe in the inerrancy (freedom from error) of the Bible, the matter of authorship is settled and not open to debate. Liberal Theologians: Over the past six centuries, a number of theologians have challenged the belief that Moses is the author. Richard Simon wrote a book during the 17th Century: Critical History of the Old Testament. He analyzed the books attributed to Moses and found different writing styles, different names used for God, and groups of laws that seem to have patched together from various original sources. Jean Astruc during the 18th century and Julius Wellhausen during the 19th century further developed these thoughts further. A consensus has been achieved among liberal and mainline theologians. They now accept the Documentary Hypothesis. They have concluded that most of the Pentateuch was written by four authors or groups of authors: "J" (who used Jehovah as the name for God). "E" (who used Elohim); "D", the authors of the book of Deuteronomy and "P" who wrote the "priestly" sections which deal with ritual, liturgy and the dates and genealogical passages. The writings were then edited into a single document by one or more redactors ("R"). The interleaving of the J and P accounts of the Noachian flood is one clear example of multiple authorships. To the writings of J, E, and P was added additional material obtained from other Mid-Eastern sources; The two creation stories in the Book of Genesis are examples. Yeah well ppl who ARE religious SHOULD read it! to the last poster, no it is not WRONG and No it is not my information, it is the WEBSITES information. AND those ppl ACTUALLY study ALL religions and ALL bibles as I understand and you probably dont even READ OR STUDY let alone UNDERSTAND any bible for that matter, unless of course you are just close-minded, and still dont UNDERSTAND your bible!
obama lier? i think so? Open QuestionShow me another » Why will Michelle Hussein Obama pay $50,000 for a facelift?she says I look like a ape? Obama LAUNDRY LIST OF LIES. 1.) Selma Got Me Born - LIAR, your parents felt safe enough to have you in 1961 - Selma had no effect on your birth, as Selma was in 1965. 2.) Father Was A Goat Herder - LIAR, he was a privileged, well educated youth, who went on to work with the Kenyan Government. 3.) Father Was A Proud Freedom Fighter - LIAR, he was part of one of the most corrupt and violent governments Kenya has ever had 4.) My Family Has Strong Ties To African Freedom - LIAR, your cousin Raila Odinga has created mass violence in attempting to overturn a legitimate election in 2007, in Kenya. It is the first widespread violence in decades. 5.) My Grandmother Has Always Been A Christian - LIAR, she does her daily Salat prayers at 5am according to her own interviews. Not to mention, Christianity wouldn’t allow her to have been one of 14 wives to 1 man. 6.) My Name is African Swahili - LIAR, your name is Arabic and ‘Baraka’ (from which Barack came) means ‘blessed’ in that language. Hussein is also Arabic and so is Obama. 7.) I Never Practiced Islam - LIAR, you practiced it daily at school, where you were registered as a Muslim and kept that faith for 31 years,until your wife made you change, so you could run for office. 8.) My School In Indonesia Was Christian - LIAR, you were registered as Muslim there and got in trouble in Koranic Studies for making faces (check your own book). 9.) I Was Fluent In Indonesian - LIAR, not one teacher says you could speak the language. 10.) Because I Lived In Indonesia, I Have More Foreign Experience - LIAR, you were there from the ages of 6 to 10, and couldn’t even speak the language. What did you learn, how to study the Koran and watch cartoons. 11.) I Am Stronger On Foreign Affairs - LIAR, except for Africa (surprise) and the Middle East (bigger surprise), you have never been anywhere else on the planet and thus have NO experience with our closest allies. 12.) I Blame My Early Drug Use On Ethnic Confusion - LIAR, you were quite content in high school to be Barry Obama, no mention of Kenya and no mention of struggle to identify - your classmates said you were just fine. 13.)An Ebony Article Moved Me To Run For Office - LIAR, Ebony has yet to find the article you mention in your book. It doesn’t, and never did, exist. 14.) A Life Magazine Article Changed My Outlook On Life - LIAR, Life has yet to find the article you mention in your book. It doesn’t, and never did, exist. 15.) I Won’t Run On A National Ticket In ‘08 - LIAR, here you are, despite saying, live on TV, that you would not have enough experience by then, and you are all about having experience first. 16.) Present Votes Are Common In Illinois - LIAR, they are common for YOU, but not many others have 130 NO VOTES. 17.) Oops, I Misvoted - LIAR, only when caught by church groups and democrats, did you beg to change your misvote. 18.) I Was A Professor Of Law - LIAR, you were a senior lecturer ON LEAVE. 19.) I Was A Constitutional Lawyer - LIAR, you were a senior lecturer ON LEAVE. 20.) Without Me, There Would Be No Ethics Bill - LIAR, you didn’t write it,introduce it, change it, or create it. 21.) The Ethics Bill Was Hard To Pass - LIAR, it took just 14 days from start to finish. 22.) I Wrote A Tough Nuclear Bill - LIAR, your bill was rejected by your own party for its pandering and lack of all regulation - mainly because of your Nuclear Donor, Exelon, from which David Axelrod came. 23.) I Have Released My State Records - LIAR, as of March, 2008, state bills you sponsored or voted for have yet to be released, exposing all the special interests pork hidden within. 24.) I Took On The Asbestos Altgeld Gardens Mess - LIAR, you were part of a large group of people who remedied Altgeld Gardens. You failed to mention anyone else but yourself, in your books. 25.) My Economics Bill Will Help America - LIAR, your 111 economic policies were just combined into a proposal which lost 99-0, and even YOU voted against your own bill. 26.) I Have Been A Bold Leader In Illinois - LIAR, even your own supporters claim to have not seen BOLD action on your part. 27.) I Passed 26 Of My Own Bills In One Year - LIAR, they were not YOUR bills, but rather handed to you, after their creation by a fellow Senator, to assist you in a future bid for higher office. 28.) No One Contacted Canada About NAFTA - LIAR, the Candian Government issued the names and a memo of the conversation your campaign had with them. 29.) I Am Tough On Terrorism - LIAR, you missed the Iran Resolution vote on terrorism and your good friend Ali Abunimah supports the destruction of Israel. 30.) I Am Not Acting As President Yet - LIAR, after the NAFTA Memo, a dead terrorist in the FARC, in Colombia, was found with a letter stating how you and he were working together on getting FARC recognized officially. 31.) I Didn’t Run Ads In Florida - LIAR, you allowed national ads to run 8-12 times per day for two weeks - and you still lost. 32.) I Won Michigan - LIAR, no you didn’t. 33.) I won Nevada - LIAR, no you did not. 34.) I Want All Votes To Count - LIAR, you said let the delegates decide. 35.) I Want Americans To Decide - LIAR, you prefer caucuses that limit the vote, confuse the voters, force a public vote, and only operate during small windows of time. 36.) I passed 900 Bills in the State Senate - LIAR, you passed 26, most of which you didn’t write yourself. 37.) My Campaign Was Extorted By A Friend - LIAR, that friend is threatening to sue if you do not stop saying this. Obama has stopped saying this. 38.) I Believe In Fairness, Not Tactics - LIAR, you used tactics to eliminate Alice Palmer from running against you. 39.) I Don’t Take PAC Money - LIAR, you take loads of it. 40.) I don’t Have Lobbysists - LIAR, you have over 47 lobbyists, and counting. 41.) My Campaign Had Nothing To Do With The 1984 Ad - LIAR, your own campaign worker made the ad on his Apple in one afternoon. 42.) My Campaign Never Took Over MySpace - LIAR, Tom, who started MySpace issued a warning about this advertising to MySpace clients. 43.) I Inspire People With My Words - LIAR, you inspire people with other people’s words. 44.) I Have Passed Bills In The U.S. Senate - LIAR, you have passed A BILL in the U.S. Senate - for Africa, which shows YOUR priorities. 45.) I Have Always Been Against Iraq - LIAR, you weren’t in office to vote against it AND you have voted to fund it every single time, unlike Kucinich, who seems to be out gutting you Obama. You also seem to be stepping back from your departure date - AGAIN. 46.) I Have Always Supported Universal Health Care - LIAR, your plan leaves us all to pay the 15,000,000 who don’t have to buy it. 47.) I Only Found Out About My Investment Conflicts Via Mail - LIAR, both companies you site as having sent you letters about this conflict have no record of any such letter ever being created or sent. 48.) I Am As Patriotic As Anyone - LIAR, you won’t wear a flag pin and you don’t put your hand over your heart during the Anthem. 49.) My Wife Didn’t Mean What She Said About Pride In Country - LIAR, your wife’s words follow lock-step in the vain of Wright and Farrahkan, in relation to their contempt and hatred of America. 50.) Wal-Mart Is A Company I Wouldn’t Support - LIAR, your wife has received nearly a quater of a million dollars through Treehouse, which is connected to Wal-Mart. 51.) Treehouse Is A Small Company - LIAR, the CEO of Treehouse last year, made more than the CEO of Wal-Mart, according to public records. 52.) University Of Chicago Hospital Pay Is Fair - LIAR, your wife’s pay raise was nearly 150% her already bloated rate and the hospital is a Non-Profit Hospital, which made $100,000,000 in the last 3 years. They overcharge blacks VS whites for services, and overcharge everyone in general by 538%! 53.)I Barely Know Rezko - Only 5 Billed Hours - LIAR, you have known him for 17 years, and decided to do a real estate deal with him during a time when he was proven to be under investigation. Despite this, you divided your property and had them take off $300K before the mortgage problems started. Then Rezko’s wife buys the lot beside it that you can’t afford, saving you $625,000. 54.) My Donations Have Been Checked Thoroughly - LIAR, you only gave back Hsu ($72K) and Rezko ($150K) their money when publically called on their involvement in your campaigns. 55.) My Church Is Like Any Other Christian Church - LIAR, your church is so extreme, the pastor who married you, Rev. Wright, just got done blaming the US for 9/11 and named Louis Farrahkan their person of the year. 56.) I Disagree With My Church All The Time - LIAR, you still have yet to repudiate Wright, who married you and your wife, and you still donate large sums of money to assist the church in furthering its message - hatred and revenge. You donated in 2006 alone, $22,500 to the church that you so terribly disagree with. That is nearly $500 PER WEEK - that sure is disagreement, Senator Obama. 57.) I Have Clean Connections Despite Rezko - LIAR, you are not only connected to Exelon and Rezko, you are also connected to Hillary PAC supporter Mr. Hsu, AND an Iraqi Billionaire of ill repute, Nadhmi Auchi, who ripped off people in the Food For Oil, Iraqi deal. Seems Mr. Auchi may have helped Obama buy his million dollar property long before Obama had millions of dollars. Wonder what favors Mr. Auchi expects, when Obama leaves Iraq free to be taken over by special interests such as him. 58.) I never heard sermons like Rev. Wright’s, that have been in videos all day, You Tube - LIAR! 3 days later during your Mea Culpa BS speech you said “Did I hear controversial statements while sitting in the pew yes!"
Does Obama have an integrity problem? Obama LAUNDRY LIST OF LIES. 1.) Selma Got Me Born - LIAR, your parents felt safe enough to have you in 1961 - Selma had no effect on your birth, as Selma was in 1965. 2.) Father Was A Goat Herder - LIAR, he was a privileged, well educated youth, who went on to work with the Kenyan Government. 3.) Father Was A Proud Freedom Fighter - LIAR, he was part of one of the most corrupt and violent governments Kenya has ever had 4.) My Family Has Strong Ties To African Freedom - LIAR, your cousin Raila Odinga has created mass violence in attempting to overturn a legitimate election in 2007, in Kenya. It is the first widespread violence in decades. 5.) My Grandmother Has Always Been A Christian - LIAR, she does her daily Salat prayers at 5am according to her own interviews. Not to mention, Christianity wouldn’t allow her to have been one of 14 wives to 1 man. 6.) My Name is African Swahili - LIAR, your name is Arabic and ‘Baraka’ (from which Barack came) means ‘blessed’ in that language. Hussein is also Arabic and so is Obama. 7.) I Never Practiced Islam - LIAR, you practiced it daily at school, where you were registered as a Muslim and kept that faith for 31 years,until your wife made you change, so you could run for office. 8.) My School In Indonesia Was Christian - LIAR, you were registered as Muslim there and got in trouble in Koranic Studies for making faces (check your own book). 9.) I Was Fluent In Indonesian - LIAR, not one teacher says you could speak the language. 10.) Because I Lived In Indonesia, I Have More Foreign Experience - LIAR, you were there from the ages of 6 to 10, and couldn’t even speak the language. What did you learn, how to study the Koran and watch cartoons. 11.) I Am Stronger On Foreign Affairs - LIAR, except for Africa (surprise) and the Middle East (bigger surprise), you have never been anywhere else on the planet and thus have NO experience with our closest allies. 12.) I Blame My Early Drug Use On Ethnic Confusion - LIAR, you were quite content in high school to be Barry Obama, no mention of Kenya and no mention of struggle to identify - your classmates said you were just fine. 13.)An Ebony Article Moved Me To Run For Office - LIAR, Ebony has yet to find the article you mention in your book. It doesn’t, and never did, exist. 14.) A Life Magazine Article Changed My Outlook On Life - LIAR, Life has yet to find the article you mention in your book. It doesn’t, and never did, exist. 15.) I Won’t Run On A National Ticket In ‘08 - LIAR, here you are, despite saying, live on TV, that you would not have enough experience by then, and you are all about having experience first. 16.) Present Votes Are Common In Illinois - LIAR, they are common for YOU, but not many others have 130 NO VOTES. 17.) Oops, I Misvoted - LIAR, only when caught by church groups and democrats, did you beg to change your misvote. 18.) I Was A Professor Of Law - LIAR, you were a senior lecturer ON LEAVE. 19.) I Was A Constitutional Lawyer - LIAR, you were a senior lecturer ON LEAVE. 20.) Without Me, There Would Be No Ethics Bill - LIAR, you didn’t write it,introduce it, change it, or create it. 21.) The Ethics Bill Was Hard To Pass - LIAR, it took just 14 days from start to finish. 22.) I Wrote A Tough Nuclear Bill - LIAR, your bill was rejected by your own party for its pandering and lack of all regulation - mainly because of your Nuclear Donor, Exelon, from which David Axelrod came. 23.) I Have Released My State Records - LIAR, as of March, 2008, state bills you sponsored or voted for have yet to be released, exposing all the special interests pork hidden within. 24.) I Took On The Asbestos Altgeld Gardens Mess - LIAR, you were part of a large group of people who remedied Altgeld Gardens. You failed to mention anyone else but yourself, in your books. 25.) My Economics Bill Will Help America - LIAR, your 111 economic policies were just combined into a proposal which lost 99-0, and even YOU voted against your own bill. 26.) I Have Been A Bold Leader In Illinois - LIAR, even your own supporters claim to have not seen BOLD action on your part. 27.) I Passed 26 Of My Own Bills In One Year - LIAR, they were not YOUR bills, but rather handed to you, after their creation by a fellow Senator, to assist you in a future bid for higher office. 28.) No One Contacted Canada About NAFTA - LIAR, the Candian Government issued the names and a memo of the conversation your campaign had with them. 29.) I Am Tough On Terrorism - LIAR, you missed the Iran Resolution vote on terrorism and your good friend Ali Abunimah supports the destruction of Israel. 30.) I Am Not Acting As President Yet - LIAR, after the NAFTA Memo, a dead terrorist in the FARC, in Colombia, was found with a letter stating how you and he were working together on getting FARC recognized officially. 31.) I Didn’t Run Ads In Florida - LIAR, you allowed national ads to run 8-12 times per day for two weeks - and you still lost. 32.) I Won Michigan - LIAR, no you didn’t. 33.) I won Nevada - LIAR, no you did not. 34.) I Want All Votes To Count - LIAR, you said let the delegates decide. 35.) I Want Americans To Decide - LIAR, you prefer caucuses that limit the vote, confuse the voters, force a public vote, and only operate during small windows of time. 36.) I passed 900 Bills in the State Senate - LIAR, you passed 26, most of which you didn’t write yourself. 37.) My Campaign Was Extorted By A Friend - LIAR, that friend is threatening to sue if you do not stop saying this. Obama has stopped saying this. 38.) I Believe In Fairness, Not Tactics - LIAR, you used tactics to eliminate Alice Palmer from running against you. 39.) I Don’t Take PAC Money - LIAR, you take loads of it. 40.) I don’t Have Lobbysists - LIAR, you have over 47 lobbyists, and counting. 41.) My Campaign Had Nothing To Do With The 1984 Ad - LIAR, your own campaign worker made the ad on his Apple in one afternoon. 42.) My Campaign Never Took Over MySpace - LIAR, Tom, who started MySpace issued a warning about this advertising to MySpace clients. 43.) I Inspire People With My Words - LIAR, you inspire people with other people’s words. 44.) I Have Passed Bills In The U.S. Senate - LIAR, you have passed A BILL in the U.S. Senate - for Africa, which shows YOUR priorities. 45.) I Have Always Been Against Iraq - LIAR, you weren’t in office to vote against it AND you have voted to fund it every single time, unlike Kucinich, who seems to be out gutting you Obama. You also seem to be stepping back from your departure date - AGAIN. 46.) I Have Always Supported Universal Health Care - LIAR, your plan leaves us all to pay the 15,000,000 who don’t have to buy it. 47.) I Only Found Out About My Investment Conflicts Via Mail - LIAR, both companies you site as having sent you letters about this conflict have no record of any such letter ever being created or sent. 48.) I Am As Patriotic As Anyone - LIAR, you won’t wear a flag pin and you don’t put your hand over your heart during the Anthem. 49.) My Wife Didn’t Mean What She Said About Pride In Country - LIAR, your wife’s words follow lock-step in the vain of Wright and Farrahkan, in relation to their contempt and hatred of America. 50.) Wal-Mart Is A Company I Wouldn’t Support - LIAR, your wife has received nearly a quater of a million dollars through Treehouse, which is connected to Wal-Mart. 51.) Treehouse Is A Small Company - LIAR, the CEO of Treehouse last year, made more than the CEO of Wal-Mart, according to public records. 52.) University Of Chicago Hospital Pay Is Fair - LIAR, your wife’s pay raise was nearly 150% her already bloated rate and the hospital is a Non-Profit Hospital, which made $100,000,000 in the last 3 years. They overcharge blacks VS whites for services, and overcharge everyone in general by 538%! 53.)I Barely Know Rezko - Only 5 Billed Hours - LIAR, you have known him for 17 years, and decided to do a real estate deal with him during a time when he was proven to be under investigation. Despite this, you divided your property and had them take off $300K before the mortgage problems started. Then Rezko’s wife buys the lot beside it that you can’t afford, saving you $625,000. 54.) My Donations Have Been Checked Thoroughly - LIAR, you only gave back Hsu ($72K) and Rezko ($150K) their money when publically called on their involvement in your campaigns. 55.) My Church Is Like Any Other Christian Church - LIAR, your church is so extreme, the pastor who married you, Rev. Wright, just got done blaming the US for 9/11 and named Louis Farrahkan their person of the year. 56.) I Disagree With My Church All The Time - LIAR, you still have yet to repudiate Wright, who married you and your wife, and you still donate large sums of money to assist the church in furthering its message - hatred and revenge. You donated in 2006 alone, $22,500 to the church that you so terribly disagree with. That is nearly $500 PER WEEK - that sure is disagreement, Senator Obama. 57.) I Have Clean Connections Despite Rezko - LIAR, you are not only connected to Exelon and Rezko, you are also connected to Hillary PAC supporter Mr. Hsu, AND an Iraqi Billionaire of ill repute, Nadhmi Auchi, who ripped off people in the Food For Oil, Iraqi deal. Seems Mr. Auchi may have helped Obama buy his million dollar property long before Obama had millions of dollars. Wonder what favors Mr. Auchi expects, when Obama leaves Iraq free to be taken over by special interests such as him. 58.) I never heard sermons like Rev. Wright’s, that have been in videos all day, You Tube - LIAR! 3 days later during your Mea Culpa BS speech you said “Did I hear controversial statements while sitting in the pew yes!" 59.) Iran is a tiny threat!..not Iran is killing us!!!!!!! 60.) Obama is for public funding until he gets $250,000,000, and now he is against it! 61) Obama just came out and said that he has ALWAYS considered the right to bear arms an individual right. LIAR! You said in February that you agreed with the Washington D.C. gun ban, and that it was Constitutional! 62) Obama is now running a commercial claiming credit for Welfare reform. REPUBLICANS did welfare reform. His numbers are even lying. He claims 80% when it is actually 60%.
whats The Real Story Of Mary From the Holy Quran? 1 Kaf. Ha. Ya. `Ain. Sad. This is the only Sura which begins with these five Abbreviated Letters, K.,H.,Y.,A.,S. For Abbreviated Letters generally. 2 (This is) a recital of the Mercy of thy Lord to His Servant Zakariya. The Mercy of Allah to Zakriya was shown in many ways: (1) in the acceptance of his prayer; (2) in bestowing a son like Yahya; and (3) in the love between father and son, in addition to the work which Yahya did as Allah's Messenger for the world. 3 Behold! he cried to his Lord in secret . In secret: because he feared that his own family and relatives were going wrong, and he wanted to keep the lamp of Allah burning bright. He could not very well mention the fear about his colleagues (who were his relations) 4 Praying: "O my Lord! infirm indeed are my bones and the hair of my head doth glisten with grey: but never am I unblest O my Lord in my prayer to Thee! This preface shows the fervent faith of Zakariya. Zakariya was a prophet of the Most High Allah. His office was in the Temple, and his relatives were his colleagues. But he found in them no true spirit of the service of Allah and man. He was filled with anxiety as to who would uphold the godly ideas he had in mind, which were strange to his worldly colleagues. 5 "Now I fear (what) my relatives (and colleagues) (will do) after me: but my wife is barren: so give me an heir as from Thyself His was not merely a desire for a son. If it had been, he would have prayed much earlier in his life, when he was a young man. He was too full of true piety to put merely selfish things into his prayers. But here was a public need, in the service of the Lord. 6 "(One that) will (truly) represent me and represent the posterity of Jacob; and make him O my Lord! one with whom Thou art well-pleased!" It is true that an heir inherits property, but his higher duty is to represent in everything the personality of him from whom he inherits. It is doubtful whether Zakariya had any worldly property. But he had character and virtue, as a man of God, and this he wanted to transmit to his heir as his most precious possession. It was almost the most precious possession of the posterity of Jacob. The people around him had fallen away from Allah's Message. Could his heir, like him, try and renew it? 7 (His prayer was answered): "O Zakariya! We give thee good news of a son: his name shall be Yahya: on none by that name have We conferred distinction before." This was John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus. In accordance with his father's prayer he, and Jesus for whom he prepared the way, renewed the Message of Allah, which had been corrupted and lost among the Israelites. The Arabic form Yahya suggests "Life". The Hebrew form is Johanan, which means "Jehovah has been Gracious". 8 He said: "O my Lord! how shall I have a son when my wife is barren and I have grown quite decrepit from old age?" Who is the "He" in this clause? As I have construed it, following the majority of Commentators, it means the angel who brought the message from Allah. But some Commentators construe it to refer to Zakariya. In that case the meaning will be: Zakariya after a little reflection said (in his wonder) "So!", i.e., "Can it really be so? Can I really have a son in my old age?" 9 He said: "So (it will be): thy Lord saith `That is easy for Me: I did indeed create thee before when thou hadst been nothing!' " Every man was nothing just before he was created, i.e., his personality was called into being by Allah. Even if there are material processes in forming the body, in accordance with the laws of nature, the real creative force is the power of Allah. But here there is a subtler meaning. John was the harbinger of Jesus, preparing the way for him; and this sentence also prepares us for the more wonderful birth of Jesus himself, see verse 21 below. Everything is possible with Allah. 10 (Zakariya) said "O my Lord! give me a Sign." "Thy Sign" was the answer "shall be that thou shalt speak to no man for three nights although thou art not dumb." 2464 2465 The "Sign", was in order to convince Zakariya that the Lord's promise was true. 11 So Zakariya came out to his people from his chamber: he told them by signs to celebrate Allah's praises in the morning and in the evening. 12 (To his son came the command): "O Yahya! take hold of the Book with might": and We gave him wisdom even as a youth. Time passes. The son is born. In this section of the Sura the centre of interest is Yahya, and the instruction is now given to him. 'Keep fast hold of Allah's revelation with all your might': for an unbelieving world had either corrupted or neglected it, and Yahya (John the Baptist) was to prepare the way for, Jesus, who was coming to renew and re-interpret it. Hukm, translated Wisdom, implies something more than Wisdom; it is the Wisdom or Judgment that is entitied to judge and command, as in the matter of denouncing sin. 13 And pity (for all creatures) as from Us and purity: he was devout John the Baptist did not live long. He was imprisoned by Herod, the tetrarch (provincial ruler under the Roman Empire), whom he had reproved for his sins, and eventually beheaded at the instigation of the woman with whom Herod was infatuated. But even in his young life, he was granted (1) wisdom by Allah, for he boldly denounced sin; (2) gentle pity and love for all Allah's creatures, for he moved among the humble and lowly, and despised "soft raiment"; and (3) purity of life, for he renounced the world and lived in the wilderness. All his work he did in his youth. These things showed themselves in his conduct, for he was devout, showing love to Allah and to Allah's creatures, and more particularly to his parents (for we are considering that aspect of his life): this was also shown by the fact that he never used violence, from an attitude of arrogance, nor entertained a spirit of rebellion against divine Law. 14 And kind to his parents and he was not overbearing or rebellious. 15 So Peace on him the day he was born the day that he dies and the day that he will be raised up to life (again)! This is spoken as in the life-time of Yahya. Peace and Allah's Blessings, were on him when he was born; they continue when he is about to die an unjust death at the hands of a tyrant; and they will be specially manifest at the Day of Judgment. 16 Relate in the Book (the story of) Mary when she withdrew from her family to a place in the East. the story of Mary. Here the whole theme is different: it is the personal side of the experiences of the worshippers of Allah in relation to their families or environment. To a private eastern chamber, perhaps in the Temple. She went into privacy, from her people and from people in general, for prayer and devotion. It was in this state of purity that the angel appeared to her in the shape of a man. She thought it was a man. She was frightened, and she adjured him not to invade her privacy. 17 She placed a screen (to screen herself) from them: then We sent to her Our angel and he appeared before her as a man in all respects. 18 She said: "I seek refuge from thee to (Allah) Most Gracious: (come not near) if thou dost fear Allah." 19 He said: "Nay I am only a messenger from thy Lord (to announce) to thee the gift of a holy son." Allah had destined her to be the mother of the Prophet Jesus Christ, and now had come the time when this should be announced to her. 20 She said: "How shall I have a son seeing that no man has touched me and I am not unchaste?" 21 He said: "So (it will be): thy Lord saith `That is easy for Me: and (We wish) to appoint him as a Sign unto men and a Mercy from Us': it is a matter (so) decreed." The mission of Jesus is announced in two ways (1) he was to be a Sign to men; his wonderful birth and wonderful life were to turn an ungodly world back to Allah; and (2) his mission was similar to that of all prophets of Allah. But the point here is that the Israelites, to whom Jesus was sent, were a hardened race, for whom the message of Jesus was truly a gospel of Mercy. For anything that Allah wishes to create, He says "Be", and it is . There is no interval between His decree and its accomplishment, except such as He imposes by His decree. Time may be only a projection of our own minds in this world of relativity. 22 So she conceived him and she retired with him to a remote place. The annunciation and the conception, we may suppose, took place in Nazareth (of Galilee), say 65 miles north of Jerusalem. The delivery took place in Bethlehem about 6 miles south of Jerusalem. It was a remote place, not only with reference to the distance of 71 miles, but because in Bethlehem itself the birth was in an obscure corner under a palm-tree, from which perhaps the babe was afterwards removed to a manger in a stable. 23 And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm-tree: she cried (in her anguish): "Ah! would that I had died before this! Would that I had been a thing forgotten and out of sight!" She was but human, and suffered the pangs of an expectant mother, with no one to attend on her. The circumstances being peculiar, she had got far away from her people. 24 But he cried to her from beneath the (palm-free): "Grieve not! for thy Lord hath provided a rivulet beneath thee; 25 "And shake towards thyself the trunk of the palm-tree: it will let fall fresh ripe dates upon thee. Unseen Providence had seen that she should not suffer from thirst or from hunger. The rivulet provided her with water also for ablutions. 26 "So eat and drink and cool (thine) eye. And if thou dost see any man say `I have vowed a fast to (Allah) Most Gracious and this day will I enter into no talk with any human being.' " Cool thine eye: An idiom for "comfort thyself and be glad". The literal meaning should not, however, be lost sight of. She was to cool her eyes (perhaps full of tears) with the fresh water of the rivulet and take comfort that a remarkable babe had been born to her. She was also to look around, and if any one came near, she was to decline all conversation. It was quite true: she was under a vow, and could not talk to any one. She was to decline all conversation with man or woman, on the plea of a vow to Allah. The "fast" here does not mean abstinence literally from eating and drinking. She has just been advised to eat the dates and drink of the stream. It means abstinence from the ordinary household meals, and indeed from human intercourse generally. 27 At length she brought the (babe) to her people carrying him (in her arms). They said: "O Mary! truly an amazing thing hast thou brought! The amazement of the people knew no bounds. In any case they were ready to think the worst of her, as she had disappeared from her kin for some time. But now she comes, shamelessly parading a babe in her arms! How she had disgraced the house of Aaron, the fountain of priesthood! We may suppose that the scene took place in the Temple in Jerusalem, or in Nazareth. 28 "O sister of Aaron! thy father was not a man of evil nor thy mother a woman unchaste!" Aaron the brother of Moses was the first in the line of Israelite priesthood. Mary and her cousin Elisabeth (mother of Yahya) came of a priestly family, and were therefore, "sisters of Aaron" or daughters of 'Imran (who was Aaron's father). See n. 375 to iii. 35. Mary is reminded of her high lineage and the unexceptionable morals of her father and mother. How, they said, she had fallen, and disgraced the name of her progenitors! 29 But she pointed to the babe. They said: "How can we talk to one who is a child in the cradle?" What could Mary do? How could she explain? Would they, in their censorious mood, accept her explanation? All she could do was to point to the child, who, she knew, was no ordinary child. And the child came to her rescue. By a miracle he spoke, defended his mother, and preached-to an unbelieving audience. 30 He said: "I am indeed a servant of Allah: He hath given me revelation and made me a prophet; 31 "And He hath made me Blessed wheresoever I be and hath enjoined on me Prayer and Charity as long as I live; There is a parallelism throughout the accounts of Jesus and Yahya, with some variations. Both the parallelisms and the variations are interesting. For instance Jesus declares at the very outset that he is a servant of Allah, thus negativing the false notion that he was Allah or the son of Allah. The greatness of Yahya is described in terms that are not applied to Jesus, but the verses xix. 14-15 as applied to Yahya are in almost identical terms with those applied to Jesus here. Devotion in Prayer and Charity is a good description of Christ at its best, and pity, purity, and devotion in Yahya are a good description of the ways leading to Prayer and Charity, just as John led to Jesus. 32 "(He) hath made me kind to my mother and not overbearing or miserable; Overbearing violence is not only unjust and harmful to those on whom it is practised; it is perhaps even more harmful to the person who practises it, for his soul becomes turbid, unsettled, and ultimately unhappy and wretched,-the state of those in Hell. Here the negative qualities are "not overbearing or miserable." As applied to John they were "not overbearing or rebellious." John bore his punishment from the State without any protest or drawing back. 33 "So Peace is on me the day I was born the day that I die and the Day that I shall be raised up to life (again)"! and Christ was not crucified. 34 Such (was) Jesus the son of Mary: (it is) a statement of truth about which they (vainly) dispute. The disputations about the nature of Jesus Christ were vain, but also persistent and sanguinary. The modern Christian churches have thrown them into the background, but they would do well to abandon irrational dogmas altogether. 35 It is not befitting to (the majesty of) Allah that He should beget a son. Glory be to Him! When He determines a matter He only says to it "Be" and it is. Begetting a son is a physical act depending on the needs of men's animal nature. Allah Most High is independent of all needs, and it is derogatory to Him to attribute such an act to Him. It is merely a relic of pagan and anthropomorphic materialist superstitions. 36 Verily Allah is my Lord and your Lord: Him therefore serve ye: this is a Way that is straight. As opposed to the crooked superstitions which take refuge in all sorts of metaphysical sophistries to prove three in one and one in three. In the Qur-an there is no crookedness (xviii. 1). Christ's teaching was simple, like his life, but the Christians have made it crooked. 37 But the sects differ among themselves: and woe to the Unbelievers because of the (coming) Judgment of a momentous Day! Judgment: the word in the original is Mash-had, which implies many things: (1) the time or place where evidence is taken, as in a Court of Judgment; (2) the time or place where people are produced (to be judged); and (3) the occasion for such production for the taking of evidence. A very expressive phrase for the Day of Judgment. 38 How plainly will they see and hear the Day that they will appear before Us! But the unjust today are in error manifest! and that whole passage, where the Resurrection is described. 39 But warn them of the Day of Distress when the matter will be determined: for (behold) they are negligent and they do not believe! Hasrat: Sighs, sighing, regrets, distress. 40 It is We Who will inherit the earth and all beings thereon: to Us will they all be returned. Material property passes from one to another: when one dies, another inherits it. Allah gives life and death, and all that survives after physical death goes back to Allah, the original source of all things. 41 Also mention in the Book (the story of) Abraham: he was a man of Truth a prophet. 42 Behold he said to his father: "O my father! why worship that which heareth not and seeth not and can profit thee nothing? The reference to Abraham here is in relation to his tender solicitude for his father, who had not received the light of Unity, and to whom Abraham wanted to be a guide and friend. 43 "O my father! to me hath come knowledge which hath not reached thee: so follow me: I will guide thee to a Way that is even and straight. Some are more receptive of Light than others. It is their duty and privilege to guide and point to the right Way. Sawiyan-right, smooth, even; complete, perfect; hence the derived meaning: in full possession of all the physical senses; in that context, 'not dumb': , when the angel appears in the form of a man, 'completely like' a man, a man 'in all respects.' 44 "O my father! serve not Satan: for Satan is a rebel against (Allah) Most Gracious. The rebellion is all the more heinous and inexcusable, considering that Allah is Most Just, Most Merciful, Most Gracious. 45 "O my father! I fear lest a Penalty afflict thee from (Allah) Most Gracious so that thou become to Satan a friend." To entertain a feeling of friendliness, instead of aversion, to Evil, is in itself a degradation of our nature, a Penalty which Allah imposes on our deliberate rejection of the Truth. And the friendliness to Evil also implies the sharing of the outlawry of Evil. 46 (The father) replied: "Dost thou hate my gods O Abraham? If thou forbear not I will indeed stone thee: now get away from me for a good long while!" Note the gentle persuasive tone of Abraham in his speeches (for we may suppose those sentences to sum up a long course of arguments) and contrasted with the brusque and repellent tone of the father's reply in this verse. The one was the outcome of the true Light which had come to Abraham from Allah, as the other was the outcome of Pagan arrogance and the worship of brute force. The spiritual lesson from this episode of Abraham's life may be stated in four propositions: (1) the pious son is dutiful to his father and wishes him well in all things, material and spiritual, (2) if the father refuses Allah's Light, the son will do his utmost to bring such Light to the father; (3) having received the Light, the son will never renounce that Light, even if he has to forfeit his father's love and renounce his home; (4) even if the father repels him and turns him out, his answer will be a soft answer, full of love and forgiveness on the one hand, but firmness on behalf of Truth on the other. 47 Abraham said: "Peace be on thee: I will pray to my Lord for thy forgiveness: for He is to me Most Gracious. where this promise of Abraham to pray for his father is referred to, and its limitations pointed out. 48 "And I will turn away from you (all) and from those whom ye invoke besides Allah: I will call on my Lord: Perhaps by my prayer to my Lord I shall be not unblest." Abraham left his father and the home of his fathers (Ur of the Chaldees) and never returned. He left because he was turned out, and because it was not possible for him to make any compromise with what was false in religion. In return for abuse, he spoke gentle words. And he expressed his fervent hope that at least he (Abraham) would have Allah's blessing in reply to his prayers. Here was a prefigurement of another Hijrat many centuries later! In both cases the prayer was abundantly fulfilled. 49 When he had turned away from them and from those whom they worshipped besides Allah We bestowed on him Isaac and Jacob and each one of them We made a prophet. Isaac and Isaac's son Jacob are mentioned here as carrying on one line of Abraham's traditions. The other line was carried on by Isma'il, who is mentioned independently five verses lower down, as his line got special honour in the Holy Prophet of Islam. That is why his mention comes after that of Moses. 50 And We bestowed of Our Mercy on them and We granted them lofty honor on the tongue of truth. Abraham and his son and grandson Isaac and Jacob, and their line, maintained the banner of Allah's truth for many generations, and they won deservedly high praise-the praise of truth-on the tongues of men. Abraham prayed that he should be praised by the tongue of truth among men to come in later ages: xxvi. 84. Ordinary praise may mean nothing: it may be due to selfish flattery on the part of others or artful management by the person praised. Praise on the tongue of sincere truth is praise indeed! 51 Also mention in the Book (the story of) Moses: for he was specially chosen and he was an apostle (and) a prophet. Moses was (1) especially chosen, and therefore prepared and instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, in order that he might free his people from Egyptian bondage; there may also be a reference to Moses's title of Kalimullah, the one to whom Allah spoke without th eintervention of angels (2) he was a prophet (nabi), in that he received inspiration; and (3) he was a messenger (rasul) in that he had a Book of Revelation, and an Ummat or organised Community, for which he instituted laws. 52 And We called him from the right side of Mount (Sinai) and made him draw near to Us for mystic (converse). The incident here I think refers to the incidents described more fully . The time is when Moses (with his family) was travelling and grazing the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro, just before he got his commission from Allah. The place is somewhere near Mount Sinai (Jabal Musa). Moses sees a Fire in the distance, but when he goes there, he hears a voice that tells him it is sacred ground. Allah asked him to put off his shoes and to draw near, and when he went near, great mysteries were revealed to him. He was given his commission, and his brother Aaron was given to him to go with him and aid him. It is after that, that he and Aaron went and faced Pharaoh in Egypt. The right side of the mountain may mean that Moses heard the voice from the right side of the mountain as he faced it; or it may have the figurative meaning of "right" in Arabic, i.e., the side which was blessed or sacred ground. 53 And out of Our Mercy We gave him his brother Aaron (also) a prophet. Moses was diffident, and reluctant to go to Pharaoh as he had an impediment in his tongue, and he asked that his brother Aaron should be associated with him in his mission. Allah in His Mercy granted his request. 54 Also mention in the Book (the story of) Ismail: He was (strictly) true to what he promised and he was an apostle (and) a prophet. Isma'il was Az-zabih i.e., the chosen sacrifice for Allah in Muslim tradition. When Abraham told him of the sacrifice, he voluntarily offered himself for it, and never flinched from his promise, until the sacrifice was redeemed by the substitution of a ram under Allah's commands. He was the fountain-head of the Arabian Ummat, and in his posterity came the Prophet of Allah. The Ummat and the Book of Islam reflect back the prophethood on Isma'il. 55 He used to enjoin on his people Prayer and Charity and he was most acceptable in the sight of his Lord. 56 Also mention in the Book the case of Idris: he was a man of truth (and sincerity) (and) a prophet: Idris is mentioned twice in the Qur-an, where he is mentioned among those who patiently persevered., that he was taken up without passing through the portals of death. All we are told is that he was a man of truth and sincerity, and a prophet, and that he had a high position among his people. It is this point which brings him in the series of men just mentioned; he kept himself in touch with his people, and was honoured among them. Spiritual progress need not cut us off from our people, for we have to help and guide them. He kept to truth and piety in the highest station. 57 And We raised him to a lofty station. 58 Those were some of the prophets on whom Allah did bestow His Grace of the posterity of Adam and of those whom We carried (in the Ark) with Noah and of the posterity of Abraham and Israel of those whom We guided and chose; whenever the Signs of (Allah) Most Gracious were rehearsed to them they would fall down in prostrate adoration and in tears. The earlier generations are grouped into three epochs from a religious point of view: (1) from Adam to Noah, (2) from Noah to Abraham, and (3) from Abraham to an indefinite time, say to the time when the Message of Allah was corrupted and the need arose for the final Messenger of Unity and Truth. Israel is another name for Jacob. The original is in the Aorist tense, implying that the "Posterity" alluded to includes not only the messengers but their worthy followers who are true to Allah and uphold His standard. 59 But after them there followed a posterity who missed prayers and followed after lusts: soon then will they face Destruction This selfish godless posterity gains the upper hand at certain times, but even then there is always a minority who see the error of their ways, repent and believe, and live righteous lives. They are not penalised in the Hereafter because they were associated with the ungodly in time. They reap the full reward of their faith and righteousness. 60 Except those who repent and believe and work righteousness: for these will enter the Garden and will not be wronged in the least 61 Gardens of Eternity those which (Allah) Most Gracious has promised to His servants in the Unseen: for His promise must (necessarily) come to pass. 62 They will not there hear any vain discourse but only salutations of peace: and they will have therein their sustenance morning and evening. Salam, translated "Peace", has a much wider signification. It includes (1) a sense of security and permanence, which is unknown in this life; (2) soundness, freedom from defects, perfection as in the word salim; (3) preservation, salvation, deliverance, as in the word sallama, (4) salutation, accord with those around us; (5) resignation, in the sense that we are satisfied and not discontented; besides (6) the ordinary meaning of Peace, i.e., freedom from any jarring element. All these shades of meaning are implied in the word Islam. (19.62) Rizq: literally sustenance or means of subsistence, the term covers all the means of perfect satisfaction of body and soul. Morning and evening, i.e., early and late, all the time, always. (19.62) 63 Such is the Garden which We give as an inheritance to those of Our Servants who guard against evil. 64 (The angels say:) "We descend not but by command of thy Lord: to Him belongeth what is before us and what is behind us and what is between: and thy Lord never doth forget" We are apt to be impatient of the evils we see around us. We may give of our best service to Allah, and yet see no results. In our human short-sightedness we may complain within ourselves. But we must not be impatient. The angels of Grace come not haphazard, but by command of Allah according to His Universal Will and Purpose. Allah does not forget. If things are delayed, it is in accordance with a wise providence, which cares for all. Our plain duty is to be patient and constant in His service. (19.64) 65 "Lord of the heavens and of the earth and of all that is between them: so worship Him and be constant and patient in His worship: knowest thou of any who is worthy of the same Name as He?" The more we taste of the truth and mystery of life, the more do we realise that there is no one to be mentioned in the same breath as Allah. He is above all names. But when we think of His beautiful qualities, and picture them to ourselves by names which give us some idea of Him, we can search the whole wide world of our imagination, and we shall not find another to be compared with Him in name or quality. He is the One: praise be to Him! (19.65) 66 Man says: "What! when I am dead shall I then be raised up alive?" 67 But does not man call to mind that We created him before out of nothing? 68 So by thy Lord without doubt We shall gather them together and (also) the Evil Ones (with them); then shall We bring them forth on their knees round about Hell; The disbelief in a future life is not merely a philosophic doubt, but a warped will, a disingenuous obstinacy in face of our inner spiritual instincts and experiences. We were nothing before. Cannot the same Allah, Who created us out of nothing also continue our personality? But if we refuse to accept His light and guidance, our state will grow worse and worse. We shall be deprived of His grace. We shall be herded with satans. In utter humiliation we shall be faced with all the consequences of our refusal of Truth. (19.68) Round about Hell: There are many ways leading to evil, and people get to it from all round. Hence the mention of the seven Gates to Hell: see xv. 44. and n. 1977. (19.68) 69 Then shall We certainly drag out from every sect all those who were worst in obstinate rebellion against (Allah) Most Gracious. 70 And certainly We know best those who are most worthy of being burned therein. 71 Not one of you but will pass over it: this is with thy Lord a Decree which must be accomplished. Three interpretations are possible, (1) The general interpretation is that every person must pass through or by or over the Fire. Those who have had Taqwa (see. n. 26 to ii. 2) will be saved by Allah's Mercy, while unrepentant sinners will suffer the torments in ignominy, (2) If we refer the pronoun "you" to those "in obstinate rebellion" in verse 69 above, both leaders and followers in sin, this verse only applies to the wicked, (3) Some refer this verse to the Bridge over Hell, the Bridge Sirat, over which all must pass to their final Destiny. This Bridge is not mentioned in the Qur-an. (19.71) 72 But We shall save those who guarded against evil and We shall leave the wrongdoers therein (humbled) to their knees. 73 When Our Clear Signs are rehearsed to them the Unbelievers say to those who believe "Which of the two sides is best in point of position? Which makes the best show in council?" The Unbelievers may, for a time, make a better show in worldly position, or in people's assemblages where things are judged by the counting of heads. But Truth must prevail even in this world, and ultimately the positions must be reversed. (19.73) 74 But how many (countless) generations before them have We destroyed who were even better in equipment and in glitter to the eye? 75 Say: "If any men go astray (Allah) Most Gracious extends (the rope) to them. Until when they see the warning of Allah (being fulfilled) either in punishment or in (the approach of) the Hour they will at length realize who is worst in position and (who) weakest in forces! Allah's warning is that every evil deed must have its punishment, and that there will be a Hereafter, the Day of Judgment, or the Hour, as it is frequently called. The punishment of evil often begins in this very life. For instance, over-indulgence and excesses of all kinds bring on their Nemesis quite soon in this very life. But some subtler forms of selfishness and sin will be punished as every evil will be punished-in its own good time, as the Hour approaches. In either case, the arrogant boasting sinners will realise that their taunt-who is best in position and in forces? (xix. 73)-is turned against themselves. (19.75) 76 "And Allah doth advance in guidance those who seek guidance; and the things that endure. Good Deeds are best in the sight of thy Lord as rewards and best in respect of (their) eventual returns." These lines are the same as in xviii. 46 (second clause), (where see n. 2387), except that the word maradd (eventual returns) is here substituted for amal (hope). The meaning is practically the same: but "hope" is more appropriate in the passage dealing generally with this world's goods, and "eventual returns" in the passage dealing with the sinner's specific investments and commitments in worldly position and organised cliques. (19.76) 77 Hast thou then seen the (sort of) man who rejects Our Signs yet says: "I shall certainly be given wealth and children"? Besides the man who boasts of wealth and power in actual possession, there is a type of man who boasts of getting them in the future and builds his worldly hopes thereon. Is he sure? He denies Allah, and His goodness and Mercy. But all good is in the hands of Allah. Can such a man then bind Allah to bless him when he rejects faith in Allah? Or does he pretend that he has penetrated to the mysteries of the future? For no man can tell what the future holds for him. (19.77) 78 Has he penetrated to the Unseen or has he taken a contract with (Allah) Most Gracious? 79 Nay! We shall record what he says and We Shall add and add to his punishment. Such a man deserves double punishment,-for rejecting Allah, and for his blasphemies with His holy name. (19.79) 80 To Us shall return all that he talks of and he shall appear before Us bare and alone. Literally, "We shall inherit", Cf. xix. 40 and n. 2492. Even if the man had property and power, it must go back to the Source of all things, and the man must appear before the Judgment-seat, alone and unaccompanied, stripped of all the things from which he expected so much! (19.80) 81 And they have taken (for worship) gods other than Allah to give them power and glory! 2525 'Izz=exalted rank, glory, power, might, the ability to impose one's will or to carry out one's will. (19.81) 82 Instead they shall reject their worship and become adversaries against them. Cf. x. 28-30, where the idols deny that they knew anything of their worship, and leave their worshippers in the lurch; and v. 119, where Jesus denies that he asked for worship, and leaves his false worshippers to the punishment of Allah. (19.82) 83 Seest thou not that We have set the Evil Ones on against the Unbelievers to incite them with fury? Under the laws instituted by Allah, when evil reaches a certain stage of rebellion and defiance, it is left to gather momentum and to rush with fury to its own destruction. It is given a certain amount of respite, as a last chance: but failing repentance, its days are numbered. The godly therefore should not worry themselves over the apparent worldly success of evil, but should get on with their own duties in a spirit of trust in Allah. (19.83) 84 So make no haste against them for We but count out to them a (limited) number (of days). 85 The day We shall gather the righteous to (Allah) Most Gracious like a band presented before a king for honors. 86 And We shall drive the sinners to Hell like thirsty cattle driven down to water Note the contrast between the saved and the doomed. The one march with dignity like honoured ones before a king, and the other rush in anguish to their punishment like a herd of cattle driven down by thirst to their watering place. Note the metaphor of the water. They rush madly for water but are plunged into the Fire! (19.86) 87 None shall have the power of intercession but such a one as has received permission (or promise) from (Allah) Most Gracious. 88 They say: "(Allah) Most Gracious has begotten a son!" 89 Indeed ye have put forth a thing most monstrous! The belief in Allah begetting a son is not a question merely of words or of speculative thought. It is a stupendous blasphemy against Allah. It lowers Allah to the level of an animal. If combined with the doctrine of vicarious atonement, it amounts to a negation of Allah's justice and man's personal responsibility. It is destructive of all moral and spiritual order, and is condemned in the strongest possible terms. (19.89) 90 At if the skies are ready to burst the earth to split asunder and the mountains to fall down in utter ruin. 91 That they should invoke a son for (Allah) Most Gracious. 92 For it is not consonant with the majesty of (Allah) Most Gracious that He should beget a son. This basic principle was laid down early in the argument (xix. 35). It was illustrated by a reference to the personal history of many messengers, including Jesus himself, who behaved justly as men to their kith and kin and humbly served Allah. The evil results of such superstitions were pointed out in the case of many previous generations which went to their ruin by dishonouring Allah. And the argument is now rounded off towards the close of the Sura. (19.92) 93 Not one of the beings in the heavens and the earth but must come to (Allah) Most Gracious as a servant. 94 He does take and account of them (all) and hath numbered them (all) exactly. Allah has no sons or favourites or parasites, such as we associate with human beings. On the other hand every creature of His gets His love, and His cherishing care. Everyone of them, however humble, is individually marked before His Throne of Justice and Mercy, and will stand before Him on his own deserts. (19.94) 95 And every one of them will come to him singly on the Day of Judgment. 96 On those who believe and work deeds of righteousness will (Allah) Most Gracious bestow Love. His own love, and the love of man's fellow-creatures, in this world and in the Hereafter. Goodness breeds love and peace, and sin breeds hatred and contention. (19.96) 97 So have We made the (Qur'an) easy in thine own tongue that with it thou mayest give Glad Tidings to the righteous and warnings to people given to contention. 98 But how many (countless) generation before them have We destroyed? Canst thou find a single one of them (now) or hear (so much as) a whisper of them?
Looking for a "real" relationship.? I am 21, a Christian, and a virgin. I really wanted to meet a cute, sweet, girl who is a virgin, but it's nearly impossible. I'm trying to go to a singles club, but there really aren't any in Arlington Heights, IL. Some of my guy friends have already had sex (outside of a religious few), I don't know any girls at my college (they aren't Christian and have had sex and bfs), and I don't have any girls as friends to introduce me to girls. I just want to meet someone to have a decent relationship with, not for sex, until marriage. If there is anyone out there looking for this, please feel free to respond. I'm patient, but I'm starting to lose hope. Here is my picture to show you I'm not ugly: (on the right side) http://www.myspace.com/muzicfan115 http://tiu.facebook.com/profile.php?id=119400589 To let people know, I live near Arlington Heights, IL, so I would need someone to meet in my area. Online dating doesn't work for me, they often aren't virgins. I don't smoke or really drink...yes, I'm pathetic. Please help. The girls on my myspace, I don’t really like; they’re not pure and they don't know of any girls who are virgins. I want to meet a Christian girl, because religion is a very important part of me. And I want to meet a virgin because, I don't want to be treated as second best or have a person that has had sex and will compare me. I hope this clarifies that I am NOT looking for sex, but I am looking for a positive and long lasting relationship. If anyone feels this way and is serious about a relationship, I need to know that I am not alone. I talked with my pastor about this and he said he understands, but I want to have Christian girls as friends, so I can maybe form a relationship. Oh yeah, and I'm not a pervert, so I can't see anyone under the age of 18, sorry. I know this is long, but please no cliches. (i.e. "life is hard, get over it", "or you'll eventually find someone"). I know it will be hard, and I'm willing to make small sacrifices, such as someone that occasionly drinks, but smoking I can't because I'm allergic and I kept myself pure for this long, so I want to have a pure girlfriend and wife. Thanks for the help.
Is it right that Our politicians will vote for Israeli needs while ignoring what the common american wants? Old Yesterday, 06:10 PM #1 Cartman Remember the Intifada Cartman's Avatar Join Date: May 2007 Location: Dallas, Texas Posts: 1,394 Reputation: points: 4864 / Rep Power: 50 Cartman has a reputation beyond reputeCartman has a reputation beyond reputeCartman has a reputation beyond reputeCartman has a reputation beyond reputeCartman has a reputation beyond reputeCartman has a reputation beyond reputeCartman has a reputation beyond reputeCartman has a reputation beyond reputeCartman has a reputation beyond reputeCartman has a reputation beyond reputeCartman has a reputation beyond repute Israeli Lobby In America:Corruption of The American Politician "It makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish power and prominence in popular culture." -- Michael Medved, well-known Jewish author and respected film critic. For decades Israel has violated well established precepts of international law and defied numerous United Nations resolutions in its occupation of conquered lands, in extra-judicial killings, and in its repeated acts of military aggression. Most of the world regards Israel's policies, and especially its oppression of Palestinians, as outrageous and criminal. This international consensus is reflected, for example, in numerous UN resolutions condemning Israel, which have been approved with overwhelming majorities. "The whole world," United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan recently said, "is demanding that Israel withdraw [from occupied Palestinian territories]. I don't think the whole world ... can be wrong." [note 1] Only in the United States do politicians and the media still fervently support Israel and its policies. For decades the US has provided Israel with crucial military, diplomatic and financial backing, including more than $3 billion each year in aid. Why is the U.S. the only remaining bastion of support for Israel? Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who was awarded the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, has candidly identified the reason: "The Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the US], and to criticize it is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic," he said. "People are scared in this country, to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful -- very powerful." [note 2] Bishop Tutu spoke the truth. Although Jews make up only about three percent of the US population, they wield immense power and influence -- vastly more than any other ethnic or religious group. As Jewish author and political science professor, Benjamin Ginsberg, has pointed out: [note 3] "Since the 1960s, Jews have come to wield considerable influence in American economic, cultural, intellectual and political life. Jews played a central role in American finance during the 1980s, and they were among the chief beneficiaries of that decade's corporate mergers and reorganizations." Today, though barely two percent of the nation's population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews. The chief executive officers of the three major television networks and the four largest film studios are Jews, as are the owners of the nation's largest newspaper chain and the most influential single newspaper, the New York Times ... The role and influence of Jews in American politics is equally marked. Jews are only two percent of the nation's population yet comprise eleven percent of what this study defines as the nation's elite. However, Jews constitute more than 25 percent of the elite journalists and publishers, more than 17 percent of the leaders of important voluntary and public interest organizations, and more than 15 percent of the top ranking civil servants. Stephen Steinlight, former Director of National Affairs of the American Jewish Committee, similarly notes the "disproportionate political power" of Jews, which is "pound for pound the greatest of any ethnic/cultural group in America." He goes on to explain that "Jewish economic influence and power are disproportionately concentrated in Hollywood, television, and in the news industry." [note 4] Two well-known Jewish writers, Seymour Lipset and Earl Raab, pointed out in their 1995 book, Jews and the New American Scene: [note 5] "During the last three decades Jews [in the United States] have made up 50 percent of the top two hundred intellectuals ... 20 percent of professors at the leading universities ... 40 percent of partners in the leading law firms in New York and Washington ... 59 percent of the directors, writers, and producers of the 50 top-grossing motion pictures from 1965 to 1982, and 58 percent of directors, writers, and producers in two or more primetime television series." The influence of American Jewry in Washington, notes the Israeli daily Jerusalem Post, is "far disproportionate to the size of the community, Jewish leaders and U.S. official acknowledge. But so is the amount of money they contribute to [election] campaigns." One member of the influential Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations "estimated Jews alone had contributed 50 percent of the funds for [President Bill] Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign." [note 6] "It makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish power and prominence in popular culture," acknowledges Michael Medved, a well-known Jewish author and film critic. "Any list of the most influential production executives at each of the major movie studios will produce a heavy majority of recognizably Jewish names." [note 7] One person who has carefully studied this subject is Jonathan J. Goldberg, now editor of the influential Jewish community weekly 'Forward.' In his 1996 book, Jewish Power, he wrote: [note 8] "In a few key sectors of the media, notably among Hollywood studio executives, Jews are so numerically dominant that calling these businesses Jewish-controlled is little more than a statistical observation ... Hollywood at the end of the twentieth century is still an industry with a pronounced ethnic tinge. Virtually all the senior executives at the major studios are Jews. Writers, producers, and to a lesser degree directors are disproportionately Jewish -- one recent study showed the figure as high as 59 percent among top-grossing films." The combined weight of so many Jews in one of America's most lucrative and important industries gives the Jews of Hollywood a great deal of political power. They are a major source of money for Democratic candidates. Reflecting their role in the American media, Jews are routinely portrayed as high-minded, altruistic, trustworthy, compassionate, and deserving of sympathy and support. While millions of Americans readily accept such stereotyped imagery, not everyone is impressed. "I am very angry with some of the Jews," complained actor Marlon Brando during a 1996 interview. "They know perfectly well what their responsibilities are ... Hollywood is run by Jews. It's owned by Jews, and they should have a greater sensitivity about the issue of people who are suffering." [note 9] A Well-Entrenched Factor The intimidating power of the "Jewish lobby" is not a new phenomenon, but has long been an important factor in American life. In 1941 Charles Lindbergh spoke about the danger of Jewish power in the media and government. The shy 39-year-old -- known around the world for his epic 1927 New York to Paris flight, the first solo trans-Atlantic crossing -- was addressing 7,000 people in Des Moines, Iowa, on September 11, 1941, about the dangers of US involvement in the war then raging in Europe. The three most important groups pressing America into war, he explained, were the British, the Jews, and the Roosevelt administration. Of the Jews, he said: "Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government." Lindbergh went on: "For reasons which are understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, [they] wish to involve us in the war. We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we must also look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction." In 1978, Jewish American scholar Alfred M. Lilienthal wrote in his detailed study, The Zionist Connection: [note 10] "How has the Zionist will been imposed on the American people?... It is the Jewish connection, the tribal solidarity among themselves and the amazing pull on non-Jews, that has molded this unprecedented power ... In the larger metropolitan areas, the Jewish-Zionist connection thoroughly pervades affluent financial, commercial, social, entertainment, and art circles." As a result of the Jewish grip on the media, wrote Lilienthal, news coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict in American television, newspapers and magazines is relentlessly sympathetic to Israel. This is manifest, for example, in the misleading portrayal of Palestinian "terrorism." As Lilienthal put it: "One-sided reportage on terrorism, in which cause is never related to effect, was assured because the most effective component of the Jewish connection is probably that of media control." One-Sided 'Holocaust' History The Jewish hold on cultural and academic life has had a profound impact on how Americans look at the past. Nowhere is the well-entrenched Judeocentric view of history more obvious than in the "Holocaust" media campaign, which focuses on the fate of Jews in Europe during World War II. Israeli Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has remarked: [note 11] "Whether presented authentically or inauthentically, in accordance with the historical facts or in contradiction to them, with empathy and understanding or as monumental kitsch, the Holocaust has become a ruling symbol of our culture ... Hardly a month goes by without a new TV production, a new film, a new drama, new books, prose or poetry, dealing with the subject, and the flood is increasing rather than abating." Non-Jewish suffering simply does not merit comparable attention. Overshadowed in the focus on Jewish victimization are, for example, the tens of millions of victims of America's World War II ally, Stalinist Russia, along with the tens of millions of victims of China's Maoist regime, as well as the 12 to 14 million Germans, victims of the flight and expulsion of 1944-1949, of whom some two million lost their lives. The well-financed Holocaust media and "educational" campaign is crucially important to the interests of Israel. Paula Hyman, a professor of modern Jewish history at Yale University, has observed: "With regard to Israel, the Holocaust may be used to forestall political criticism and suppress debate; it reinforces the sense of Jews as an eternally beleaguered people who can rely for their defense only upon themselves. The invocation of the suffering endured by the Jews under the Nazis often takes the place of rational argument, and is expected to convince doubters of the legitimacy of current Israeli government policy." [note 12] Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish scholar who has taught political science at City University of New York (Hunter College), says in his book, 'The Holocaust Industry,' that "invoking The Holocaust" is "a ploy to delegitimize all criticism of Jews."[note 13] "By conferring total blamelessness on Jews, the Holocaust dogma immunizes Israel and American Jewry from legitimate censure. ... Organized Jewry has exploited the Nazi holocaust to deflect criticism of Israel's and its own morally indefensible policies." He writes of the brazen "shakedown" of Germany, Switzerland and other countries by Israel and organized Jewry "to extort billions of dollars." "The Holocaust," Finkelstein predicts, "may yet turn out to be the 'greatest robbery in the history of mankind'." Jews in Israel feel free to act brutally against Arabs, writes Israeli journalist Ari Shavit, "believing with absolute certitude that now, with the White House, the Senate and much of the American media in our hands, the lives of others do not count as much as our own." [note 14] Admiral Thomas Moorer, former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has spoken with blunt exasperation about the Jewish-Israeli hold on the United States: [note 15] "I've never seen a President -- I don't care who he is -- stand up to them [the Israelis]. It just boggles the mind. They always get what they want. The Israelis know what is going on all the time. I got to the point where I wasn't writing anything down. If the American people understood what a grip those people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens certainly don't have any idea what goes on." Today, the danger is greater than ever. Israel and Jewish organizations, in collaboration with this country's pro-Zionist Christian fundamentalist "amen corner," are prodding the United States -- the world's foremost military and economic power -- into new wars against Israel's enemies. As the French ambassador in London recently acknowledged, Israel -- which he called (a quote which shocked millions -ed) "that ****ty little country" -- is a threat to world peace. "Why should the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?," he said. [note 16] In summation: Jews wield immense power and influence in the United States. The "Jewish lobby" is a decisive factor in US support for Israel. Jewish-Zionist interests are not identical to American interests. In fact, they often conflict. As long as the "very powerful" Jewish lobby remains en