Thank you

I just wanted to take a minute to thank my friends, my faithful readers and the new visitors for your visits and message of encouragement on Facebook. Although most of you are anonymous, you are the ones that help me build it and I appreciate your support in  helping when you pass it on to your friends. A special thanks to the faithful followers, I don´t know who you are but I can tell that you follow this blog because of the same city and country names coming up very regularly.

I hope and it is my sincere desire that you have benefited from the posts I have written and that it has helped in getting closer to our Lord who is the One who inspires me and who keeps me going. I can only give freely what I have freely received. I am deeply and immeasurably indebted and grateful to Him because of the demonstration of His love, grace, mercy and pardon for my sins through His self-sacrificial death on the cross and the free gift of eternal life through His resurrection from the dead.

God bless you and may all together continue to lift up the Holy Name of our Lord and Savior our God, the Father, Jesus-Christ, His Son and the Holy Spirit who reveals to us who they are and what they have done for us. Maranatha.

Jean-Louis.

As Israel strikes back, fake Gaza images dominate social media

A BBC report has found that many of the photographs used to illustrate the situation in Gaza are from years ago, and even from the conflicts in Iraq and Syria.

Aryeh Savir, Tazpit News Agency

Latest Update:  07.08.14, 21:10 / Israel News

A significant part of any battle nowadays is waged in the media, as each sides tries to garner public support through the exploit of images and footage used to influence popular opinion.

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A report by the BBC shows that Palestinian supporters are using fake images to illustrate the suffering in Gaza.

"Graphic images are being shared on social media to show how people have been affected by the renewed tensions between Israel and the Palestinians," the BBC reported.

"Over the past week the hashtag #GazaUnderAttack has been used hundreds of thousands of times, often to distribute pictures claiming to show the effects of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza."

The hashtag has received 375,000 retweets in eight days.

The network found that several graphic photos, that spread through social media proporting to show killed Gazans and destruction caused by IAF strikes in recent days, were actually photos taken several years ago, some of which in other war areas like Syria and Iraq.

"BBC Trending," a show that examines trends in social media, checked the veracity of widely spread photos on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram with the hashtag #GazaUnderAttack.


Over 300,000 posts were made under that hashtag. In one case, a picture of a neighborhood being bombarded was posted with the caption "This happened today in gaza while ramadhan.Our prayers always be w you. Israel is the real terrorist! (sic)"

But a BBC investigation found that the photo was taken during an IAF strike in 2009 in Beit Lahia during Operation Cast Lead.

In another instance, a photo of blooding children was posted with the caption "This is not a matter of religion. This is a matter of humanity."

According to the BBC, the photo was taken in Aleppo in Syria and not in Gaza. Another photo in the same post was taken in Iraq in 2007.

The British broadcaster also spoke to one of the posters who shared a photo under the #GazaUnderAttack, even though the photo was taken in Syria. "I deleted one of my posts that has the image in there," she said. "It's disappointing that images get shared quite quickly. I guess that's the different between the internet and credible newspaper publisher where pictures are from a source."

A Ynet examination found that photos that are not from the IDF's current Gaza operation are still being shared on Twitter.

A search of the hashtag found a photo of two men rescuring a boy severely wounded in IAF bombings with the caption "The world is silent as Israel wipes out Gaza with airstrikes. Another kid, one of many, says goodbye." with the #GazaUnderAttack hashtag.

But a search of Google Images found the photo was taken in 2012 during Operation Pillar of Defense. The boy in the photo was killed along with his family in an Air Force attack.

Hamas has used this tactic in the past too. Tazpit's Anav Silverman reported in 2012 that during Operation Pillar of Defense, the militant organization used fake images of Gaza with false headlines, inciting a flurry of comments on Facebook against Israel.

The photos were of massacres that occurred in Syria the previous month, but were depicted as massacres of Gazan families by the IDF. Other such incidents reoccur persistently.

Ynet contributed to this report.

The mega church culture: A toxic export

Reposted from http://www.wnd.com/ 

Published: 12 hours ago

Joshua Charles 

 I’m in the home stretch of my nearly month-long trip to the Middle East, and my heart is heavy and my mind contemplative. To say that this research expedition has been life-changing would be an understatement, and it still isn’t over.
One of the greatest privileges I have had here is to meet with local Christians. The Middle Eastern church has its own issues, just like we in America do, but actually meeting and fellowshiping with them has been extremely enlightening.

The greatest question that comes to mind (at least at the moment) after these meetings is “what kind of ‘church’ is America exporting?” The church in the Middle East (speaking specifically of Jordan) is heavily influenced by the Western church, particularly the American church, far more than I realized. For instance, ministries receive millions of dollars despite the relative lack of growth. According to some local Christians we met with, those ministries spend millions, send back reports, use anything they can to show how “effective” they are, and use local Christians as, in their word, “trophies” to testify to their supposed effectiveness, and thus justifying why they should continue to receive millions more. 

According to them, ministries such as these, despite the best of intentions, have transformed the Church into a corporation, an organization, rather than the Body of Christ made up of the people of God bound together by familial ties.
Additionally, these same Christians are very concerned that these ministries bring a particularly American brand of Christianity. What does that mean? In addition to a more corporatized vision of what “church” is, they bring with them several other things (according to them): theological superficiality, an inability to speak honestly about sin (better not to bring it up) and naiveté about both the region and the culture. One of them called this the “mega church culture.”

Does any of this sound familiar?
They should, for these are, unfortunately, many of the defining characteristics of a large and growing portion of the “church” in America: a corporation based on an organizational structure that does not survive without lots of money, and at the same oftentimes lack precisely what Christians should excel at – being the FAMILY of God!
Many of these Jordanian Christians had visited the United States and preached there. They have a deep love for the United States and the American people. According to them, “Americans are the nicest people in the world.” But that does not allay their grave concerns both for the American church, as well as the vision of “church” it exports around the world.

According to one pastor who was incredibly gracious and hospitable in welcoming us into his home, a man of great wisdom and love, “In American you can’t talk about sin! What is the gospel even for if there is no sin?” This came from a man in a Muslim country, in which Christians and Muslims live relatively peacefully, but on the condition that Christians don’t share the Gospel. The question struck deep. He then followed it up with his own opinion of what the corporatized, organization-centric vision of “church” in America has done to us. The words that followed eerily reverberated with a palpable sense of undeniable truth: “In the United States, the church is very busy doing activities. LOTS of activities, people going here and there and everywhere. But where is the presence of God?”

I could not answer him, and I literally had tears well up in my eyes, because I knew what he was saying was true. Was he saying every American church? No. Was he saying every self-described American Christian? Of course not. He even emphasized that the Jordanian church had its own problems, and they were by no means perfect. But his words were true, and they reminded me of a story a mentor once told me. He used to work at a huge ministry most would instantly recognize. When he visited the corporate offices of this ministry, he saw something in the lobby that shocked him: They had come up with a formula by which they determined that by donating a certain amount of money, someone could literally “save” a particular number of people. 

 And I think that is precisely what our Jordanian brothers and sisters were trying to warn us about – we have made ministry, “church” and evangelization into a formula – something ultimately independent of God and whose success is based entirely on whether we execute the right methods, the right tools of manipulation and marketing, rather than whether God is with us or not. In the meantime, we lose perhaps the most precious aspect of daily Christian life: the sense of family with other Christians. We replace family with organizational membership. And to this, the Jordanian pastor asked us perhaps the most ominous question of all: “And what will happen when persecution comes? What will happen when your organizations come crashing down under the brunt of persecution? Will you have true Christian family to turn to?”

This sense of family has not been forgotten by our Jordanian brethren. In praying for us as we left an amazing night of fellowship, they prayed: “Dear dad, we love you so much. And we thank you for this precious gift of new family from the other side of the world now brought near to us.” Organizations change, corporations come and go, but family is forever. No wonder Jesus and all the Apostles referred to the people of God in familial terms.
Meeting with our Jordanian brethren also brought home both how many myths there are about this part of the world, but also how truly dangerous it is at the same time. There are lots of concerning things taking place, but there are also many good, loving and generous people as well. God has planted his seeds even in the darkest of places, and for this reason we still can and must hope. One young man I met, a brilliant apologist with a premier apologetics ministry, left me with this exhortation for American Christians, particularly the young: “Research. Don’t fall for the headlines. Ponder, meditate and think. It is your Christian duty to be knowledgeable and wise about the world around you. Don’t forget that.”
Amen.

Media wishing to interview Joshua Charles, please contact media@wnd.com.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/07/the-mega-church-culture-a-toxic-export/#fAxO8PFWHg0Hrgg8.99

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/07/the-mega-church-culture-a-toxic-export/#fAxO8PFWHg0Hrgg8.99

D.L. Moody on “Stony Ground Hearers”

By STLloyd July 4, 2014 D.L. Moody

Posted via  servehiminthewaiting.com 

“When a man is not deeply convicted of sin, it is a pretty sure sign that he has not truly repented. Experience has taught me that men who have very slight conviction of sin, sooner or later lapse back into their old life. For the last few years I have been a good deal more anxious for a deep and true work in professing converts than I have for great numbers. If a man professes to be converted without realizing the heinousness of his sins, he is likely to be one of those stony ground hearers who don’t amount to anything. … I believe we are making a woeful mistake in taking so many people into the Church who have never been truly convicted of sin. Sin is just as black in a man’s heart today as it ever was” 

–D.L. Moody, “Results of True Repentance,” from The Overcoming Life and Other Sermons, 1896. (From F.B.I.S. Friday Church News Notes, volume 15, Issue 27)

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