CONTINUE TO PRAY FOR PASTOR SAEED (Iranian-born AMERICAN pastor who just started an 8 year sentence for helping the underground churches in Iran) If you have not already, please join over 500,000 (was recently250,000) who have signed the petition for Pastor Saeed's release and tell your friends about it. http://aclj.org/iran/save-american-pastor-from-iranian-prison-sentence As the Lord leads, please pray: *For Pastor Abedini as he endures one of Iran’s most deadly prisons, potentially beaten and abused regularly, simply because of his Christian faith. *For the pastor’s wife and family and the Holy Spirit’s comfort upon them. * For God to visit his tormenters and all in his cell with him with supernatural dreams of the risen Christ, and use the pastor's actions and words to draw them to repent and turn to Christ; that God would use the pastor's time in that prison to spark a genuine spiritual revival that will bring scores of Iranians to Christ..*For the U.S. State Department to get involved in a significant way to obtain the pastor’s release.
LATEST Update - April 15 - 1)".. During the weekly prison visit today, Pastor Saeed's family reported that his physical condition is worsening - seeing first-hand the marks and symptoms left by the recent beating. These beatings and the internal injuries are causing Pastor Saeed frequent fainting spells. Iranian officials are telling Pastor Saeed it could be an additional two months before he will receive medical treatment. Such a delay is inhumane and a gross violation of Iran’s international obligations. ...In addition to refusing to give Pastor Saeed the medical care he needs, it now appears authorities are stepping up their physical abuse and psychological torture. Pastor Saeed reported that cellmates, who appear to have connections to the Iranian intelligence police, recently threatened they would suffocate Pastor Saeed in his sleep, making his death look like an accident. The daily threat that his life could be taken by his internal injuries or by the hands of cellmates, weighs heavily on Pastor Saeed. .."(http://aclj.org/iran/beatings-intensify-american-pastor-saeed-condition-worsens-in-iranian-prison PRAY that Pastor Saeed might finally receive the medical treatment he needs. 2) More than 550,000 people from 180 countries have signed the petition to Save Saeed. Your voice has moved the U.S., the European Union, and many others to call for his release. But as Pastor Saeed's May 7th 33rd birthday approaches, it's time to encourage him directly. At the ACLJ, they've obtained the address of Evin Prison, and their goal is to flood the prison with thousands of messages of encouragement for Pastor Saeed. Just write a letter (or simply sign your name to one proposed greeting) and they will be sure that its delivered. These messages will let Pastor Saeed know that we're praying for him and his release, as well as send a signal to the Iranian leaders that Americans will not give up standing up for him. Go to Save Saeed.org and add your name to those sending letters to him.
"Imrtant lessons from Boston and Chechnya," b Dennis Prager, [NOTE; The following is an interesting perspective on the bombing suspects in the Boston Marathon massacre. I'm not sure what to make of all the thoughts expessed, but they are certaily worth considering. - Stan]1. The gulf between the decent and the indecent - Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older brother, once told an interviewer before a Golden Gloves boxing competition: “I don’t have a single American friend. I don’t understand them.” The reason Tsarnaev didn’t understand Americans was not primarily cultural. Tsarnaev came to America when he was 14 or 15, an age when the vast majority of immigrants to America have assimilated quite successfully. Rather, the reason was that the indecent don’t understand the decent, just as the decent don’t understand the indecent.
One of the greatest insights I learned as a young man came from reading Viktor Frankl’s seminal work, “Man’s Search for Meaning.” Frankl was a Jewish psychoanalyst who survived Auschwitz, where nearly every member of his family, including his wife, was murdered. His conclusion: “There are two races of men in this world but only these two. The race of the decent man and the race of the indecent man.”
Those “races” do not understand one another. But more important than understanding the indecent is overpowering and, when necessary, destroying the indecent.
2. Any religion or ideology that is above good and evil produces enormous evil. For tens of millions of Muslims today, Islam is beyond good and evil: The infidel may be decent, but that is of no importance to the radical Islamist. For example, to become a “more religious” Muslim, Tamerlan Tsarnaev gave up boxing, marijuana, tobacco and even not wearing a shirt in the presence of females. Tsarnaev believed Islam forbade those things — none of which is an evil. But when it came to the greatest evil — murder (of non-Muslims) — his religion was not only silent, it was enthusiastically supportive.
Likewise, communists in the Soviet Union, China and elsewhere — and their many supporters in the West — raised the creation of egalitarian society and industrialization above good and evil. And Nazism elevated race above good and evil. The environmentalists who oppose vitamin A-injected rice in the Third World place their agenda above good and evil. Unfortunately, most religious and secular ideologues find preoccupation with human decency boring. The greatest moral idea in history, ethical monotheism, doesn’t excite most people.
3. A victimhood identity produces cruelty. The Tsarnaev brothers’ primary self-perception was that of being Chechen victims, and that plus their religious convictions allowed them to blow up men, women and children with a perfectly clear conscience. Even when victimhood status is objectively true — which it was not for these brothers, who were among the spectacularly fortunate few to be able to live in freedom and with unlimited opportunities — nothing provides people with as good a reason to commit atrocities as does a victim mentality.
4. Happiness is a moral issue. Happiness is not an emotional state so much as it is a moral imperative. In general, those who act happy make the world better and those who act unhappy make it worse. This is equally true in the micro and macro realms. It is not surprising, therefore, that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was described by a cousin, Zaur Tsarnaev, in this way: “He was never happy, never cheering, never smiling.”
5. Boys will be bad men if they had no good men. It is apparent that the younger brother Dzhokhar was deeply influenced by his brother, Tamerlan, who was seven years older. All of us who have an older brother, especially with a large age gap, know that he has a god-like status in the eyes of a young boy.
If good men do not inspire boys, bad men will. Without good older men in boys’ lives, those boys are likely to grow up and do bad things. See our inner cities for further confirmation.
6. Universities and the left generally continue to deny any link between Muslim terrorists and their Muslim beliefs. Just as in previous acts of Islamist terror, the left in general, and university professors in particular, continue to argue that it is wrong — actually bigoted — to associate these terrorists’ religious beliefs with their terrorism.... Professor Brian Levin — director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino (formerly associate director of the Southern Poverty Law Center) — to Bill Maher: “Look, it’s not like people who are Muslim who do wacky things have a monopoly on it. We have hypocrites across faiths, Jewish, Christian who say they’re out for God and end up doing not so nice things.” Bill Maher’s response: “That’s liberal b***s**t.”
And that’s what our children are routinely taught.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
Dennis Prager’s latest book, “Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph,” was published April 24 by HarperCollins. He is a nationally syndicated radio show host and creator of PragerUniversity.Com.
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