Ancient Jewish Texts Found in Afghanistan to Debut Next Week

Ancient texts (illustrative)
Flash90


The National Library will hold a special event next week to debut ancient texts found in an Afghanistan genizah, or storage area for old Jewish texts. The texts are estimated to be over 1000 years old and include writings from post-Talmudic Jewish leader Rabbi Saadiah Gaon.

Professor Hagai Ben-Shammai, academic director of the National Library spoke to Arutz Sheva Monday about the event, and revealed that thousands of texts were found in the genizah - some dating back to the first century CE. The National Library has managed to acquire 29 texts for archival purposes.

Most of the texts were written in Ancient Persian or Arabic, and consist of legal and commercial documents, according to the Professor. The documents appeared to have belonged to a small group of people.

However, one notable find stands out: a commentary written in Arabic on the book of Isaiah, which is attributed to post-Talmudic Jewish leader and Rabbi Saadiah Gaon.

The items in question were found in a cave in northern Afghanistan - and well preserved, probably due to the climate.

In order to verify the chronology of the items, archaeologists sent microscopic portions of the texts to be carbon-dated; they also verified the dates by examining the documents themselves. The texts, interestingly, are written on paper and not on parchment; yet they have remained well-preserved for over 1000 years.

Other documents of Rabbi Saadiah Gaon are among the finds, though the National Library has not been able to purchase everything from private traders, according to the Professor.

The texts include a debate between the Rabbi and a prominent figure of the day, who calls into question the historical and moral cohesion of the Bible. The language used throughout the debate is said to be particularly poetic.

When asked whether or not the Library would be able to purchase all of the texts, the Rabbi expressed hopes that it would eventually - but also hinted that the price for the hundreds of documents exceeded six or seven figures.

The discovery is the latest in a trend of texts being unearthed across the globe this year.

In 2013, the world's oldest siddur, or Jewish prayer book, was uncovered in Italy. The siddur is estimated to date back to about 840 CE.

Credit to Israel National News

The Pope and the Adam and Eve Fable

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On The 100th Anniversary Of The Federal Reserve Here Are 100 Reasons To Shut It Down Forever

December 23rd, 1913 is a date which will live in infamy.  That was the day when the Federal Reserve Act was pushed through Congress.  Many members of Congress were absent that day, and the general public was distracted with holiday preparations.  Now we have reached the 100th anniversary of the Federal Reserve, and most Americans still don't know what it actually is or how it functions.  But understanding the Federal Reserve is absolutely critical, because the Fed is at the very heart of our economic problems.  Since the Federal Reserve was created, there have been 18 recessions or depressions, the value of the U.S. dollar has declined by 98 percent, and the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger.  This insidious debt-based financial system has literally made debt slaves out of all of us, and it is systematically destroying the bright future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.  If nothing is done, we are inevitably heading for a massive amount of economic pain as a nation.  So please share this article with as many people as you can.  The following are 100 reasons why the Federal Reserve should be shut down forever...

#1 We like to think that we have a government "of the people, by the people, for the people", but the truth is that an unelected, unaccountable group of central planners has far more power over our economy than anyone else in our society does.

#2 The Federal Reserve is actually "independent" of the government.  In fact, the Federal Reserve has argued vehemently in federal court that it is "not an agency" of the federal government and therefore not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

#3 The Federal Reserve openly admits that the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks are organized "much like private corporations".

#4 The regional Federal Reserve banks issue shares of stock to the "member banks" that own them.

#5 100% of the shareholders of the Federal Reserve are private banks.  The U.S. government owns zero shares.

#6 The Federal Reserve is not an agency of the federal government, but it has been given power to regulate our banks and financial institutions.  This should not be happening.

#7 According to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Congress is the one that is supposed to have the authority to "coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures".  So why is the Federal Reserve doing it?

#8 If you look at a "U.S. dollar", it actually says "Federal Reserve note" at the top.  In the financial world, a "note" is an instrument of debt.

#9 In 1963, President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 11110 which authorized the U.S. Treasury to issue "United States notes" which were created by the U.S. government directly and not by the Federal Reserve.  He was assassinated shortly thereafter.

#10 Many of the debt-free United States notes issued under President Kennedy are still in circulation today.

#11 The Federal Reserve determines what levels some of the most important interest rates in our system are going to be set at.  In a free market system, the free market would determine those interest rates.

#12 The Federal Reserve has become so powerful that it is now known as "the fourth branch of government".

#13 The greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was whenthere was no central bank.

#14 The Federal Reserve was designed to be a perpetual debt machine.  The bankers that designed it intended to trap the U.S. government in a perpetual debt spiral from which it could never possibly escape.  Since the Federal Reserve was established 100 years ago, the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger.

#15 A permanent federal income tax was established the exact same year that the Federal Reserve was created.  This was not a coincidence.  In order to pay for all of the government debt that the Federal Reserve would create, a federal income tax was necessary.  The whole idea was to transfer wealth from our pockets to the federal government and from the federal government to the bankers.

#16 The period prior to 1913 (when there was no income tax) was the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history.

#17 Today, the U.S. tax code is about 13 miles long.

#18 From the time that the Federal Reserve was created until now, the U.S. dollar has lost 98 percent of its value.

#19 From the time that President Nixon took us off the gold standard until now, the U.S. dollar has lost 83 percent of its value.

#20 During the 100 years before the Federal Reserve was created, the U.S. economy rarely had any problems with inflation.  But since the Federal Reserve was established, the U.S. economy has experienced constant and never ending inflation.

#21 In the century before the Federal Reserve was created, the average annual rate of inflation was about half a percent.  In the century since the Federal Reserve was created, the average annual rate of inflation has been about 3.5 percent.

#22 The Federal Reserve has stripped the middle class of trillions of dollars of wealth through the hidden tax of inflation.

#23 The size of M1 has nearly doubled since 2008 thanks to the reckless money printing that the Federal Reserve has been doing.

#24 The Federal Reserve has been starting to behave like the Weimar Republic, and we all remember how that ended.

#25 The Federal Reserve has been consistently lying to us about the level of inflation in our economy.  If the inflation rate was still calculated the same way that it was back when Jimmy Carter was president, the official rate of inflation would be somewhere between 8 and 10 percent today.

#26 Since the Federal Reserve was created, there have been 18 distinct recessions or depressions: 1918, 1920, 1923, 1926, 1929, 1937, 1945, 1949, 1953, 1958, 1960, 1969, 1973, 1980, 1981, 1990, 2001, 2008.

#27 Within 20 years of the creation of the Federal Reserve, the U.S. economy was plunged into the Great Depression.

#28 The Federal Reserve created the conditions that caused the stock market crash of 1929, and even Ben Bernanke admits that the response by the Fed to that crisis made the Great Depression even worse than it should have been.

#29 The "easy money" policies of former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan set the stage for the great financial crisis of 2008.

#30 Without the Federal Reserve, the "subprime mortgage meltdown" would probably never have happened.

#31 If you can believe it, there have been 10 different economic recessions since 1950.  The Federal Reserve created the "dotcom bubble", the Federal Reserve created the "housing bubble" and now it has created the largest bond bubble in the history of the planet.

#32 According to an official government report, the Federal Reserve made 16.1 trillion dollars in secret loans to the big banks during the last financial crisis.  The following is a list of loan recipients that was taken directly from page 131 of the report...

Citigroup - $2.513 trillion
Morgan Stanley - $2.041 trillion
Merrill Lynch - $1.949 trillion
Bank of America - $1.344 trillion
Barclays PLC - $868 billion
Bear Sterns - $853 billion
Goldman Sachs - $814 billion
Royal Bank of Scotland - $541 billion
JP Morgan Chase - $391 billion
Deutsche Bank - $354 billion
UBS - $287 billion
Credit Suisse - $262 billion
Lehman Brothers - $183 billion
Bank of Scotland - $181 billion
BNP Paribas - $175 billion
Wells Fargo - $159 billion
Dexia - $159 billion
Wachovia - $142 billion
Dresdner Bank - $135 billion
Societe Generale - $124 billion
"All Other Borrowers" - $2.639 trillion

#33 The Federal Reserve also paid those big banks $659.4 million in "fees" to help "administer" those secret loans.

#34 During the last financial crisis, big European banks were allowed to borrow an "unlimited" amount of money from the Federal Reserve at ultra-low interest rates.

#35 The "easy money" policies of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have created the largest financial bubble this nation has ever seen, and this has set the stage for the great financial crisis that we are rapidly approaching.

#36 Since late 2008, the size of the Federal Reserve balance sheet has grown from less than a trillion dollars to more than 4 trillion dollars.  This is complete and utter insanity.

#37 During the quantitative easing era, the value of the financial securities that the Fed has accumulated is greater than the total amount of publicly held debt that the U.S. government accumulated from the presidency of George Washington through the end of the presidency of Bill Clinton.

#38 Overall, the Federal Reserve now holds more than 32 percent of all 10 year equivalents, and that percentage is rising by about 0.3 percent each week.

#39 Quantitative easing creates financial bubbles, and when quantitative easing ends those bubbles tend to deflate rapidly.

#40 Most of the new money created by quantitative easing has ended up in the hands of the very wealthy.

#41 According to a prominent Federal Reserve insider, quantitative easing has been one giant "subsidy" for Wall Street banks.

#42 As one CNBC article recently stated, we are seeing absolutely rampant inflation in "stocks and bonds and art and Ferraris".

#43 Donald Trump once made the following statement about quantitative easing: "People like me will benefit from this."

#44 Most people have never heard about this, but a very interesting study conducted for the Bank of England shows that quantitative easing actually increases the gap between the wealthy and the poor.

#45 The gap between the top one percent and the rest of the country is now the greatest that it has been since the 1920s.

#46 The mainstream media has sold quantitative easing to the American public as an "economic stimulus program", but the truth is that the percentage of Americans that have a job has actually gone downsince quantitative easing first began.

#47 The Federal Reserve is supposed to be able to guide the nation toward "full employment", but the reality of the matter is that an all-time record 102 million working age Americans do not have a job right now.  That number has risen by about 27 million since the year 2000.

#48 For years, the projections of economic growth by the Federal Reserve have consistently overstated the strength of the U.S. economy.  But every single time, the mainstream media continues to report that these numbers are "reliable" even though all they actually represent is wishful thinking.

#49 The Federal Reserve system fuels the growth of government, and the growth of government fuels the growth of the Federal Reserve system.  Since 1970, federal spending has grown nearly 12 times as rapidly as median household income has.

#50 The Federal Reserve is supposed to look out for the health of all U.S. banks, but the truth is that they only seem to be concerned about the big ones.  In 1985, there were more than 18,000 banks in the United States.  Today, there are only 6,891 left.

#51 The six largest banks in the United States (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) have collectively gotten 37 percent larger over the past five years.

#52 The U.S. banking system has 14.4 trillion dollars in total assets.  The six largest banks now account for 67 percent of those assets and all of the other banks account for only 33 percent of those assets.

#53 The five largest banks now account for 42 percent of all loans in the United States.

#54 We were told that the purpose of quantitative easing is to help "stimulate the economy", but today the Federal Reserve is actually paying the big banks not to lend out 1.8 trillion dollars in "excess reserves" that they have parked at the Fed.

#55 The Federal Reserve has allowed an absolutely gigantic derivatives bubble to inflate which could destroy our financial system at any moment.  Right now, four of the "too big to fail" banks each have total exposure to derivatives that is well in excess of 40 trillion dollars.

#56 The total exposure that Goldman Sachs has to derivatives contracts is more than 381 times greater than their total assets.

#57 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has a track record of failure that would make the Chicago Cubs look good.

#58 The secret November 1910 gathering at Jekyll Island, Georgia during which the plan for the Federal Reserve was hatched was attended by U.S. Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department A.P. Andrews and a whole host of representatives from the upper crust of the Wall Street banking establishment.

#59 The Federal Reserve was created by the big Wall Street banks and for the benefit of the big Wall Street banks.

#60 In 1913, Congress was promised that if the Federal Reserve Act was passed that it would eliminate the business cycle.

#61 There has never been a true comprehensive audit of the Federal Reserve since it was created back in 1913.

#62 The Federal Reserve system has been described as "the biggest Ponzi scheme in the history of the world".

#63 The following comes directly from the Fed's official mission statement: "To provide the nation with a safer, more flexible, and more stable monetary and financial system."  Without a doubt, the Federal Reserve has failed in those tasks dramatically.

#64 The Fed decides what the target rate of inflation should be, what the target rate of unemployment should be and what the size of the money supply is going to be.  This is quite similar to the "central planning" that goes on in communist nations, but very few people in our government seem upset by this.

#65 A couple of years ago, Federal Reserve officials walked into one bank in Oklahoma and demanded that they take down all the Bible verses and all the Christmas buttons that the bank had been displaying.

#66 The Federal Reserve has taken some other very frightening steps in recent years.  For example, back in 2011 the Federal Reserveannounced plans to identify "key bloggers" and to monitor "billions of conversations" about the Fed on Facebook, Twitter, forums and blogs.  Someone at the Fed will almost certainly end up reading this article.

#67 Thanks to this endless debt spiral that we are trapped in, a massive amount of money is transferred out of our pockets and into the pockets of the ultra-wealthy each year.  Incredibly, the U.S. government spent more than 415 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt in 2013.

#68 In September, the average rate of interest on the government’s marketable debt was 1.981 percent.  In January 2000, the average rate of interest on the government’s marketable debt was 6.620 percent.  If we got back to that level today, we would be paying more than a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt and it would collapse our entire financial system.

#69 The American people are being killed by compound interest but most of them don't even understand what it is.  Albert Einstein once made the following statement about compound interest...

"Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it."

#70 Most Americans have absolutely no idea where money comes from.  The truth is that the Federal Reserve just creates it out of thin air.  The following is how I have previously described how money is normally created by the Fed in our system...

When the U.S. government decides that it wants to spend another billion dollars that it does not have, it does not print up a billion dollars.

Rather, the U.S. government creates a bunch of U.S. Treasury bonds (debt) and takes them over to the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve creates a billion dollars out of thin air and exchanges them for the U.S. Treasury bonds.

#71 What does the Federal Reserve do with those U.S. Treasury bonds?  They end up getting auctioned off to the highest bidder.  But this entire process actually creates more debt than it does money...

The U.S. Treasury bonds that the Federal Reserve receives in exchange for the money it has created out of nothing are auctioned off through the Federal Reserve system.

But wait.

There is a problem.

Because the U.S. government must pay interest on the Treasury bonds, the amount of debt that has been created by this transaction is greater than the amount of money that has been created.

So where will the U.S. government get the money to pay that debt?

Well, the theory is that we can get money to circulate through the economy really, really fast and tax it at a high enough rate that the government will be able to collect enough taxes to pay the debt.

But that never actually happens, does it?

And the creators of the Federal Reserve understood this as well.  They understood that the U.S. government would not have enough money to both run the government and service the national debt.  They knew that the U.S. government would have to keep borrowing even more money in an attempt to keep up with the game.

#72 Of course the U.S. government could actually create money and spend it directly into the economy without the Federal Reserve being involved at all.  But then we wouldn't be 17 trillion dollars in debt and that wouldn't serve the interests of the bankers at all.

#73 The following is what Thomas Edison once had to say about our absolutely insane debt-based financial system...

That is to say, under the old way any time we wish to add to the national wealth we are compelled to add to the national debt.

Now, that is what Henry Ford wants to prevent. He thinks it is stupid, and so do I, that for the loan of $30,000,000 of their own money the people of the United States should be compelled to pay $66,000,000 — that is what it amounts to, with interest. People who will not turn a shovelful of dirt nor contribute a pound of material will collect more money from the United States than will the people who supply the material and do the work. That is the terrible thing about interest. In all our great bond issues the interest is always greater than the principal. All of the great public works cost more than twice the actual cost, on that account. Under the present system of doing business we simply add 120 to 150 per cent, to the stated cost.

But here is the point: If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good.

#74 The United States now has the largest national debt in the history of the world, and we are stealing more than 100 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day in a desperate attempt to keep the debt spiral going.

#75 Thomas Jefferson once stated that if he could add just one more amendment to the U.S. Constitution it would be a ban on all government borrowing....

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.

#76 At this moment, the U.S. national debt is sitting at$17,251,528,475,994.19.  If we had followed the advice of Thomas Jefferson, it would be sitting at zero.

#77 When the Federal Reserve was first established, the U.S. national debt was sitting at about 2.9 billion dollars.  On average, we have been adding more than that to the national debt every single day since Obama has been in the White House.

#78 We are on pace to accumulate more new debt under the 8 years of the Obama administration than we did under all of the other presidents in all of U.S. history combined.

#79 If all of the new debt that has been accumulated since John Boehner became Speaker of the House had been given directly to the American people instead, every household in America would have been able to buy a new truck.

#80 Between 2008 and 2012, U.S. government debt grew by 60.7 percent, but U.S. GDP only grew by a total of about 8.5 percentduring that entire time period.

#81 Since 2007, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio has increased from 66.6 percent to 101.6 percent.

#82 According to the U.S. Treasury, foreigners hold approximately 5.6 trillion dollars of our debt.

#83 The amount of U.S. government debt held by foreigners is about 5 times larger than it was just a decade ago.

#84 As I have written about previously, if the U.S. national debt was reduced to a stack of one dollar bills it would circle the earth at the equator 45 times.

#85 If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his entire fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.

#86 Sometimes we forget just how much money a trillion dollars is.  If you were alive when Jesus Christ was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.

#87 If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.

#88 In addition to all of our debt, the U.S. government has also accumulated more than 200 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities.  So where in the world will all of that money come from?

#89 The greatest damage that quantitative easing has been causing to our economy is the fact that it is destroying worldwide faith in the U.S. dollar and in U.S. debt.  If the rest of the world stops using our dollars and stops buying our debt, we are going to be in a massive amount of trouble.

#90 Over the past several years, the Federal Reserve has been monetizing a staggering amount of U.S. government debt even though Ben Bernanke once promised that he would never do this.

#91 China recently announced that they are going to quit stockpiling more U.S. dollars.  If the Federal Reserve was not recklessly printing money, this would probably not have happened.

#92 Most Americans have no idea that one of our most famous presidents was absolutely obsessed with getting rid of central banking in the United States.  The following is a February 1834 quote by President Andrew Jackson about the evils of central banking....

I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the Bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the Bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out and, by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out.

#93 There are plenty of possible alternative financial systems, but at this point all 187 nations that belong to the IMF have a central bank.  Are we supposed to believe that this is just some sort of a bizarre coincidence?

#94 The capstone of the global central banking system is an organization known as the Bank for International Settlements.  The following is how I described this organization in a previous article...

An immensely powerful international organization that most people have never even heard of secretly controls the money supply of the entire globe.  It is called the Bank for International Settlements, and it is the central bank of central banks.  It is located in Basel, Switzerland, but it also has branches in Hong Kong and Mexico City.  It is essentially an unelected, unaccountable central bank of the world that has complete immunity from taxation and from national laws.  Even Wikipedia admits that "it is not accountable to any single national government."  The Bank for International Settlements was used to launder money for the Nazis during World War II, but these days the main purpose of the BIS is to guide and direct the centrally-planned global financial system.  Today, 58 global central banks belong to the BIS, and it has far more power over how the U.S. economy (or any other economy for that matter) will perform over the course of the next year than any politician does.  Every two months, the central bankers of the world gather in Basel for another "Global Economy Meeting".  During those meetings, decisions are made which affect every man, woman and child on the planet, and yet none of us have any say in what goes on.  The Bank for International Settlements is an organization that was founded by the global elite and it operates for the benefit of the global elite, and it is intended to be one of the key cornerstones of the emerging one world economic system.

#95 The borrower is the servant of the lender, and the Federal Reserve has turned all of us into debt slaves.

#96 Debt is a form of social control, and the global elite use all of this debt to dominate all the rest of us.  40 years ago, the total amount of debt in our system (all government debt, all business debt, all consumer debt, etc.) was sitting at about 2 trillion dollars.  Today, the grand total exceeds 56 trillion dollars.

#97 Unless something dramatic is done, our children and our grandchildren will be debt slaves for their entire lives as they service our debts and pay for our mistakes.

#98 Now that you know this information, you are responsible for doing something about it.

#99 Congress has the power to shut down the Federal Reserve any time that they would like.  But right now most of our politicians fully endorse the current system, and nothing is ever going to happen until the American people start demanding change.

#100 The design of the Federal Reserve system was flawed from the very beginning.  If something is not done very rapidly, it is inevitable that our entire financial system is going to suffer an absolutely nightmarish collapse.

The truth is that we do not have to have a Federal Reserve.  The greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was when we did not have a central bank.  If we are ever going to turn this nation around economically, we are going to have to get rid of this debt-based financial system that is centered around the Federal Reserve.  On the path that we are on now, there is no hope.  Please share this article with as many people as you can.  It is imperative that we try to wake the American people up while we still have time.

Credit to Economic Collapse

'ANGEL' SEEN AT PROMISE KEEPERS EVENT

The Bible teaches, and Christians believe, that angels are present on earth, to protect people and join in worship of God, and the faithful know it although they may not be able to document it using some scientific test, mathematical formula or photograph.

Until now.

A digital image captured during a time of praise and worship at his year’s Promise Keepers men’s conference in Cedar Falls, Iowa, shows what looks like an angel:

A radiant, glowing white figure standing on the stage while the worship and praise band, “One Body” leads the men in singing “Jesus, take all of me. I run to you, I run to you. I lay everything at your feet. Let my life be yours.”

On its Facebook page, the men’s group famed for its hundreds of conferences calling on men to return to God and be the faithful husbands, fathers, brothers and sons that the nation needs, described that “something supernatural took place in Cedar Falls.”

A man at the conference, using his iPad, took two pictures of the band, and both had “an angel on them.”

He said while the image is stunning, the back story makes it even more compelling.

During the 2013 season, the Saturday morning message at PK conferences was on purity, he said.

“We candidly addressed the issue of pornography and adultery, as we are convinced that this issue has become the enemy’s ‘spiritual weapon of mass destruction,’” he said.

That day in Cedar Falls, there was a powerful message on that issue, and an alter call, where men “stood in front of the stage weeping and asking for forgiveness and healing from God.”

The band was leading with, “Jesus, take all of me. I run to you, I run to you. I lay everything at your feet. Let my life be yours.”

Up in the seats was “a Southern Baptist, self-described ‘conservative, non-prophetic’ pastor” who lifted his iPad over his head to take a photo.

“He looked down at the screen to see a strange glow on the stage that sent chills down his spine. He then showed the picture to the man standing next to him, and proceeded to take another picture of the stage. When he looked at the second picture and saw the same image, he was overwhelmed with emotion, as he was convinced that what he saw in these photos was an angel. He immediately came to stage right and showed the pictures to our program director,” he said.

And no, it’s not photoshopped.



The pastor’s wife released a statement, “My husband took these photos. No photo shop. Enjoy debating angels and stage lights but don’t miss the miracle of a few thousand men gathering to praise God and to be challenged to be men of honor who keep their promises! At least 17 of them were our guys. That’s a miracle. They were in our church Sunday gathering at the front praying with their families and friends. Miracles happen.”

Promise Keepers points out the responsibility, and influence of men leading their families in worship. The group reports, “When a child is the first to attend church, 3½ percent of the families follow. When a wife/mom is the first to attend church, 17 percent of the families follow. When a dad/husband is the first to attend church, 93 percent of the families follow. ”

“There will always be those who are skeptical. Even God’s own voice was given a ‘natural explanation,’ but I was at this event (and all PK events this year), and what I experienced was a move of the Spirit unlike anything before. And we need this move – this awakening – to continue,” Jesse said.

Millions of men have come before the ministry of Promise Keepers since its founding by then-University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney in 1990, whose team took a national championship title. He led a gathering, the “Stand in the Gap” event on the National Mall in Washington on Oct. 4, 1997, that drew an estimated 1.4 million, one of the largest events ever to be held there.

He’s in the College Football Hall of Fame class from 2014.

A central message of Promise Keepers is that men need to be warriors for their faith, family, marriages, churches, communities and nation.

“There is an all-out assault taking place on anyone who stands for biblical truth,” the organization explains. “Rarely a day goes by where we don’t hear of someone being criticized – or even outright attacked – for affirming the morals and values that only a few decades ago were the norm in society. The bombardment of sin is destroying families and communities – but men of God are rising up to fight!”

The 2014 conference theme is “Unleashing the Warrior,” and events tentatively are scheduled for May 16-17 in Jacksonville, Fla.; June 6-7 in Peoria, Ill.; June 20-21 in Baton Rouge, Fla.; July 25-26 in Loveland, Colo.; and Aug. 9 in Wallingford, Conn.

Those are in addition to the Israel tour offerings and Sept. 17 worldwide simulcast event that will originate in Jerusalem.


Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/12/miracles-happen-angel-seen-at-promise-keepers-event/#MAtfmv3q0mLykFxb.99

Toronto hit as winter storm grips eastern Canada and US

Snow and ice cause severe disruption to parts of eastern Canada and the US

A severe ice storm has brought snow and freezing rain to Canada's biggest city, Toronto, and to much of the east of the country.

At least 11 deaths have been blamed on the storm system in Canada and the north-east US, which was also affected.

The storm left hundreds of thousands of people in the region without electricity.

Travellers were stranded at airports in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal as dozens of flights were cancelled or delayed.

Parts of the transport network in Southern Ontario were severely affected.

Toronto's Mayor Rob Ford said it was "one of the worst storms in Toronto history," saying that a state of emergency may be called on Monday.

 

Tree damage during the storm has been described as extensive
 

Freezing rain fell over the weekend, causing icicles to form
 

Although the storm has moved on, temperatures continue to be very low
 

Vehicles had to drive round the ice covered branches on Toronto streets
 

Crews are working to restore power to tens of thousands of homes in Toronto

The Toronto Hydro power company said that it may take up to 72 hours to get everybody in the city reconnected.

Early on Monday morning it said that around a quarter of a million of its customers were still without power.

Over the border in the United States, many flights were also cancelled due to the storm, at one of the busiest travel periods of the year.

More than 400,000 people were also left without power in Michigan, New York state and New England.

The US National Weather Service described the storm system as "complex and large", warning that "another round of snow and ice" was expected for New England on Monday as the storm winds down.

At least four people were killed by flooding caused by the storm in Kentucky, while a tornado was reported to have caused extensive damage in Arkansas.

However, the system has also brought record high temperatures to some parts of the east coast of the US, with the temperature in New York's Central Park reaching 21C, with records also being set in several other cities.

Credit to BBC

The Right Name makes a difference

A naming convention is a convention for naming things. The intent is to allow useful information to be deduced from the names based on regularities.
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_convention]

If there ever was a book that would benefit from following uniform rules for names, it is the Bible. The Bible is a book of types and anti-types, of shadows and substance. Names not only bear tremendous meaning in the Scriptures, but they serve as links whereby the natural and the spiritual material in its pages might be connected.

Tragically, there has been no book in history wherein names have been recorded more inconsistently, and rendered more arbitrarily, than the Bible. The mishmash of naming practices has led to the obscuring of many deep and wonderful spiritual truths. If I were to sum up the state of names in the most popular English Bibles, the word “confusion” would accurately describe it.

In an earlier chapter I mentioned the great disservice that copyists and Bible translators have done in removing the memorial name of God (Yahweh) from scriptures. The name Yahweh occurs 6,828 times in the Old Testament. The King James Bible renders the divine name as Lord in nearly every instance. Yet, even in this they were not completely consistent. In four occasions in the Old Testament, the King James Bible renders the tetragrammaton as “JEHOVAH.” These occurrences are found in Exodus 6:3, Psalm 83:18, Isaiah 12:2, and 26:4. I would like to examine the first occurrence where the name Jehovah occurs in the King James Bible.

Exodus 6:3
And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them.
KJV

The word JEHOVAH is a translation of the four Hebrew letters Yod He Vav He. The name Jehovah has largely fallen out of favor with Bible scholars, as Yahweh is widely considered to be a better translation. What is being conveyed in the KJV rendering of Exodus 6:3 is that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knew the Creator as “God Almighty,” but they were not familiar with the name “JEHOVAH,” or other renderings of the tetragrammaton such as Yahweh. Is this is true statement? A good way to check would be to read the book of Genesis, for it is there that the lives of these three men are recounted. The first encounter between Abraham (Abram) and Yahweh is recorded in the 12th chapter of Genesis.

Genesis 12:1
Now the Lord (Yahweh) had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee:
KJV

Genesis 12:4
So Abram departed, as the Lord (Yahweh) had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran.
KJV

Genesis 12:7-8
And the Lord (Yahweh) appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the Lord (Yahweh), who appeared unto him. And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west, and Hai on the east: and there he builded an altar unto the Lord (Yahweh), and called upon the name of the Lord(Yahweh).
KJV

In these four verses we find that the tetragrammaton occurs six times. In each instance the KJV Bible renders the divine name as “Lord,” but this is a substitution, rather than a translation. The Hebrew text actually includes the four letters of the tetragrammaton in each instance and Yahweh would be a more accurate translation of the memorial name of God.

What are we to make of the claim in Exodus 6:3 that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not know God Almighty by this name? We might reason that perhaps they did not know the name of Yahweh, but that Moses in writing the book of Genesis used this name because God had revealed it to him. This is a possibility, but it becomes untenable in light of a number of verses, such as Genesis 12:8 where we are told that Abraham “builded an altar unto Yahweh, and called upon the name of Yahweh.”

Still, some may argue that this is inconclusive. Maybe Moses was just using a figure of speech here, but Abraham did not actually know the name Yahweh. The matter could be settled if we could find any occurrence in Genesis where Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob used the name Yahweh when speaking to other men, or while in prayer to God. Examples of this are to be found.

Genesis 14:22-23
And Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have lift up mine hand unto the Lord(Yahweh), the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take from a thread even to a shoelatchet, and that I will not take any thing that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abram rich:
KJV

Here is a very clear testimony that Abraham knew God by the name Yahweh. We find that Abraham not only uses the name Yahweh here, but he describes Yahweh as “the most high God” (El Elyon). There are many more clear examples of this type in Genesis. Consider the following.

Genesis 15:7-8
And he said unto him, I am the Lord (Yahweh) that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it. And he said, Lord God (Yahweh Adonai), whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?
KJV

This is quite remarkable. In these two verses we have Yahweh declaring His name to Abraham, and we have Abraham addressing God as “Yahweh Adonai.” The tetragrammaton is found in the Hebrew text in each occasion, and the KJV translators rendered it as “Lord.” Clearly Abraham knew the name of Yahweh! We observe in other Scripture verses that Isaac and Jacob also knew the name of Yahweh.

Genesis 27:20
And Isaac said unto his son (Jacob), How is it that thou hast found it so quickly, my son? And he said, Because the Lord (Yahweh) thy God brought it to me.
KJV

How then do we reconcile the statement in Exodus 6:3 with the evidence in Genesis? Did the Holy Spirit err in inspiring men to record conflicting statements? It is far more reasonable to conclude that our English Bibles contain some type of error here. Such an idea is resisted by those who claim that the KJV Bible is inerrant. Nevertheless, the evidence of error is before us. The problem can be resolved by accepting the translation of Exodus 6:3 adopted by The Scriptures, a divine name Bible, published by the Institute for Scripture Research.

Shemoth 6:3
And I appeared to Abraham, to Yitshaq, and to Ya’aqob, as El Shaddai. And by My Name, *(Yahweh), was I not known to them?

*(Where I have placed the name Yahweh in parentheses, The Scriptures have the tetragrammaton spelled out in Hebrew letters.)

Ancient Hebrew did not include punctuation like that found in English today. Sentences did not end with question marks, periods, or exclamation points. The reader had to discern what form of statement was being made from the context. A declarative and an interrogative statement could be written identically. W.C. Kaiser, in his writing The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable and Relevant, agrees that this verse should be rendered as a rhetorical question. This solves the apparent contradiction that arises from the King James rendering of this verse.

One might guess that English Bibles that make such a muddle out of the name of God, will do no better with names of lesser importance. That is sadly the case. The second name in importance in the Bible has to be that of the Son of God. The King James, and every other popular English Bible, renders the name of the Son of God as “Jesus.” This name is now so familiar to English speaking people, and especially to Christians, that adopting another, more accurate rendering, seems to be an insurmountable problem.

Jesus is truly a terrible rendering of the name of the Son of God. It completely obscures the Hebraic roots of His name. The name Jesus also hides from view the type and antitype that exist between the Israelite leader named Joshua and the Son of God. These men shared the same name. The Hebrew name of these men transliterates into English as Yehoshua. Some prefer Yahshua, Yeshua, or some other variant. Whatever name is adopted, however, there is no reason to render the name of the Israelite leader who succeeded Moses, and the Son of God, differently. They shared the same name. The translators of the KJV Bible were well aware of this. In the New Testament the successor to Moses is called Jesus instead of Joshua.

Acts 7:44-45
Our fathers had the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness, as he had appointed, speaking unto Moses, that he should make it according to the fashion that he had seen. Which also our fathers that came after brought in with Jesus into the possession of the Gentiles, whom God drave out before the face of our fathers, unto the days of David...
KJV

The Hebrew forefathers brought the tabernacle into the land of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua, who in this verse is called Jesus. It is very poor translation policy to call one man by two different names in the Old and New Testaments. The KJV also renders Joshua as Jesus in Hebrews 4:8. To make an even greater muddle, the KJV renders this same name as Jose in Luke 3:29. The NKJV, NIV, NASB, ESB, and other popular English Bible versions do no better. They all give different names to Joshua, the Israelite leader, and the Son of God.

Hebrews 4:8
For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken of another day after that.
NAS

Hebrews 4:8-9
For if Joshua had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day.
NKJV

Hebrews 4:8-9
For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on.
ESV

Hebrews 4:8-9
For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day.
NIV

Hebrews 4:8-9
Now if Joshua had succeeded in giving them this rest, God would not have spoken about another day of rest still to come.
NLT

In the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament from which the translators worked, there is no difference between the name rendered as Joshua above, and the same name rendered as Jesus when it is used as a reference to the Son of God. The translators could have called the Son of God Joshua, or called the Israelite leader Jesus, or called them both Yehoshua. They should not have given them different names when in fact they bore the same name. Doing so hides from the eyes of the people of God the parallels contained between these two men’s lives and ministries. Consider a small portion of the similarities between their lives below. For the sake of clarity I will refer to them as OT Yahshua and NT Yahshua.

Both Leaders of God’s People
OT Yahshua: [Moses said] Yahweh was angry with me also on your account, saying, "Not even you shall enter there. Joshua the son of Nun, who stands before you, he shall enter there; encourage him, for he will cause Israel to inherit it.” (Deuteronomy 1:37-38)

NT Yahshua: “And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the leaders of Judah; for out of you shall come forth a Ruler, Who will shepherd My people Israel.” (Matthew 2:6)

Both Called out of Egypt
OT Yahshua:“None of the men who came up from Egypt, from twenty years old and upward, shall see the land... except Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite and Joshua the son of Nun, for they have followed Yahweh fully.” (Numbers 32:11-12)

NT Yahshua: Joseph arose and took the Child and His mother by night, and departed for Egypt; 15 and was there until the death of Herod, that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, “Out of Egypt did I call My Son." (Matthew 2:14-15)

Both Filled with the Spirit
OT Yahshua: So Yahweh said to Moses, "Take Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit, and lay your hand on him.” (Numbers 27:18)

NT Yahshua: “You know of Yahshua of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit...” (Acts 10:38)

Both Appoint Twelve Men
OT Yahshua: "So Joshua called the twelve men whom he had appointed from the sons of Israel, one man from each tribe.” (Joshua 4:4).

NT Yahshua: “And He went up on the mountain and summoned those whom He Himself wanted, and they came to Him. And He appointed twelve, so that they would be with Him and that He could send them out to preach...” (Mark 3:13-14)

Both Baptized in the Jordan River
OT Yahshua: Joshua said, "By this you shall know that the living God is among you... It shall come about when the soles of the feet of the priests who carry the ark of Yahweh, the Lord of all the earth, rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan will be cut off, and the waters which are flowing down from above will stand in one heap." (Joshua 3:10-13)

NT Yahshua: “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.” (Mark 1:9)

Many more parallels could be mentioned. The Israelite leader of the Old Testament who is commonly known as Joshua led the natural descendants of Abraham into their inheritance. This serves as a type and shadow of the Son of God who bore the same name, for He leads the spiritual descendants of Abraham into their inheritance.

This confusion in the rendering of names is not limited to these examples. There is hardly a Biblical character whose name has not been rendered inconsistently in our English Bibles. Consider the case of Jacob. Jacob was the father of 12 sons who became the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel. In the New Testament there is a book of the Bible written by a Hebrew Christian named Jacob. His book intentionally draws comparisons that point back to Jacob and his sons. The book begins with the following words:

Jacob, a bond-servant of God and of the Lord Yahshua Christ, to the twelve tribes who are dispersed abroad, greetings.

Here is a father in the Christian church, an elder among the body of believers, writing as if to his 12 sons. This is an intentional allusion to Jacob of the Old Testament who also had 12 sons. Yet most believers never make the connection. Why? Because the most popular English Bibles have rendered the New Testament believer whose name was Jacob as James. The name of the book he wrote also bears the name James. People of God, this is Jacob’s book! It is addressed to the 12 tribes.

Tell me which of your English Bible translations has a book in the New Testament bearing the name of Jacob? Why is it not there? Why render it as James, thereby obscuring the link between Old Testament and New, between type and anti-type? Why take the same name recorded in the Greek New Testament and render it in two very different ways? It was quite common for Jewish men to be named after the forefathers whose names are recorded in the Old Testament. The author of the book of James was not the only Jewish Christian who bore the name of Jacob. This was also the name of the brother of John who is similarly called James today.

Following this pattern of being named after Old Testament patriarchs we find that Simon Peter was Simeon, Judas was Judah, both being named after sons of Jacob. In these names as well, we find that the shadows of the Old Testament are fulfilled in the New, but the link is lost to most because the names have been altered. It was Judah, the son of Jacob, who suggested to his brothers that they sell Joseph into slavery for 20 pieces of silver. In the New Testament it was another man named Judah who sold the Son of God for 30 pieces of silver. Christians seldom make the connection because in the New Testament the name is written as Judas instead of Judah.

Genesis 37:26-28
And Judah said to his brothers, "What profit is it for us to kill our brother and cover up his blood? Come and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; for he is our brother, our own flesh..." So they pulled him up and lifted Joseph out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver.

Matthew 26:14-15
Then one of the twelve, named Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests, and said, "What are you willing to give me to deliver Him up to you?" And they weighed out to him thirty pieces of silver.

One of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament was Elijah. In the King James Bible, his name is written in two different ways.

I Kings 17:22
And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah...
KJV

Matthew 11:14
And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.
KJV

We observed earlier that the name of Joshua is in one place in the KJV Bible rendered as Jose. More confusing still, the name of Joseph is rendered as Joses. It gets worse yet, for the prophet Jeremiah has his name rendered three different ways in the KJV Bible. He is referred to as Jeremiah, Jeremias, and Jeremy. This is horrible confusion.

As a minister appointed by Christ to serve as a teacher to His body, my desire is to make plain the truths found in Scripture. Sadly, the translators of most English Bibles have not followed policies that serve the same end. On the contrary, they have obscured the truth by following arbitrary and inconsistent naming conventions.

There are some lesser known English translations of the Scriptures that follow consistent naming conventions. One of these Bibles is called The Scriptures. It is published by the Institute for Scripture Research, a ministry in South Africa. There are certain translation policies of The Scriptures that I do not like, but I do appreciate the fact that they have chosen to render the names of Hebrew men and women consistently in both the Old and New Testaments. Some of these names require an adjustment for Bible readers who are accustomed to reading popular English Bibles, but they preserve the link between individuals who bore the same name. Following are some examples of these names in The Scriptures.

Ya’aqob for Jacob
Yehudah for Judah and Jude
Mosheh for Moses
Shemu’el for Samuel
Yeshayahu for Isaiah
Yirmeyahu for Jeremiah
Yehezqel for Ezekiel
Obadyah for Obadiah
Nehemyah for Nehemiah
Mattithyahu for Matthew
Yohanan for John

With these renderings, the Hebrew character of these names are preserved. Additionally, one can easily see how the name “Yah” and the Hebrew word “El” were constituent parts of many individuals names. Yah is an abbreviated form of Yahweh that occurs 49 times in the Old Testament, and a great many more times as a part of an individual’s name. The word “El” is translated into English as “God.”

The names of Biblical characters are pregnant with meaning, and for this reason they should be clarified rather than obscured. Surely Satan has worked hard to sow confusion into the pages of Scriptures that truth might be hidden from the eyes of Yahweh’s people. Following are some Bible names and their meanings.

Nehemyah/Nehemiah: comforted by Yahweh
Yirmeyahu/Jeremiah: Yahweh has uplifted
Obadyah/Obadiah: Servant of Yahweh
Shemu’el/Samuel: El (God) has heard
Yehezqel/Ezekiel: El (God) strengthens

This small sampling of names reveals the great importance of Biblical names. The names of men and women oftentimes bore testimony of some aspect of God’s character, or of man’s relationship to his Creator. Many names were prophetic. Ancient cultures set great importance upon names. This is why we observe men like Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael being given new names by the King of Babylon when they were taken into captivity. Their Hebrew names were laid aside and new names honoring the gods of Babylon were assigned to them.

Daniel, whose name meant “(El) God is my judge,” had his name changed to Belteshazzar which means “Bel (Baal) is the keeper of secrets.” Hananiah, whose name meant “Yah has graciously given” had his name changed to Shadrach which is possibly derived from Shudur Aku meaning “command of Aku (the moon god).” Azariah, whose Hebrew name meant “helped of Yah” had his name changed to Abednego which means “servant of Nebo.” Mishael, whose Hebrew name meant “Who is like (El) God,” had his name changed to Meshach which means “who is what Aku is?” We see in these names that both the Hebrews and the Babylonians were fond of choosing names that honored their deity/deities.

The study of Biblical names can be highly rewarding. What is certain is that most of the English Bibles today have hindered, rather than helped, students of the Scriptures to discover the wealth of insight to be gleaned from Biblical names.
Credit to Joseph Herrin