The Bulletin Board:(Please SCROLL DOWN this page to find the article titled on this post in LARGE CAPITAL LETTERS. Thank you.)
PRAY FOR AMERICA: THANK GOD for His many blessings on America throughout it's history. May we then ask that AMERICA once again be a blessing TO GOD, by once again submitting to HIS will in our affairs - both personal and national - that He may truly "heal our land." (2 Chron. 7:14)
WORLD-WDE PRAYER REQUESTS:
UPDATE: "Second US Doctor Sick with Ebola; Crisis 'Out of Control'" - CBNNews.com, Sept. 02, 2014;
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/healthscience/2014/September/A-Losing-Battle-Ebola-Going-to-Get-Worse-CDC-Says/ "Another American doctor in Liberia has tested positive for the Ebola virus, according to the international Christian mission organization, SIM. SIM leaders report the American doctor was treating obstetrics patients at the organization's ELWA Hospital in Monrovia and not treating Ebola patients..."The epidemic is going faster than we are," he warned. 'We need to scale up our response. We can hope for new tools and maybe they'll come, but we can't count on them.' So far, the West African outbreak has killed more than 1,500 people in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria."
Of course, let's CONTINUE PRAYING FOR AN END TO THE EBOLA CRISIS IN WEST AFRICA AND THE HEALING OF ALL THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN INFECTED.
PRAY FOR THE CRISIS HAPPENING NOW IN IRAQ (see post #907) Pray that allied forces will be able to drive the group ISIS back (see post #964)
LATEST:"Christians in the Middle East Arm Themselves As Genocide Comes to Their Front Door" - Katie Pavlich | Sep 05, 2014;
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/09/05/christians-in-the-middle-east-arm-themselves-as-violence-rages-around-them-n1887849" Earlier this week the BBC and Al Jazeera both reported on armed Iraqi citizen volunteers who helped government forces fight off ISIS in Amerli. Today, the AP is out with a story about Christians in the Middle East who are arming themselves, carrying weapons with them during daily tasks and heading to the hills at night to defend their communities as violence continues to rage around them. Genocide is at their front door and they're doing everything they can to stop it from coming in... So far, the terror army ISIS has slaughtered and tortured thousands of Christians in Iraq and Syria."
URGENT: Emergency Relief For Iraqi Believers Facing Genocide! - August 30, 2014- Liberty Counsel Action is partnering with RUN Ministries to deliver emergency food, water and shelter to Iraqi Christians and Yazidis who have fled their homes and are facing genocide. More than 146,000 people are now threatened by genocide from radical ISIS forces.RUN Ministries has a solid network of believers throughout the Middle East who are willing to risk life and limb to get relief through the ISIS lines of defense. The cost of getting the needed aid to them is $8 per person per day. This includes tents, blankets, food, and water for the first 3 weeks. TO DONATE (as I have), PLEASE GO TO: http://www.grassrootsaction.com/201181/offer.asp?Ref_ID=27781&CID=201181&RID=42814607
"Not Everyone Happy with Religious Ambassador Pick," Caitlin Burke,July 29, 2014;
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2014/July/Obama-Taps-Rabbi-for-Religious-Freedom-Ambassador/ "..An estimated 76 percent of the world's population live in countries where religious freedom is restricted. Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States must take a strong stand against those violations. "Around the world repressive governments and extremists groups have been crystal clear about what they stand against, so we have to be equally clear about what we must stand for," Kerry said. "We stand for greater freedom, for greater tolerance, greater respect, for rights of freedom of expression and freedom of conscience," he said A key development in the 2013 report is the large number of displaced members of religious communities, including entire Christian communities in Syria and Iraq that have been forced to flee their homes because of persecution."
SIGN A PETITION TO THE UN FOR THE PROTECTION OF CHRISTIANS :" The church in Syria has shone brightly for 2,000 years. But today violence and persecution threatens its survival. Thanks to an incredible response, Open Doors is helping 8,000 families in Syria survive each month. We believe the signatures and prayers of 500,000 people will encourage the UN to act and protect the rights and lives of all Syrians, especially the vulnerable Christian community." Go to: http://lp.opendoorsusa.org/emails/nov-13-action/save-syria.html?utm_source=action&utm_medium=email&utm_content=button&utm_campaign=november
LATEST SAHEED NEWS! May 22 - "Pastor Saeed Forcibly Returned to Prison after Beating" - By Caitlin Burke,CBN News, May 22, 2014;
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2014/May/Pastor-Saeed-Beaten-Sent-Back-to-Iran-Prison/ "Saeed Abedini, a U.S. pastor imprisoned for his faith, was severely beaten at an Iranian hospital before being returned to the brutal Rajai Shahr prison. His Iranian family claims the transfer was unexpected and the reason is unclear. But one of the guards involved in the transfer suggested recent Iranian nuclear talks could be a motive, the family said...""
We need to continue to pray for Pastor Saeed - that his health will improve and that he will be re-united with his wife and two young children who live in the United States. We also remain hopeful that in addition to getting the medical care he so desperately needs, that Iranian officials display the kind of humanitarian treatment that often accompanies the start of the Iranian New Year which began on March 21st. This is the time of year when the Iranian government frequently offers clemency to prisoners of conscience. [If you have not yet, please sign the petition for his clemency- http://beheardproject.com/saeed#sign]
*For the people of Ukrainen [esp. for the church 'to be THE church'] as they wait to see if the Russian troops will advance.
*About President Obama and to use wisdom in crafting our foreign policy, and wisdom for his advisers.
Continue to Pray for EGYPT - Continue to pray for the tense situation in Egypt and especially for the Christian believers who are being targeted with violence by Muslim Brotherhood members.]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Surprised by Joy" - Life is more than survival of the fittest: a response to Richard Dawkins.
By Matthew Hennessey, AUGUST 23, 2014;http://www.nationalreview.com/article/386086/surprised-joy-matthew-hennessey [AS I SEE IT : This is the the most awesome response I've heard to the evil of utilitarian thinking that so pervades our society and so many others. There were many times while reading this I just wanted to cheer and applaud the writer. I trust you will also enjoy this incredible read. P.S. - I do hope you got to view the pictures in yesterday's post (#989) of children returning to school. Esp. as you view the younger ones, I hope you are struck as I am that EVERY DAY in AMERICA, 3,000 (about 1,000 African-American) unborn babies are murdered by abortionists. Tragically, each of those babies will NOT be going to school one day. - Stan]
(Dreamstime)
Every once in a while people let their guard down and say what they really think. For Richard Dawkins, [a recent]Wednesday was one of those days.
In an extraordinary moment of public honesty, Dawkins, the British evolutionary biologist and militant atheist, wrote on Twitter that “it would be immoral to bring [a child with Down syndrome] into the world if you have the choice.” It was a statement that no doubt delighted the utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer, his friend and fellow traveler, who has advocated the killing of disabled infants on the grounds that they are not rational and self-conscious beings. “We have begun to think in terms of quality of life, instead of all life equally being sacred. That’s why it is logical to now start thinking about severely defective babies, and whether it is always wrong to kill them,” Singer told a journalist in 2004.
Does such talk frighten you? It does me. My eight-year old daughter Magdalena has Down syndrome. She falls into the category of people Peter Singer would like to see dead. I fall into the category of people Richard Dawkins considers immoral. How upside-down these guys are. It’s like an ethical Bizzaro World, where all the cold, heartless, smart guys with the fanciest degrees and the most fashionable eyeglasses look with utter disdain on the slightly different, slightly imperfect, slightly vulnerable people. God save us from utilitarian philosophers and evolutionary biologists.
Richard Dawkins is a man of logic, and his tweet makes sense if you view babies as personal accessories or interchangeable units of economic utility. But logic has its limits. Life is more than survival of the fittest. Sometimes it’s a mysterious and beautiful ballet. Other times it’s a painful and confusing crawl through the darkness. There is sudden despair and surprising joy. Logic can explain only so much.
Do you remember the late Robin Williams’s joke about the duckbill platypus? He said it was God giving Darwin the finger. We humans are more like duckbill platypuses than we are the homogenous and genetically perfect robots that Richard Dawkins wants us to be.
No one can say with certainty exactly how many unborn children with Down syndrome are aborted every year in allegedly civilized countries, including our own, but the estimates are shockingly high. Shocking, that is, if you are like me and don’t think it immoral to bring a baby with Down syndrome into the world. Shocking, that is, if you think we live in a society that places a value on human life that other societies — societies we consider barbarous — don’t.
In 2008, shortly after the Summer Olympics were held in Beijing, Sky News reporter Holly Williams interviewed the director of a Chinese maternity hospital who admitted that her facility counseled expectant mothers to abort babies with “serious deformities,” such as a missing arm or leg. “We don’t let them have the baby,” said the hospital director. “If they have it, it’s a burden to the family, to society, and to the country. We want healthy babies because they make families happy and our society happy too. We’re working to improve the quality of the population.”
You should seek out and watch the video if only to hear the hospital director’s girlish giggling as the interview concludes. You may have heard that evil can be banal. See for yourself just how easily a moral society can be corrupted by ideas similar to those of Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins. See for yourself just what kind of an ethical universe you get when the evolutionary biologists are in charge.
Mr. Dawkins, you’re welcome to come to our house and meet Magdalena. I think you’d really like her, if you could see past her imperfections — if you could see what we see, if you could hear her laughing. But you probably won’t come. You’re probably too busy. We’re probably too simple-minded for you, with our sky God and our ritualistic religious hocus-pocus and our weird belief that even children with Down syndrome should be allowed to live.
So, go ahead and call me immoral, Richard Dawkins. Call my wife immoral. Call the dozens of families around the world we have met and befriended over the last eight years immoral. Many of us had a “choice,” as you call it, and chose life over death. We chose the joy of love over the pain of abortion. We chose the happiness that radiates from Magdalena’s soul over the darkness that must cloud your every, empty day.
We chose Magdalena, and we’d do it again. We’d do it again because your scientific morality is cold and dark. It illuminates nothing.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
— Matthew Hennessey writes from Connecticut. Follow him on Twitter: @matthennessey
PRAY FOR AMERICA: THANK GOD for His many blessings on America throughout it's history. May we then ask that AMERICA once again be a blessing TO GOD, by once again submitting to HIS will in our affairs - both personal and national - that He may truly "heal our land." (2 Chron. 7:14)
WORLD-WDE PRAYER REQUESTS:
UPDATE: "Second US Doctor Sick with Ebola; Crisis 'Out of Control'" - CBNNews.com, Sept. 02, 2014;
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/healthscience/2014/September/A-Losing-Battle-Ebola-Going-to-Get-Worse-CDC-Says/ "Another American doctor in Liberia has tested positive for the Ebola virus, according to the international Christian mission organization, SIM. SIM leaders report the American doctor was treating obstetrics patients at the organization's ELWA Hospital in Monrovia and not treating Ebola patients..."The epidemic is going faster than we are," he warned. 'We need to scale up our response. We can hope for new tools and maybe they'll come, but we can't count on them.' So far, the West African outbreak has killed more than 1,500 people in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria."
Of course, let's CONTINUE PRAYING FOR AN END TO THE EBOLA CRISIS IN WEST AFRICA AND THE HEALING OF ALL THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN INFECTED.
PRAY FOR THE CRISIS HAPPENING NOW IN IRAQ (see post #907) Pray that allied forces will be able to drive the group ISIS back (see post #964)
LATEST:"Christians in the Middle East Arm Themselves As Genocide Comes to Their Front Door" - Katie Pavlich | Sep 05, 2014;
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/09/05/christians-in-the-middle-east-arm-themselves-as-violence-rages-around-them-n1887849" Earlier this week the BBC and Al Jazeera both reported on armed Iraqi citizen volunteers who helped government forces fight off ISIS in Amerli. Today, the AP is out with a story about Christians in the Middle East who are arming themselves, carrying weapons with them during daily tasks and heading to the hills at night to defend their communities as violence continues to rage around them. Genocide is at their front door and they're doing everything they can to stop it from coming in... So far, the terror army ISIS has slaughtered and tortured thousands of Christians in Iraq and Syria."
URGENT: Emergency Relief For Iraqi Believers Facing Genocide! - August 30, 2014- Liberty Counsel Action is partnering with RUN Ministries to deliver emergency food, water and shelter to Iraqi Christians and Yazidis who have fled their homes and are facing genocide. More than 146,000 people are now threatened by genocide from radical ISIS forces.RUN Ministries has a solid network of believers throughout the Middle East who are willing to risk life and limb to get relief through the ISIS lines of defense. The cost of getting the needed aid to them is $8 per person per day. This includes tents, blankets, food, and water for the first 3 weeks. TO DONATE (as I have), PLEASE GO TO: http://www.grassrootsaction.com/201181/offer.asp?Ref_ID=27781&CID=201181&RID=42814607
"Not Everyone Happy with Religious Ambassador Pick," Caitlin Burke,July 29, 2014;
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2014/July/Obama-Taps-Rabbi-for-Religious-Freedom-Ambassador/ "..An estimated 76 percent of the world's population live in countries where religious freedom is restricted. Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States must take a strong stand against those violations. "Around the world repressive governments and extremists groups have been crystal clear about what they stand against, so we have to be equally clear about what we must stand for," Kerry said. "We stand for greater freedom, for greater tolerance, greater respect, for rights of freedom of expression and freedom of conscience," he said A key development in the 2013 report is the large number of displaced members of religious communities, including entire Christian communities in Syria and Iraq that have been forced to flee their homes because of persecution."
SIGN A PETITION TO THE UN FOR THE PROTECTION OF CHRISTIANS :" The church in Syria has shone brightly for 2,000 years. But today violence and persecution threatens its survival. Thanks to an incredible response, Open Doors is helping 8,000 families in Syria survive each month. We believe the signatures and prayers of 500,000 people will encourage the UN to act and protect the rights and lives of all Syrians, especially the vulnerable Christian community." Go to: http://lp.opendoorsusa.org/emails/nov-13-action/save-syria.html?utm_source=action&utm_medium=email&utm_content=button&utm_campaign=november
LATEST SAHEED NEWS! May 22 - "Pastor Saeed Forcibly Returned to Prison after Beating" - By Caitlin Burke,CBN News, May 22, 2014;
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2014/May/Pastor-Saeed-Beaten-Sent-Back-to-Iran-Prison/ "Saeed Abedini, a U.S. pastor imprisoned for his faith, was severely beaten at an Iranian hospital before being returned to the brutal Rajai Shahr prison. His Iranian family claims the transfer was unexpected and the reason is unclear. But one of the guards involved in the transfer suggested recent Iranian nuclear talks could be a motive, the family said...""
We need to continue to pray for Pastor Saeed - that his health will improve and that he will be re-united with his wife and two young children who live in the United States. We also remain hopeful that in addition to getting the medical care he so desperately needs, that Iranian officials display the kind of humanitarian treatment that often accompanies the start of the Iranian New Year which began on March 21st. This is the time of year when the Iranian government frequently offers clemency to prisoners of conscience. [If you have not yet, please sign the petition for his clemency- http://beheardproject.com/saeed#sign]
PRAY ALSO : - For comfort and peace for Saeed’s wife and children here in the U.S.\
- For a strong witness and testimony from Pastor Abedini in the prison where God has placed him
- For Christians around the world who are being persecuted for their faith in Christ
- For leadership from the White House and State Department in defending the freedoms of Abedini and other Americans
- GO TO SaveSaeed.org to sign a petition over 600,000 others asking for his immediate release
/PRAYER ALERT- UKRAINE: As the Lord leads, please pray:
*For God to suppress President Putin’s ambitions to "restore" the Soviet empire.*For the people of Ukrainen [esp. for the church 'to be THE church'] as they wait to see if the Russian troops will advance.
*About President Obama and to use wisdom in crafting our foreign policy, and wisdom for his advisers.
Continue to Pray for EGYPT - Continue to pray for the tense situation in Egypt and especially for the Christian believers who are being targeted with violence by Muslim Brotherhood members.]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Surprised by Joy" - Life is more than survival of the fittest: a response to Richard Dawkins.
By Matthew Hennessey, AUGUST 23, 2014;http://www.nationalreview.com/article/386086/surprised-joy-matthew-hennessey [AS I SEE IT : This is the the most awesome response I've heard to the evil of utilitarian thinking that so pervades our society and so many others. There were many times while reading this I just wanted to cheer and applaud the writer. I trust you will also enjoy this incredible read. P.S. - I do hope you got to view the pictures in yesterday's post (#989) of children returning to school. Esp. as you view the younger ones, I hope you are struck as I am that EVERY DAY in AMERICA, 3,000 (about 1,000 African-American) unborn babies are murdered by abortionists. Tragically, each of those babies will NOT be going to school one day. - Stan]
(Dreamstime)
Every once in a while people let their guard down and say what they really think. For Richard Dawkins, [a recent]Wednesday was one of those days.
In an extraordinary moment of public honesty, Dawkins, the British evolutionary biologist and militant atheist, wrote on Twitter that “it would be immoral to bring [a child with Down syndrome] into the world if you have the choice.” It was a statement that no doubt delighted the utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer, his friend and fellow traveler, who has advocated the killing of disabled infants on the grounds that they are not rational and self-conscious beings. “We have begun to think in terms of quality of life, instead of all life equally being sacred. That’s why it is logical to now start thinking about severely defective babies, and whether it is always wrong to kill them,” Singer told a journalist in 2004.
Does such talk frighten you? It does me. My eight-year old daughter Magdalena has Down syndrome. She falls into the category of people Peter Singer would like to see dead. I fall into the category of people Richard Dawkins considers immoral. How upside-down these guys are. It’s like an ethical Bizzaro World, where all the cold, heartless, smart guys with the fanciest degrees and the most fashionable eyeglasses look with utter disdain on the slightly different, slightly imperfect, slightly vulnerable people. God save us from utilitarian philosophers and evolutionary biologists.
Richard Dawkins is a man of logic, and his tweet makes sense if you view babies as personal accessories or interchangeable units of economic utility. But logic has its limits. Life is more than survival of the fittest. Sometimes it’s a mysterious and beautiful ballet. Other times it’s a painful and confusing crawl through the darkness. There is sudden despair and surprising joy. Logic can explain only so much.
Do you remember the late Robin Williams’s joke about the duckbill platypus? He said it was God giving Darwin the finger. We humans are more like duckbill platypuses than we are the homogenous and genetically perfect robots that Richard Dawkins wants us to be.
No one can say with certainty exactly how many unborn children with Down syndrome are aborted every year in allegedly civilized countries, including our own, but the estimates are shockingly high. Shocking, that is, if you are like me and don’t think it immoral to bring a baby with Down syndrome into the world. Shocking, that is, if you think we live in a society that places a value on human life that other societies — societies we consider barbarous — don’t.
In 2008, shortly after the Summer Olympics were held in Beijing, Sky News reporter Holly Williams interviewed the director of a Chinese maternity hospital who admitted that her facility counseled expectant mothers to abort babies with “serious deformities,” such as a missing arm or leg. “We don’t let them have the baby,” said the hospital director. “If they have it, it’s a burden to the family, to society, and to the country. We want healthy babies because they make families happy and our society happy too. We’re working to improve the quality of the population.”
You should seek out and watch the video if only to hear the hospital director’s girlish giggling as the interview concludes. You may have heard that evil can be banal. See for yourself just how easily a moral society can be corrupted by ideas similar to those of Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins. See for yourself just what kind of an ethical universe you get when the evolutionary biologists are in charge.
Mr. Dawkins, you’re welcome to come to our house and meet Magdalena. I think you’d really like her, if you could see past her imperfections — if you could see what we see, if you could hear her laughing. But you probably won’t come. You’re probably too busy. We’re probably too simple-minded for you, with our sky God and our ritualistic religious hocus-pocus and our weird belief that even children with Down syndrome should be allowed to live.
So, go ahead and call me immoral, Richard Dawkins. Call my wife immoral. Call the dozens of families around the world we have met and befriended over the last eight years immoral. Many of us had a “choice,” as you call it, and chose life over death. We chose the joy of love over the pain of abortion. We chose the happiness that radiates from Magdalena’s soul over the darkness that must cloud your every, empty day.
We chose Magdalena, and we’d do it again. We’d do it again because your scientific morality is cold and dark. It illuminates nothing.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
— Matthew Hennessey writes from Connecticut. Follow him on Twitter: @matthennessey
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