Rather Expose Them Christian News Blog
A WordPress Blog-THE CHURCH MILITANT Ephesians 5:11-"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them". This Christian News Blog maintains a one stop resource of current news and reports of its own related to church, moral, spiritual, and related political issues, plus articles, and postings from other online discernment ministries, and media which share the aims to obey the biblical commands to shed light on and refute error, heresy, apostasy, cults, and spiritual abuse. ALL CONTENT FROM HTTPS://RATHEREXPOSETHEM.BLOGSPOT.COM MOVED TO THIS NEW BLOG, MAY 2020
It seems like the White House is in a state of pure panic mode as the GOP has brought out the receipts on the Biden family's questionable business deals. The latest revelation pertains to Chinese bank payments to Hunter Biden.
Ramadan is typically described as a month-long fast. Yet the entire month is filled with feasting. Indeed, binge eating during Ramadan is causing a health crisis in Muslim countries. So why are gluttony and excess portrayed as a strict discipline and self-control in Islam? Is there a spiritual component to Ramadan? David Wood explores the issue and uncovers the disturbing truth about Islam's holiest month.
BY ROBERT SPENCER
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Christians of all traditions were likely surprised on Friday when the Vatican’s Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue issued a message to Muslims for Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting by day and gorging by night. The fact that such a message was sent was not a surprise, as interreligious dialogue has for many years been far more important to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and other Churches than actually spreading the Gospel message. The surprising aspect was that in the message, which was entitled “Christians and Muslims: Promoters of Love and Friendship,” the Vatican asserted that Ramadan is important not just for Muslims, but for Christians as well. Christians, were you aware of this?
The message was signed by Cardinal Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot, a Spanish prelate who is the prefect of the Interreligious Dialogue Dicastery, and Msgr. Indunil Kodithuwakku Janakaratne Kankanamalage, a Sri Lankan who is its secretary, is addressed to “Dear Muslim brothers and sisters.” It immediately states, “The month of Ramadan is important for you, but also for your friends, neighbors, and fellow believers of other religions, in particular Christians.” Can Cardinal Guixot or Msgr. Kankanamalage give us any examples of Christians who observe Ramadan, or who think it important?
Certainly, there are many Christians who believe for various reasons that it is very important to build good relationships with Muslims, but one would be hard-pressed to find any who actually join in the fasting-and-gorging month, just as it would be difficult to find any Muslims who observe the Christian fasting season of Lent. Although there is always some overlap, particularly among people in mixed marriages, it is rare for people of one religious tradition to follow the practices of another. The Vatican is so anxious to reach out in friendship to Muslims that it is massively overstating its case. That’s not to say that most Christians have a negative view of Ramadan. They just aren’t thinking about it at all.
The Vatican message, however, goes on to assert that during Ramadan, “existing friendships are reinforced and others are built, paving the way for more peaceful, harmonious and joyful coexistence. This corresponds to the divine will for our communities, and indeed for all the members and communities of the one human family.” Gee, that’s swell, but even Guixot and Kankanamalage seem to realize that it’s a bit pollyannish, as they go on to assure us that “we are aware, dear friends, that peaceful and friendly coexistence faces many challenges and threats: extremism, radicalism, polemics, disputes, and religiously motivated violence.”
You can say that again. In fact, much of that religiously motivated violence comes from people who are observing the month of Ramadan that the Vatican is busy celebrating. In April 2022, the Palestinian Authority’s Supreme Sharia Judge, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, declared that “Ramadan is not a month of laziness but rather a month of activity, of effort, and of hard work, and as it also was in the life of the Prophet, a month of jihad, conquest, and victory.” The jihad he had in mind was violence against unbelievers, and not getting the kids to school on time, as a Muslim cleric in India, Maulana Bashir Ahmad Khaki, made clear in 2018: “Ramadan is the pious month of ‘Jihad-o-Qital’ (Jihad and killing). Those who attain martyrdom while waging Jihad, doors of heaven remain open.” In 2012, a jihad group in Bulgaria explained, “Ramadan is a month of holy war and death for Allah. It is a month for fighting the enemies of Allah and God’s messenger, the Jews and their American facilitators.” Or as the Vatican put it, “The threats are fueled by a culture of hate.”
The Vatican did not, however, explain exactly where that “culture of hate” was coming from. Instead, it pretended that both sides had an equal responsibility to seek peace: “We need, then, to find the most appropriate ways of countering and overcoming such a culture, enhancing instead, enhancing love and friendship, in particular between Muslims and Christians, due to the bonds that unite us.” Terrific. But did Guixot and Kankanamalage ever pause to ponder why such statements always and in every case come from the Christian side of the interreligious dialogue with Muslims, not from the Muslim side? Where are the Muslim leaders exhorting their coreligionists to reach out to Christians and other non-Muslims in friendship, and to reject the understanding of Ramadan that includes violence?
The Vatican’s naïve and willfully ignorant Ramadan message only highlights the fact that in this as in virtually all other cases, the friendly outreach to other religious traditions is decidedly one-sided.
BY ROBERT SPENCER
SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/03/syria-iranian-drone-kills-u-s-contractor;
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Why do we still have troops in Syria? What is their purpose, other than to line the pockets of the military-industrial complex?
“American Contractor Killed in Drone Attack on Base in Syria,” by Eric Schmitt, New York Times, March 23, 2023:
WASHINGTON — A U.S. contractor was killed and another contractor and five U.S. service members were injured when a self-destructing drone struck a maintenance facility on a coalition base in northeast Syria on Thursday, the Pentagon said in a statement.
U.S. intelligence analysts concluded that the drone was of “Iranian origin,” according to the Pentagon statement, which said the attack took place near Hasaka at 1:38 p.m. local time.
In response, at President Biden’s direction, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said he ordered airstrikes against facilities in eastern Syria used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, or I.R.G.C.
“The airstrikes were conducted in response to today’s attack as well as a series of recent attacks against coalition forces in Syria by groups affiliated with the I.R.G.C.,” Mr. Austin said in a statement released late Thursday.
“These precision strikes are intended to protect and defend U.S. personnel,” the statement said. “The United States took proportionate and deliberate action intended to limit the risk of escalation and minimize casualties.”
United States Air Force F-15E fighter jets attacked a munition warehouse, a control building and an intelligence-collection site, two senior U.S. military officials said.
The U.S. airstrikes killed eight pro-Iran fighters in eastern Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group in Britain that tracks the conflict through contacts in Syria.
Rami Abdurrahman, its director, said on Friday that the strikes had targeted a weapons depot in the city of Deir Ezzor, killing six fighters, and that two other fighters had been killed by strikes in the desert of Mayadeen and near the town of Bukamal. A United States official confirmed the locations of the American retaliatory strikes, but not the casualty reports.
“As President Biden has made clear, we will take all necessary measures to defend our people and will always respond at a time and place of our choosing,” Mr. Austin said. “No group will strike our troops with impunity.”
The attacks are likely to stoke tensions with Iran, which Biden administration officials call the largest security threat in the Middle East.
“Iran’s vast and deeply resourced proxy forces spread instability throughout the region and threaten our regional partners,” Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, the head of the military’s Central Command, said in testimony to the House Armed Services Committee earlier on Thursday….
BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
It’s about time. There’s much work to do to start protecting children from a dangerous element of the trans community that has mutated into a cult and is now inflicting grooming and mutilation upon children, allegedly without parental consent.
Such potentially criminal actions need to be subjected to immediate investigations everywhere, for the protection of children. House Education and Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx’s (R-NC) investigation is a significant step in the right direction. Children’s National Hospital has already responded. Its tweet, whether true or not, parrots the same tired talking points of the woke, using words such as “welcoming” and “inclusive.”
Four months ago, Virginia Foxx (along with other Congressional Republicans) reiterated her commitment to “oversight” and “lawsuits” amid Biden’s reckless policies and orders. Further investigations, prosecutions and jail time for these egregious assaults upon and mutilation of children would be appropriate for medical practitioners if they are found guilty after due process.
“Virginia Foxx demands answers from DC children’s hospital over gender procedures,” by Jeremiah Poff, Washington Examiner, March 21, 2023:
EXCLUSIVE — House Education and Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) is demanding a Washington children’s hospital detail its protocols and policies related to the administering of cross-sex hormones and surgeries for children.
In a letter to Children’s National Hospital President and CEO Kurt Newman that was shared exclusively with the Washington Examiner, Foxx expressed concern that the hospital’s “Youth Pride Clinic” did not once mention the role of parental consent in the prescription of “life-altering surgeries and other medical interventions” for children diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
“The website for the Clinic states that your primary and specialty care teams provide, among other things, ‘[h]ormone replacement therapy,'” Foxx wrote. “There is no mention of any parental consent requirement for such therapy or for other medical services provided to youth who have not reached the age of majority.”
In August, the hospital drew scrutiny after the popular Twitter account Libs of TikTok released a recording of a call with a hospital staff member who admitted the hospital had performed hysterectomies on children younger than 16. The hospital later denied that it provided gender transition surgeries to minors and scrubbed its website of language that said such procedures were available to patients aged 0-21.
The letter from Foxx seeks answers from the hospital on whether or not it has provided “medical interventions for a minor diagnosed with gender dysphoria” without the consent of both parents, including such procedures as facial reconstruction, chest reconstruction, or genital modifications such as vaginoplasty or phalloplasty.
The letter also seeks records of “reports or inquiries” that hospital staff members have made to child protective services if a parent objected to “medical interventions that would hormonally or surgically transition his or her child” and asks the hospital to reveal the number of children who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria by the clinic, as well as those who have received hormonal or surgical treatment.
“I am concerned about the use of life-altering, irreversible medical interventions on children with healthy bodies,” Foxx wrote. “Parents are a key part of any medical decisions for their children: parents have the right and responsibility to make medical decisions for their children, and they should be free to do so without undue pressure or interference from medical establishments.”
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Children’s National Hospital said it is “committed to fostering a welcoming and inclusive environment for all and to serving our LGBTQ+ patients and families in the full spectrum of their care.”….
BY ROBERT SPENCER
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
This is the last gasp of a dying church (and a dying civilization). A culture that has no identity of its own and welcomes those who wish to conquer and subjugate it is a culture that will soon be a matter of history. These two archbishops are signposts on the way to the demise of the Church of Sweden, and of Sweden itself as a non-Muslim country.
“The Archbishop: Muslims can join the Church of Sweden,” translated from “Ärkebiskopen: Muslimer kan vara med i Svenska kyrkan,” Samnytt, January 26, 2023 (thanks to L.):
Outgoing Archbishop Antje Jackelén received harsh criticism for her religious relativist stance, not least in relation to the controversial religious ideology of Islam. She adopted the Swedish variant of “Allahu akbar” as her language of choice and said she could not put the peaceful healer Jesus before the warrior and mass murderer Muhammad as a prophet. Now Jackelen’s successor goes a step further and welcomes all Muslims to the Church of Sweden.
Martin Modéus has been appointed as the new archbishop in the Church of Sweden. For more conservative and traditional Christians, it is out of the frying pan and into the fire after eight years with the controversial Antje Jackelén. In a debate article in the left-liberal Dagens Nyheter, Modeus presents himself as the heir and further developer of the religious relativism for which his predecessors became famous and criticized.
The fact that Modéus is speaking out in this way is caused, among other things, by the fact that the Center Party’s supposed new party leader, Muharrem Demirok, who has already been in several storms before taking office, has also declared that he is a Muslim but also a member of the Church of Sweden. Many have reacted against this, but Modéus takes the opposite stance – being a Muslim and not a Christian does not constitute an obstacle to being part of the Church of Sweden, he believes.
That the Christian way of “relating to faith” would be a requirement in the Church of Sweden, Modéus emphatically opposes – all ways, even the Muslim, are equally legitimate and needed in the country’s churches.
A requirement to be a Christian in order to be part of a Christian congregation is regarded by the new archbishop as a recent “ideologization of the concept of religion.” However, the claim is contradicted by many who believe that what is new and ideological instead is the idea that it is just as well to believe in Allah and Muhammad in a Christian congregation as in Jehovah and Jesus.
In the Church of Sweden, under the leadership of Archbishop Martin Modéus, “you define what you believe in based on your own terms.” According to Modéus, the fact that the Church of Sweden receives a diversity of non-Christian beliefs “is an asset.”
Modéus wants the country’s churches to function more as clubs for general social community than places where a common Christian belief is shared. In this, he claims to have been inspired by one of the ideologues of Dagens Nyheter’s editorial page, Björn Wiman.
The Church of Sweden has lost many members. This is due, among other things, to the fact that more and more Swedes have adopted a secular outlook on life, but in many cases also to the fact that you do not recognize yourself in the “left-wing church” it has turned into, which nowadays functions more as one of the Social Democrats’ many corporative legs in Swedish society.
However, many Swedes remain members, by birth and unfettered habit, that they have not come to terms with leaving or are simply not aware that they are members of something they never actively chose to join. Even outspoken critics retain often their membership in order not to lose the right to vote in church elections and thus the opportunity to influence the future direction of the Church of Sweden.
However, the Church of Sweden needs new members to replace those who fall away, and the large group of immigrant Muslims is therefore attractive. According to Modéus, it is by opening the church doors to them that you can still claim to be a “people’s church.” That the church should be something only for believers or cultural Christians is “far too narrow,” the archbishop asserts in the DN article.
