|
FIRST, OUR VIEWS: |
 |
Building Agape Restoration Communities
You might ask - "Why would I want to build an ARC, anyway? Do I look like Noah?" How do you start building it? First, you gather people together who are committed to living together as Christians in community. In his book The Benedict Option, Rod Dreher describes the immense pressure in today's world to force moral and ethical compromise upon Christians. But by mutually supporting each other to live as Christians on a day-to-day basis in a Christian community, we will be able to withstand these pressures!
Secular materialism has led to the de-Christianizing of the world. In its extreme form of communism, about 250,000 church buildings in Russia were destroyed or confiscated and turned into breweries, factories or "Lenin Houses of Culture" during the Soviet era. Secularization worldwide has diminished the role of the church in society by leading most people to become dependent on the state for answers to all their problems.
Poor, elderly and disabled Christians must free themselves from the idea that "they" - meaning someone else: the state or other Christians - ought to pay to build handicapped-accessible housing and new churches. But there isn't enough money in all the Christian organizations in the whole world to build enough of such buildings so our country can again be called a "Christian nation."
Almost all Christians, however, including poor and disabled people, have a place to live, so Christians already have the wealth needed to carry out the task of re-Christianizing their countries, in the form of... (read more)
North Korea is a country that violently persecutes Christians. In my final semester of undergrad study just over 50 years ago, I wrote a research paper for my "International Relations" course, which described the reunification of East and West Germany, North and South Vietnam, North and South Korea and the two Chinas. My professor read it and said to me: "Very interesting, but it'll never happen." Now, after more than 50 years, a peace treaty between North and South Korea appears to be happening.
This, however, isn't the oldest unresolved conflct: two days before the end of WWII the USSR declared war on Japan and seized the Northern Kurile Islands - this is the main obstacle keeping Russia and Japan tecnicallly in a state of war for over 70 years. But the longest unresolved conflict in recent history was the state of war between Montenegro and Japan: Montenegro was a party to the Russo-Japanese war of 1905 but was absorbed into Yugoslavia after WWI. Only in 2006, after Montenegro regained its independence, did it sign a peace treaty with Japan and re-establish diplomatic relations.
Is it really a problem that "only" 21% of the people go to church every week in Romania? See our first news article STUDY: ALMOST ALL ROMANIANS BELIEVE IN GOD BUT ONLY A FIFTH GO TO CHURCH WEEKLY: other places such as Russia where just 4-5% attend church weekly would love to see such church attendance in their countries!
Although my policy is to not include articles about pseudo-Christian heresies such as Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, our second news article RUSSIA: RAIDS BY POLICE HOLDING GUNS IN PEOPLE'S FACES, CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS, PRE-TRIAL DETENTIONS details such extreme abuse of state power against religious believers that it needs to be reported. The authorities claimed that Russia's ban on the JW's legal organization "does not violate the right of Jehovah's Witnesses to profess their faith" but they "tried to interview the children as well, asking them questions about the religion of the Jehovah's Witnesses," Holding guns in people's faces and interrogating their children about their religious beliefs would tend to intimidate them from professing their faith, don't you think?
Now we are also witnessing what may be a huge shift in relations between Russia and Ukraine: several of the articles in this issue detail the efforts of the Kyiv Patriarchate and the Ukrainian state to be granted a "tomos of autocephaly" from the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, making the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (KP) a recognized member of the canonical Eastern Orthodox church jurisdictions. As the "other news" headline MOSCOW PATRIARCHATE WILL EXIST IN RUSSIA AND THE RUSSIAN EXARCHATE WILL BE PRESENT IN UKRAINE, SAYS PATRIARCH FILARET explains, the Russian Orthodox Church could still have parishes in Ukraine, but they would be under an exarchate (foreign branch) of the Moscow Patriarchate, no longer called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (MP). Of course, Russia is resisting this because it would greatly diminish its ideological control over Ukraine.
In our last news article SERBIA'S CHURCH SHOULD STOP ALIENATING LIBERALS we see a not-so-subtle journalistic effort to inject a postmodern ideological slant into reporting, using language like: "alienating," "the role of women," "abortion," and "homosexuality," calling the Serbian Orthodox Church's position "conservative interventions" - to what? To the anti-Christian, postmodern ideology of "tolerance."
Here are a few of this week's "Daily" posts. For more...
Go To: Daily News & Views: Check it daily and
Share the latest posts in your Social Media streams!
|
LATEST UPDATE: at 2:30 a.m. local time on Saturday, 28 April, Alfie Evans died at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool, England. This same hospital was "once caught selling organs of living children and also stockpiled the organs of deceased infants for years without parental knowledge or consent." Alfie’s health crisis and death are an all-too predictable consequence of socialized medicine, and the low regard for human life displayed by the bureaucrats who administer it.
*** Click on the photos or captions above ↑ to read my summary and commentary on each. ***
Also, SHARE my posts on
Google+,
Facebook,
Twitter,
LinkedIn &
Pinterest because
I post much more on Social Media than what's on my Daily News & Views web-page!
NOW, THE NEWS:
STUDY: ALMOST ALL ROMANIANS BELIEVE IN GOD BUT ONLY A FIFTH GO TO CHURCH WEEKLY
from: Romania-insider.com
(26 Apr.) Almost all of Romania’s citizens believe in God (95%) but only 21% go to church every week, according to an infographic about the religious belief in Romania, produced by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation Romania and cited by local Agerpres. The results show that there is a "significant difference" in Romania between the affirmation of faith and the actual religious activity.
Almost 90% of Romanians consider themselves religious, 44% say they pray daily, and 33% consider themselves “religious practitioners”. Meanwhile, 79% agree with the statement that "it is necessary to believe in God to be moral and to have the right values,” and 67% agree with the statement “homosexuality must be discouraged by society."
However, only 27% see as necessary or very necessary the referendum on changing the definition of family so as to exclusively allow the marriage between persons of the opposite sex. Such a referendum has been announced and promoted by the ruling party PSD, which said it would organize a big demonstration for the "traditional family" this May. Meanwhile, 46% think the government should support the spread of religious values. [read more...]
RUSSIA: RAIDS BY POLICE HOLDING GUNS IN PEOPLE'S FACES, CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS, PRE-TRIAL DETENTIONS
by Victoria Arnold: Forum 18 News Service
(23 Apr.) One year after Russia's Supreme Court ruled that their Administrative Centre be liquidated as "extremist" and their activities banned, Jehovah's Witnesses are facing a wave of criminal prosecutions.
Between 10 and 20 April, officers of various law enforcement agencies conducted multiple armed raids on the homes of Jehovah's Witnesses in four regions. During some of the raids in Ufa, officers held their guns in individuals' faces and made threats of long prison sentences and trouble at work.
Officers seized property and took dozens of people away for questioning, and several appear to have been put into pre-trial detention on "extremism"-related criminal charges. The Investigative Committee is carrying out the criminal investigations. Up to four people may now be in custody after these raids, in Ufa (Republic of Bashkortostan), Polyarny (Murmansk Region), Shuya (Ivanovo Region), and Vladivostok (Primorye), and a fifth is under travel restrictions.
Jehovah's Witnesses note that the latest arrests are a "direct consequence" of the Supreme Court ban, which was issued on 20 April 2017. The Russian government, however, maintains that the ban does not violate the right of Jehovah's Witnesses to profess their faith. On 23 March, the Russian government submitted its response to questions from the European Court of Human Rights.
In its response, the government claims that the Supreme Court's decision "does not give an evaluation of the beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses [and] does not contain a restriction or prohibition on the individual profession of these teachings." Officers took more than 20 people to the Investigative Department of the Northern Fleet's Polyarny Flotilla, where they questioned them. "The investigators tried to interview the children as well, asking them questions about the religion of the Jehovah's Witnesses," the European Association added. [read more...]
ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE DECIDED TO CLOSELY COMMUNICATE AND COORDINATE WITH ITS SISTER ORTHODOX CHURCHES CONCERNING GRANTING AUTOCEPHALY TO UKRAINE
from: Religious Information Service of Ukraine
(23 Apr.) In Constantinople, the meeting of the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on the Ukrainian question took place on April 19-20. According to the results the Communique was adopted:
The Holy and Sacred Synod, under the chairmanship of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, concluded its regular session, which took place between Thursday, April 19th, and Friday, April 20th. All the items on the agenda were reviewed and discussed and the appropriate decisions were made.
In accordance with the Divine and Sacred Canons, as well as century-old ecclesiastical order and Holy Tradition, the Ecumenical Patriarchate concerns itself with the preservation of Pan-Orthodox unity and the care for the Orthodox Churches throughout the world — especially of the Ukrainian Orthodox Nation that has received the salvific Christian faith and holy baptism from Constantinople.
Thus, as its true Mother Church, it examined matters pertaining to the ecclesiastical situation in Ukraine, as done in previous synodal sessions, and having received from ecclesiastical and civil authorities — representing millions of Ukrainian Orthodox Christians — a petition that requests the bestowal of autocephaly, decided to closely communicate and coordinate with its sister Orthodox Churches concerning this matter. [read more...]
UKRAINE MOVES TO SPLIT CHURCH FROM RUSSIA AS ELECTIONS APPROACH
from: Reuters
(19 Apr.) Ukraine's Orthodox church could become independent of Moscow under the terms of a presidential initiative lawmakers approved on Thursday, a move that President Petro Poroshenko said would make it harder for Russia to meddle in Ukrainian affairs. Ukraine's pro-Western leaders have sought step by step to move the former Soviet republic out of Russia's orbit, after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and a Moscow-backed insurgency broke out in eastern Ukraine.
The Moscow Patriarchate is part of the Russian Orthodox Church and has a sizeable following in Ukraine. Kiev considers it a tool for the Kremlin to wield influence. Poroshenko met Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, in Istanbul last week, to seek support for giving autocephalous status - effectively, making it independent - to the Ukrainian church.
"Unity is our main weapon in the fight against the Russian aggressor," Poroshenko told parliament. "This question goes far beyond the ecclesiastical. It is about our finally acquiring independence from Moscow." Poroshenko compared having an autocephalous church to Kyiv's aspirations to join the European Union and NATO, "because the Kremlin regards the Russian church as one of the key tools of influence over Ukraine."
Asked about the issue on his daily conference call with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by Russian state media as saying: "Of course, actions aimed at splitting up the churches are unlikely to be supported and unlikely to be welcomed." [read more...]
METROPOLITAN HILARION ON SITUATION IN UKRAINE: SECULAR ADMINISTRATION CANNOT INITIATE CREATION OF AUTOCEPHALOUS CHURCH
from: Interfax-Religion
(19 Apr.) The Russian Orthodox Church believes that the new initiative of the Ukrainian authorities to create an autocephalous Orthodox Church in Ukraine is destined to fail, like the previous attempts. "We are one Church, which was born in the Kiev, Dnieper baptistery, and, of course, the Constantinople Patriarchate or any other Church cannot unilaterally proclaim the autocephaly of this or that Church," Metropolitan Hilarion, the head of the Moscow Patriarchate's Department for External Church Relations, told Interfax-Religion on Thursday.
"Therefore, we believe that this initiative, despite all current information noise, will have the same fate as the initiatives adopted in the previous years, and we are again reminding that the Ukrainian church problem can only be resolved using canonical methods," he said. According to earlier reports, Ukraine's Verkhovnaya Rada backed Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko's address to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on the creation of an autocephalous local Orthodox Church.
The Russian Orthodox Church heard about the talks between Poroshenko and Patriarch Bartholomew and the "rich gifts" that were brought to Fanar, the district of Istanbul, where the patriarch's residence is located, Metropolitan Hilarion said. "We all know that, and we also know many other things, which I would not like to say now," he said.
"For many years, we have heard a very firm position from the Constantinople patriarch, who has always said that he recognized His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry as the only head of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. And the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church has no intention of severing relations with the Russian Orthodox Church," he said. [read more...]
SERBIA'S CHURCH SHOULD STOP ALIENATING LIBERALS
from: BalkanInsight
(16 Apr.) As the Serbian Church marks its first 800 years, it is time that this important national institution rethought its policies and became more charitable and tolerant [according to this article's author]. The Serbian Orthodox Church, the only institution in Serbia that reaches all the way back to medieval times, turns 800 in 2019. Vecernje Novosti ["Evening News"], a Belgrade newspaper, published a piece earlier this month stating that the Church had begun a process to change its constitution ahead of the anniversary.
The reported changes are substantial. The appointment of the Patriarch would be done through voting rather than by a random draw of three selected candidates. All bishops would receive the rank of metropolitan, which would give them more independence in interpreting matters of faith. Finally, the Church’s official name would change to Serbian Orthodox Church – Patriarchate of Pec, which would re-assert its roots in Kosovo by referencing its Ottoman-era seat in the town of Pec/Peja in Kosovo.
But the proposed changes have stirred passions in Belgrade, given that the Church and its leading bishops often engage in politics, from insisting that Serbia never recognises Kosovo's independence to pronouncements on the role of women, on abortion and on homosexuality. These conservative interventions in Serbia's political space are increasingly problematic for liberal believers, however, who appreciate the Church's core message, history, and rituals but would prefer the church to modernise and be more conciliatory within and outside Serbia. [read more...]
OTHER NEWS HEADLINES:
UOC OF MOSCOW PATRIARCHATE: ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE TO DISCUSS AUTOCEPHALOUS CHURCH IN UKRAINE
from UNIAN Information Agency
MOSCOW PATRIARCHATE WILL EXIST IN RUSSIA AND THE RUSSIAN EXARCHATE WILL BE PRESENT IN UKRAINE, SAYS PATRIARCH FILARET
from Religious Information Service of Ukraine
UKRAINIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH OF US SUPPORTS REQUEST FOR AUTOCEPHALY FROM PATRIARCH BARTHOLOMEW
from Kyiv Post
CATHOLICOS OF ALL ARMENIANS, ARMENIAN PROTEST LEADER DISCUSS WAYS OF RESOLVING CRISIS IN COUNTRY
from Interfax-Religion
RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT MEDDLES IN UKRAINIAN CHURCH QUESTION
from RIA Novosti
2018 WORLD SOCCER CUP: AN EPIC OPPORTUNITY TO REACH RUSSIA FOR CHRIST
from Mission Eurasia
FORTY-EIGHT FOSTER CHILDREN AND NINE OF THEIR OWN
from Orthodox Christianity
INDIA: TAMIL CHRISTIANS PROTEST AGAINST VIOLENCE, HARASSMENT
from Eurasia Review
EASTER IN GEORGIA: MAKING THE PERFECT PASKA
from EurasiaNet.org
To SHARE THE ESSAY BELOW with your friends, GO TO: Hosken-News Blog. You can also write your COMMENTS there!
Community and National Tragedies
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
For a few years, I had been noticing that on the corner of Cable Avenue and Sycamore Street, the narrow brick road beside our church building, the fire hydrant was sinking into the muddy hillside. Or rather, I should say that the hillside was gradually sliding down and beginning to cover the hydrant. At first, just the bottom quarter of the fire hydrant was enveloped in muddy earth. Then several months ago, I noticed that about one-third of the hydrant had sunk into the mud. But a couple weeks ago, about half of it was enveloped by the moist hillside. [The following contains a bit of hyperbole:]
Then it happened: the spring rains had soaked the whole steep hillside, from Highway 30 seventy-five feet above down to our church building and the apartment buildings just 350 feet away, causing the earth to liquefy and come pouring down upon and into the church and apartment buildings. The walls and the roofs collapsed under the force of this mudslide, the basements and first floors were totally filled with mud, with a huge section of Highway 30 fallen into this muck and mire so that heavy excavating equipment was called in to haul away what was left of the highway and the buildings.
State disaster officials have applied for federal disaster relief and estimate that it will require at least six months of intensive, almost round-the-clock work to build a 500-foot-long and 75-foot-high concrete retaining wall, then fill the hillside with compacted earth up to the level of Highway 30 and reconstruct the highway. Meanwhile, the church and attached rectory are no more. The apartment complex was evacuated as the hillside began to give way. so nobody was injured. Residents, mostly elderly and/or disabled, have been placed in extended-stay motels until more permanent housing can be found for them. Thankfully, one church member who lived in those very apartments had vacated his apartment due to a systemic infection just days before this disaster, so we had time to remove his possessions.
"Why did this have to happen to me?" in his case changed to: "Why did this happen to our town, to the church and all those poor people?" We might be able to answer the "How?" question: in order to extract coal and iron ore, human settlements gradually built up the whole Pittsburgh metropolitan area from the three rivers confluence basin into the steep hillsides of the northern Appalachian Mountains. Then came decades of economic decline and infrastructure neglect after the coal mines and steel mills shut down, and finally heavy rainfall. But the "Why?" we may never fully know.
And yet, this was not to be the only tragedy to befall our community and nation. Exactly one hundred twelve years earlier, on April 18, “The Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire” (HistoryNet) destroyed most of that city, which had risen in just 60 years from a 500-inhabitant sleepy hamlet of Yerba Buena to become one of the wonders of the world. And yet, the works of man were no match for the power of nature and nature’s God. The San Andreas Fault, running right through San Francisco Bay, creaked and rumbled at 5:12 a.m., causing great fissures in the earth, collapsed houses and city buildings, broken gas mains and resultant fires that destroyed much of the city: the quakes had broken the water mains, so what remained of city fire crews could barely get a trickle to fight the flames.
But this was just a foretaste of the disaster to come: in the same month in 2018, the San Andreas Fault gave way again. The North American Plate that creaks south and the Pacific Plate that creaks north “came unstuck” and broke completely apart, causing hundreds of miles of the Pacific Plate to slide into the sea. Tens of millions of people were simply swallowed up by the collapsing earth as the sea rushed over them. The tremors, 9.4 on the Richter Scale, caused buildings to crumble, huge fissures to appear in the earth and fires to destroy many cities and towns from British Columbia to the Mexico border and inland for hundreds of miles. The entire U.S. civilian economy came to a halt as virtually all available resources were directed toward this national emergency. The resultant tsunamis severely damaged countries all around the Pacific Rim. Hundreds of millions of human lives were lost or forever traumatized and trillions of dollars expended trying to piece the country and the world together again.
The "Why?" question was asked over and over: "Why could God – if there is a God – let this terrible, awful tragedy happen?" Some would blame it on the fact that for several decades, California had been the “leading edge” of modern culture with its sex-and-violence themed movies selling all over the world, more recently had become a center of the LGBTQ movement, and just in the last few weeks even banned the expression of anti-LGBTQ ideas, including traditional Christian doctrine – it had become a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah.
But when Jesus Christ sent out His disciples to preach the Gospel and heal the sick, He warned those who would not receive the Good News: "And whoever will not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart from that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet. Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city!" (Mat. 10:14-15). Are sexual sins more evil and deserving of divine judgment than any other kind of sin? No! It was not directly because of sexual sins that a huge chunk of California was wiped off the map and much of the remaining "left coast" of America decimated by earthquake and fire: it was because they had rejected the Gospel. Granted, the enemy of our souls often uses the hook of sexual temptation and sin to lure people away from the path toward holiness and godliness: far too many are kept from the faith in Christ by these temptations and too many Christians have fallen away due to this kind of sin.
But outwardly religious people who haven’t succumbed to sins of the flesh may be bound by the sins of complacency and pride in their pseudo-piety. Christ told us about some Jews whom Pilate viciously slew and mixed their blood with their sacrifices: "Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish." Then Christ brings up a natural disaster: "Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all the other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish" (Lk. 13:2-5). Death can come by the malice of others or by natural disaster as well as by our own sins.
The point of all this, all these community and national tragedies, human malice and natural disasters, is that we live in a fallen universe where both the natural world and human nature are distorted by the Fall. The results of Adam and Eve’s sin, as well as our own sins, are all around us in our broken relationships and our despoiled environment. We build cities, houses, churches and apartments on hillsides and on geological faults unsafe for human habitation. We likewise build our relationships on shaky "I’m OK, you’re OK" relativistic foundations. Then we ask: "Why did God let it happen to us?"
Thus we blame God for our personal sins and our collective errors. In his apocalyptic vision, the Apostle John foresaw this as the fourth angel poured out his bowl: "And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory." And when the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the beast’s throne: "his kingdom became full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues because of the pain. They blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and did not repent of their deeds" (Rev. 16:9-11).
America needs to repent. Each and every one of us need to repent of our outward sins and our inner pseudo-piety. Refusing to repent only hardens us in our sins. Let each man and each woman, all of us together, examine ourselves, the hidden motivations of our own hearts, and pray: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner!" Only then He will spare us and restore our land.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
To keep our websites free,
please Support Agape Restoration Society: click on the "DONATE" button there.
Also, please Share Our Vision with your family & friends.
And shop at our Amazon.com Store too: when you purchase an item
using our link, a few percents are credited to our affiliate account.
Please remember to pray for Christians in socialist countries, and for...
Your fellow-servants,
Bob & Cheryl
p.s. Worry's like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do, but doesn't get you anywhere!
, 28 Apr. 2018
