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Feel free to write about whatever you wish.

It’s been a challenging year for many of us and I think the end of the year and the hopes for what is to come inspire many thoughts of a variety of subjects. My personal thoughts are of gratitude to all those who have visited this site – more than 120,000 since February – and especially to those who have taken the time to comment. Thank you all.

56 thoughts on “Open forum”

  1. My son asked me why do they say Merry Christmas and a happy new year. Why not say Merry new year.

    I told him merry is a lot higher level happiness than happy. You can be merry for one day but it would be too difficult to do it for one year.

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    • Some years back, I read (cant recall where) that the word ‘merry’ meant something very different back a few centuries, perhaps a bit more like our Christian use of the word blessed. This is supposed to mean something like be favoured or be made happy.

      anyone got anything further on it?
      Rian.

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    • Look what I found on this subject:

      The True Meaning Of Christ-Mass

      They tell us that it is the season to be jolly. It is a time of ornaments, red and green decorations, silver bells, holly, mistletoe and colored lights. It is also a time of department store Santas calling out their universal mantra, “Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas.” Nearly all of the realm of so-called “Christianity” join in and repeat this same greeting, “Merry Christmas!”

      Although we hear these words constantly as they resonate millions of times throughout the land, almost nobody understands what they are really saying. It is the purpose of this tract to take the words, “Merry Christmas” and examine the true meaning and essence of those words.

      A true Christian would want to examine everything they say, because Jesus said in Matthew 12:36-37, “But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgement. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” We will now set aside all of the customs, glitter and traditions of Christmas, which were taken from pagan witchcraft and popularized by the Roman Catholic Church, and we will focus on the true meaning of the words, “Merry Christmas!”

      The word “Merry” is simple to define. It unquestionably means to be happy, joyful and light-hearted. The word “merry” fits into the ambience of laughter and frivolity. This word “merry” by itself is innocent and innocuous enough, but as we will now see, it becomes heinously blasphemous when used with the word “Christmas.”

      Here let it be noted that most people think that the word, “Christmas” means “the birth of Christ.” By definition, it means “death of Christ”, and I will prove it by using the World Book Encyclopedia, the Catholic Encyclopedia, and a book entitled, The Mass In Slow Motion.

      If you are an honest, sincere and discerning Christian, please read on; if not, you might as well stop right here. The World Book Encyclopedia defines “Christmas” as follows: “The word Christmas comes from “Cristes Maesse”, an early English phrase that means “Mass of Christ.” (1) It is interesting to note that the word “Mass”, as used by the Roman Catholics, has traditionally been rejected by the so-called Protestants, such as Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals and so on. The word “Mass” is strictly a Catholic word and thus, so is “Christ-Mass.”

      It would stand to reason, that since all of these denominations love and embrace “Christ-Mass”, that December 25th is the great homecoming day, when all of the Protestants become Catholic for a day. It would seem that all of the so-called “wayward daughters” of the Romish church return to their mother, the scarlet harlot. Thus, all of the so-called Protestant churches could sing to the Pope that popular song “I’ll be home for Christmas.”

      As previously stated, the word “Mass” in religious usage means a “death sacrifice.” The impact of this fact is horrifying and shocking; for when the millions of people are saying, “Merry Christmas”, they are literally saying “Merry death of Christ!” Furthermore, when the fat man in the red suit laughs boisterously and says, “Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas”, he is mocking and laughing at the suffering and bleeding Saviour, who died for our sins. He does this while parents place their little children into his waiting arms to hear his false promises of gifts that he says he will give them. Consider what you are saying when you say “Merry Christmas.”

      What is so amusing about our Saviour’s painful death? What is so funny? Why is Santa laughing? Why are you going along with it? Your words do count and Satan knows it. Yes, the word “Mass” does mean “death sacrifice”, and to cement that fact, we will consider the definition of the inventors of the religious application of the word “Mass.” I am looking at page 537 of the Catholic Encyclopedia, which says, “In the Christian law, the supreme sacrifice is that of the Mass.” It goes on to say, “The supreme act of worship consists essentially in an offering of a worthy victim to God, the offering made by a proper person, as a priest, the destruction of the victim.” (2) Please note carefully the word, “victim” of the Mass. The Latin word for victim is “Hostia” from which the word “host” is derived. The Mass, by definition of those who coined the word, is a sacrifice involving a victim. There is no other meaning for the word “Mass” or “Christ-Mass.” On page 110 of a book entitled “The Mass In Slow Motion”, we find the following words: “It is only with the consecration that the sacrifice of the Mass is achieved. I have represented the Mass to you, more than once, as a kind of ritual dance.” (3)

      In essence, the Mass is the ceremonial slaying of Jesus Christ over and over again, followed by the eating of his flesh and the drinking of his blood. The Mass is the death sacrifice, and the “Host” is the victim. This is official Roman Catholic doctrine, and “Christmas” is a word that they invented. Again, I ask, what is so merry about the pain, bleeding, suffering and death of Jesus Christ? Satan has done quite a job of getting millions of so-called “Christians” to blaspheme. What a deceiver he is.
      Now you know the true meaning of the word “Christmas” or Mass of Christ. There is much more to know about this pagan holiday, and we will be glad to provide you with plenty of evidence that Jesus was not born on December 25th, and that Christmas is not only a lie, but is actually a witches’ sabbat called “Yule” in clever disguise. Please contact us at the address below, and for the sake of your soul, flee from idolatry!

      Just to post someone’s view.
      David J. Meyer

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      • “You won’t find the word “Christmas” in your Bible but you will see the word everywhere else you look today. The word literally means a “Christ mass”. Mass was a time when the church participated in the Lord’s Supper, remembering Christ’s sacrifice at Easter. (Another word that isn’t in your Bible.) That time of worship and remembrance is a Christ mass.

        If you truly understand the real meaning of Christmas, then it is a time to rejoice!

        “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” which means “God with us” (Matthew 1:23).

        The real meaning of Christmas is this…God came to this earth to dwell with us so that one day, we could go to heaven and dwell with him there. Christmas means God is with you, forever. And for those who may be reading this that have not yet placed their faith in Christ, you can meet Jesus today, and Immanuel can be with you too!”

        Janet Denison

        MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

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      • !! “If you truly understand the real meaning of Christmas, then it is a time to rejoice!”
        Or even if you don’t! 🙂

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      • THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

        Upon Calvary Christ Our Lord offered himself in sacrifice for the redemption of the human race. There had been sacrifices before Calvary, myriads of them—-foreshadowings, figures, distortions often enough, but reaching out strongly or feebly towards the perfection of Calvary’s sacrifice.

        These represented an awareness in men, a sort of instinct, that they must from time to time take something out of that vast store of things God has given them and give it back to him. Men might have used the thing for themselves but chose not to; they offered it to God, made it sacred (that is what the word sacrifice means). In itself, sacrifice is simply the admission that all things are God’s; even in a sinless world this would be true, and men would want to utter the truth by sacrifice. With sin, there was a new element; sacrifice would include the destruction of the thing offered—an animal, usually.

        We can study these sacrifices, as they were before Calvary at once perfected and ended them, in the Temple sacrifices of the Jews, the Chosen People. The whole air of the Old Testament is heavy with the odour of animals slain and offered to God. The slaying and offering—immolation and oblation—were both necessary elements. But whereas the offering was always made by the priests, the slaying need not be done by them; often it was the work of the Temple servants. For it was not the slaying that made the object sacred, but the offering. The essential thing was that the priest offer a living thing slain.

        With Christ, we have said, sacrifice came to its perfection. The priest was perfect, for Christ was the priest. The victim was perfect, for he was the victim too. He offered himself, slain. But not slain by himself. He was slain by others, slain indeed by his enemies.

        What he did was complete, once for all, not to be repeated. It accomplished three things principally—atoned for the sin of the race, healed the breach between the race and God, opened heaven to man, opened it never to be closed. He is “the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but for those of the whole world” (1 John 2:1).

        With such completion, what was still to be done? For something was still to be done. Christ is still in action on men’s behalf, as the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us. Jesus has entered “into heaven itself, that he may appear now , in the presence of God for us” (9:24). He is “always living to make intercession for us” (7:25). What still remains to be done is not an addition to what was done on Calvary, but its application to each man—that each of us should receive for himself what Our Lord won for our race.

        The “intercession” just spoken of is not a new sacrifice but the showing to God of the sacrifice of Calvary. The Victim, once slain, now deathless, stands before God, with the marks of the slaying still upon him—“a Lamb standing, as it were slain” (Revelation 5:6).

        We are now in a better position to understand the Sacrifice of the Mass. In heaven Christ is presenting himself, once slain upon Calvary, to his heavenly Father. On earth the priest—by Christ’s command, in Christ’s name, by Christ’s power—is offering to God the Victim once slain upon Calvary. Nor does this mean a new sacrifice, but Calvary’s sacrifice presented anew—in order that the redemption won for our race should produce its fruit in us individually.

        In the Mass the priest consecrates bread and wine, so that they become Christ’s body and blood. Thus the Christ he offers is truly there, really there. The Church sees the separate consecration as belonging to the very essence of the Mass. It is a reminder of Christ’s death—and he had told his first priests at the Last Supper that, in doing what he had just done, “they should show forth the death of the Lord, until he come” (1 Corinthians 11:26). They should show forth Christ’s death, remind us of his death, not, of course, kill him, any more than he had killed himself on Calvary.

        The priest offers the sacrifice. But we are, in our lesser way, offerers too. Twice we are told so in the Ordinary of the Mass. We have already seen how after the Consecration the priest says, “We thy servants but also thy holy people [ plebs tua sancta ]. . . offer . . . a pure, holy and immaculate Victim.” To see ourselves merely as spectators at Mass is to miss the opportunity to take our part in the highest action done upon earth.

        One element in the mass remains to be mentioned. We, united with Christ’s priests, have offered Our Lord to God. And God gives him back to us, to be the Life of our life. That is what Holy Communion means. God, while retaining Christ for his own, also shares him with us. So that God and man, each in his own way, received the slain and risen God-man.”

        Excerpt from ‘Theology for Beginners’ by FJ. Sheed

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  2. I am extremely impressed with your writing skills as well as with the layout on your weblog.

    Keep up the excellent quality writing, it’s rare to see
    a nice blog like this one these days.

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      • Bob and all,

        you quoted the Physicist’s favourite food as fission chips. I recall that joke was originally coined within the old 50s (60s?) stage musical Salad Days. In that terribly terribly British show it was related that the three top sports in those days were ‘Huntin’, Shootin’, and Nuclear Fishin’.

        Rian.

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  3. JOKES THAT SCIENTISTS TELL

    (From The Guardian)

    Two theoretical physicists are lost at the top of a mountain. Theoretical physicist No 1 pulls out a map and peruses it for a while. Then he turns to theoretical physicist No 2 and says: “Hey, I’ve figured it out. I know where we are.”
    “Where are we then?”
    “Do you see that mountain over there?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well… THAT’S where we are.”

    I heard this joke at a physics conference in Les Arcs (I was at the top of a mountain skiing at the time, so it was quite apt). It was explained to me that it was first told by a Nobel prize-winning experimental physicist by way of indicating how out-of-touch with the real world theoretical physicists can sometimes be.
    Jeff Forshaw, professor of physics and astronomy, University of Manchester

    ■ An electron and a positron go into a bar.
    Positron: “You’re round.”
    Electron: “Are you sure?”
    Positron: “I’m positive.”
    I think I heard this on Radio 4 after the publication of a record (small) measurement of the electron electric dipole moment – often explained as the roundness of the electron – by Jony Hudson et al in Nature 2011.
    Joanna Haigh, professor of atmospheric physics, Imperial College, London

    ■ A group of wealthy investors wanted to be able to predict the outcome of a horse race. So they hired a group of biologists, a group of statisticians, and a group of physicists. Each group was given a year to research the issue. After one year, the groups all reported to the investors. The biologists said that they could genetically engineer an unbeatable racehorse, but it would take 200 years and $100bn. The statisticians reported next. They said that they could predict the outcome of any race, at a cost of $100m per race, and they would only be right 10% of the time. Finally, the physicists reported that they could also predict the outcome of any race, and that their process was cheap and simple. The investors listened eagerly to this proposal. The head physicist reported, “We have made several simplifying assumptions: first, let each horse be a perfect rolling sphere… ”

    This is really the joke form of “all models are wrong, some models are useful” and also sums up the sort of physics confidence that they can solve problems (ie, by making the model solvable).
    Ewan Birney, associate director, European Bioinformatics Institute

    ■ What is a physicist’s favourite food? Fission chips.
    Callum Roberts, professor in marine conservation, University of York

    ■ Why did Erwin Schrödinger, Paul Dirac and Wolfgang Pauli work in very small garages? Because they were quantum mechanics.
    Lloyd Peck, professor, British Antarctic Survey

    ■ A friend who’s in liquor production,
    Has a still of astounding construction,
    The alcohol boils,
    Through old magnet coils,
    He says that it’s proof by induction.

    I knew this limerick when I was at school. I’ve always loved comic poetry and I like the pun in it. And it is pretty geeky …
    Helen Czerski, Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, Southampton

    ■ What does DNA stand for? National Dyslexia Association.

    I first read this joke when I was an undergraduate as a mature student in 1990. I’d just come to terms with my own severe reading difficulties and neurophysiology was full of acronyms, which I always got mixed up. For example, the first time I heard about Adenosine Triphosphate it was abbreviated by the lecturer to ATP, which I heard as 80p. I had no clue what she was talking about every time she mentioned 80p. And another thing, how does Adenosine Triphosphate reduce to ATP? Where’s the P?
    Peter Lovatt, lecturer in psychology of dance, University of Hertfordshire

    ■ A new monk shows up at a monastery where the monks spend their time making copies of ancient books. The new monk goes to the basement of the monastery saying he wants to make copies of the originals rather than of others’ copies so as to avoid duplicating errors they might have made. Several hours later the monks, wondering where their new friend is, find him crying in the basement. They ask him what is wrong and he says “the word is CELEBRATE, not CELIBATE!”

    I first heard this maybe more than 10 years ago in conjunction with the general theme of “copying errors” or mutations in biology.
    Mark Pagel, professor of biological sciences, University of Reading

    ■ A blowfly goes into a bar and asks: “Is that stool taken?”

    No idea where I got this from!
    Amoret Whitaker, entomologist, Natural History Museum

    ■ They have just found the gene for shyness. They would have found it earlier, but it was hiding behind two other genes.
    Stuart Peirson, senior research scientist, Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology

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    • here’s another one.
      How do you tell the sex of a chromosome?
      Just look in its jeans.

      I wont insult everyone on this list by quoting the old old limerick (heck, maybe I will after all!)
      There was a young lady named Bright
      Who travelled much faster than light.
      She departed one day
      In a relative way
      And came back the previous night.

      there was another oldie about the Fitzgerald Contraction, but cant recall it. I’ve doubtless got it in my books somewhere.

      Rian.

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    • Well there y’go!
      Once again science has proven it can perform feats god can’t even come close to doing.

      Bob’s scientific jokes have driven me to god’s brigades.
      They’re ALWAYS good for a laugh 🙂

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  4. Wow, 120,000 hits is impressive, Bryan. I am hoping 2014 will be a productive year, but also one that is peaceful. It’s easy to get carried away by angst about work, money and so on. Sometimes we get so engulfed in those thoughts, we forget the more important things, such as being grateful for friends, family and the comparative comfort we live in here in Australia, compared with many other places in the world. Happy New Year!

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  6. THE MIRACULOUS STORY OF SHIMON SABAG

    We have shared the incredible stories of many of the survivors who live in the Haifa Home for Holocaust Survivors, Jerusalem. Yet Shimon Sabag, the founder and manager of the home, has his own dramatic story to tell of how he came to care over these precious lives.

    In the early 1990s, Shimon was advancing quickly in the business world and held a senior management position in one of Israel’s largest supermarket chains. He was well liked and trusted by colleagues with both finances and personnel management, and thus fit the ideal of a ‘company man’. Yet already then, he felt in his heart that he was blessed and prospering so that he could bless others. So with the grocery chain’s ample resources at his fingertips, Shimon was very involved in helping the poor.

    However, everything changed in 1993. On his way to a meeting, Shimon’s driver fell asleep behind the wheel and the vehicle went flying off the road. Shimon barely survived the accident. His collarbone and four disks in his spine were broken, and his skull was fractured. Doctors told him to be glad he was alive, but not to expect much more than that. The diagnosis was that he would be paralysed for life.

    What the doctors did not take into account is that Shimon called upon the name of the Almighty, believing He is a God of miracles. Shimon prayed that if the Lord would allow him to arise once again, he would serve the needy among his people for the rest of his life.

    Not long after the accident, Shimon tried several times to get up from his bed, at first in his own strength. These attempts resulted in further injuries, so the doctors ordered the nurses to keep a close eye on him. But Shimon would not give up!

    After reading from the Psalms and being encouraged by the amazing story of David, he prayed for strength for one last attempt to stand up. Yet he knew that if he fell again, he could cause further irreversible damage to his spine.

    As he arose from the wheelchair and stood on his own two feet, the first words that came out of his mouth were Yesh Elohim! (“There is a God!)

    He walked over to the nurses and repeated the same powerful words: Yesh Elohim! The astounded nurses responded joyfully with the same words, but immediately led him back to his bed.

    After this incredible moment, Shimon started the long path to physical recovery. Today, he has been legally recognised with a 100% disability. But he has refused to sit idly by, especially since his spirit was soaring with an undeniable sense that God’s hand was on his life. So he pursued his daily rehabilitation routine with great inner strength and determination.

    As soon as he could move around independently, Shimon started seeking out ways to serve others. He opened a soup kitchen with his own money, which soon expanded to include an after-school club where local children could get a meal and do their homework. In 2001, he officially launched Yad Ezer L’Haver, a charitable organisation to help the poor.

    “I thank God to this day for saving me, and in a sense, I’m paying my dues to Him”, Shimon recently shared with great enthusiasm. “It’s almost like I’m a ‘prisoner of thanks’, but in a very positive way. Having this debt to God is my greatest joy”.

    Shimon has been feeding the hungry and stretching out a helping hand to those in need every day for many years now. But one day something really hit him hard. In one of his soup kitchens, as needy people lined up to take numbers in order to receive some food, several of the elderly folks in line joked with each other that they already had numbers on their forearms, so they really did not need another one.

    Shimon could not believe what he saw. Among those in the soup line were Holocaust survivors with numbers tattooed on their arms from Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Teblinka and other Nazi concentration camps.

    So he started inquiring why they were not receiving support from the government and began fighting for their rights. But this legal struggle was rather intense for his body, and in 2005 Shimon suffered a stroke. The whole right side of his body became paralysed again and his blood pressure was skyrocketing.

    As soon as he recovered and could move his right arm again, Shimon decided to establish a small home for 14 elderly Holocaust survivors in the Haifa area.

    In 2009, Shimon approached the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem with a proposal to purchase the ground floor of a building next door in order to open a community kitchen for several hundred poor Holocaust survivors in the Haifa area. They responded quickly and the rest is history.

    “In Jewish tradition we say that if you save one life, you save a whole world.”

    Today, the Haifa Home is nearing 100 residents and more are moving in as renovations are completed. Some of the newest residents were actually homeless when they were welcomed into the unique residential community. The waiting list of needy Holocaust survivors applying for residency in the warm home is over 2,000 persons alone, most of them survivors of Nazi camps in Poland and Germany.

    An estimated 200,000 Holocaust survivors currently live in Israel and up to one-third of these are in dire financial straits, often due to costly medical problems.

    Most of these survivors are now well into their 70s and 80s if not older, and many suffer from illnesses that are related to the severe malnourishment they endured as youngsters during the worst deprivations of World War II. Besides serious health problems, many also struggle with loneliness and emotional trauma.

    WORD FROM JERUSALEM—April 2013

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    • Shlomo was about 14 years old when 8,000 Jews in his hometown of Yasi, Romania were rounded up and slaughtered en masse by Romanian police and German soldiers in 1941. Shlomo found himself among the more than 5,000 remaining Jews who were then loaded onto overcrowded, sealed “death trains” that were slowly driven back and forth across the countryside in the hot summer weather until most of the trapped passengers died of dehydration, suffocation, infection or blood loss. Yet somehow, young Shlomo managed to escape the massacre and survive these cruel train rides.

      WORD from Jerusalem—December 2012

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  7. MANYA’S JOURNEY

    Manya is one of the newest residents at the Haifa Home for Holocaust survivors. An artist and poet, she has written three books. In one book, she both tells and illustrates her life story. It is such a dramatic story that a theatrical play is even planned out of it.

    Manya was born in 1933 in Bessarabia, a region along the border between Romania and the Ukraine. She was just eight years old when German soldiers occupied the area in August 1941 and began deporting the Jewish population to nearby Transnistria.

    “Soldiers came in the middle of the night and deported us. They were yelling at us: ‘Faster! Faster!’” Manya recalled, “I saw the soldiers but I did not know what the war was all about. We had to walk hundreds of kilometres, even the small children and old people.”

    Hundreds of thousands of Jews as well as the local Roma gypsies were forced to make the march, and many were killed along the way. Those who could walk no further were shot or simply left to die.

    “We had to walk for three months”, Manya remembers. “I was the only daughter of my parents and I was very weak. At one point, I could not go on and I just sat down and said ‘I can’t go any further’. A soldier came and wanted to shoot me. But my mother threw herself at the soldier’s feet and begged him: ‘Please, don’t take my only child from me!’ In a miraculous turn, the soldier did not shoot me and my father took me on his shoulders to carry me.”

    “Whenever I fell down my mother and father always helped me. They were very concerned because they saw that I was not eating or drinking anything. When we would come to a village, they would ask for a bit of water for me.”

    Manya is 80 years old now but says she remembers it all as if they brought her the water yesterday.

    Her mother also was pregnant with another child at the time, and Manya was too young to understand why her mother was getting bigger even though there was little to eat. After two months of marching, winter came and it began snowing when it was time for Manya’s mother to give birth.

    “It was like a miracle that a man came by and took us on his horse cart with him. My mother gave birth and the man’s wife took the child from her, telling her that the baby had died. But we heard that it was alive”, Manya recounts. “Maybe the child is still living somewhere. It was good that they took it because at least it had a chance to survive.”

    Whoever survived the death marches had to work hard at the labour camps. Only those who worked were fed, and Manya’s father always brought her food that he was given.

    “I was sick all the time”, said Manya. “I had typhus, high fever and a whooping cough, like many others. We did not have a bathroom, and there were no mattresses or blankets. Many died because of the freezing cold, or from sicknesses or because they were shot. It was a miracle that I and my parents all survived.”

    In 1951, the family made aliyah to Israel.

    WORD from Jerusalem—April 2013

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    • Lev was nine years old when the Germans invaded the Ukraine. Lev’s father died in a forced labour camp while his mother and her three sons went into hiding. Lev was the oldest son and at night would go out and try to find scraps of food outside neighbouring homes. Many times he was caught and suffered beatings so severe he could hardly walk because of the pain.

      After six months of living underground, they were discovered and sent to a labour camp. Every few months, they were transported from camp to camp by train, not knowing where they were going. Lev refused to cry in spite of his extreme fear, trying to stay strong for his mother and younger brothers.

      In 1990, Lev and two siblings left the Ukraine and made their way to Israel. He was never married and lived on his own Because of a hanbdicap, he was never able to work and recently he did not have enough money to pay the rent on his apartment any longer. He now shares an apartment with Shlomo and two other survivors.

      “Here, I at least have a place to sleep and something warm to eat”, Lev said gratefully.

      WORD from Jerusalem—December 2012

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      • Can anyone not see the irony in seeing the cruelty, bastardry, pain, suffering, starvation, misery, suppression, repression and assorted other realities that inescapably swamp us……and still conclude ” Yesh Elohim!”

        ……….except in the most damning of accusations.

        (Time to lay off the christmas pudding, Mon!)

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      • Yes Dabs,

        There is a God, and He would tell us to never forget the Holocaust so that it never happens again.

        Whether it will happen again depends on how well we evolved morally and spiritually, not on forgetfulness Monica. It is time to let the dead be dead. Time to let the past rest in peace. The Jews still hasn’t learned to forgive. To them is still tooth for tooth, eye for eye. They aren’t learning and the hardness of their heart is reflecting in their current lives. They are still crucifying the Christ.

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      • The ‘Word of God’ says:

        ““I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake;
        And I will not remember your sins. (Isaiah 43:25)

        It is God only who can pardon sin. We cannot! But we can forgive. But does God require us to forget? No. Forgetting is not required in order to forgive.

        In fact, to suggest that we should blot out all the memories of the Holocaust is terrible! As Elie Wiesel said, “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”

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      • Indeed?? –> “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”

        Why? It changes nothing before or since.

        ‘Holocaust’ (‘shoah’) was a jewish invention visited upon hebrew enemies long before the german nazis ever turned up. (Who ‘bears witness’ for the canaanites and the rest?)

        Self-righteous attitudes have killed more people SINCE WWII than the (touted) six million jews killed in that conflict.

        Who witnesses for them?

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  8. IRANIANS COME FACE-TO-FACE WITH THE HOLOCAUST

    Usually, every group that visits the Haifa Home for Holocaust Survivors is uniquely touched by the home’s very special set of residents. Yet in early June, an unusual group of visitors stopped by for what was a truly exceptional encounter.

    The visitors were a group of young Iranians who came face-to-face, for the first time in their lives, with the reality of the Holocaust. Most of the group were born in Iran as Muslims, but today they are Christian converts living in Britain. They were in Israel to visit bible sites but also to meet Israelis.

    While passing through Haifa, the fifteen young Iranians were invited to visit the home. There, they heard first-hand stories about life in the ghettos and Nazi death camps.

    Shoshana Kolmer shared her story of being taken from her home in Hungary to Auschwitz, where most of her family perished. She told as much as she could remember and showed the group the number tattooed on her arm. Listening to her moving testimony, the Iranian visitors all welled up with tears.

    “I just don’t understand”, said a shaken Morad. “How could a neighbour do that to a neighbour?”

    “We used to be good neighbours”, one of the survivors responded. “Now we wait until we’re good neighbours again. Like here, Like right now.”

    The group’s leader, Darius said that as a child, he was raised to hate Israel. “Every morning at school the day was opened with the shout, ‘Death to Israel.’ Only years later when I became a Christian, I realized it was the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”, said Darius. “I’m very happy we came here.”

    “Coming here was the most important part of our trip”, Jannat told the survivors. “Your stories will live with us, and in us…We will never forget you, and we will tell all our friends about you.”

    During the visit, the subject of former Iranian president Mahoud Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Holocaust came up. The survivors said they were outraged by his claims.

    “I would like Ahmadinejad to look me in the eyes and say to my face that it did not happen”, insisted Esti Lieber, who as a small child watched the Germans burn her family’s house and kill her parents.

    “I have not been able to call ‘Mama’ or ‘Papa’ since I was five years old….I want Ahmadinejad to explain to me how that didn’t happen!”

    Shimon Sabag, director of the home, noted that the survivor’s greatest fear is that one day no one will remember them or the horrors they endured.

    “This meeting was outside the box”, he said. “There is great significance to the fact that Iranian expatriates will now tell their stories.”

    WORD from Jerusalem—July, 2013

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    • Genia was born in Poland in 1923 and was 15 years old when the Germans invaded. She lived at the time with her mother, father, older brother and younger sister, only eight.

      Her father was immediately taken to a concentration camp and never returned. Her brother fled to the forests to join the Underground. Then her mother was sent to a forced labour camp. This left Genia to look after her little sister and the two were hidden by kind neighbours. About six months later, Genia got word her mother had died and the body was at the regional hospital.

      “I travelled to the hospital to look for her and they took me to a big room where there were about 150 Jewish corpses”, she recounted recently. “I looked for my mother and finally discovered she was in a bag on a shelf. I ran home to bring new clothing and to clean and dress her, but when I returned to the hospital the room was completely empty. They told me they had buried everyone in one big grave. Until this day I have no idea where she is buried.”

      Genia continued to raise her sister until the war ended and then moved to Israel in 1957. She started a family, but lost her son in one of Israel’s wars. Today, she lives in the Haifa Home.

      **************************

      Isaac passed away in August. When he was only ten years old, he had avoided deportation to a Nazi death camp by convincing the German authorities that he could work like an adult. He worked in a steel factory for the length of the war while living in the Lodz ghetto in Poland. At night he would sneak off into the city to find food for his family.

      Isaac endured terrible suffering, hunger and cold as a child, but somehow survived and immigrated to Israel at age 19. Later he met Fanny and they enjoyed a long, happy marriage together.

      WORD from Jerusalem—-December 2012

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      • ….and Muhammad hadn’t even been born yet when the jews invaded Palestine.
        …..and began the slaughter, genocide and/or ethnic-cleansing and dispossession of the populations who lived there (for the second time in history). They even massacred refugees from their depredations who’d sought shelter in refugee-camps in other countries and ‘UN-protected’ refugee camps in the West Bank.

        They claimed that god told them to do it, but Muhammad’s dad told him it was because they were nazis like the other nazis.

        When Muhammad was 12 years old he was machine-gunned to death by the israeli army whilst huddled against his father in absolute terror.

        And after a while the political-propaganda-machine kicked in and whitewashed the whole incident…..and after a few thousand more children and women and men and foreign journalists and cameramen were also butchered and swept under the same carpet, everybody forgot about Muhammed and the multitude of others slaughtered in their streets and homes, and herded into ghettos or driven out into the desert and denied water, while others were swept up in ‘dragnets’ and thrown into jails as bad as any ‘concentration camp’ indefinitely and repeatedly tortured.

        Everybody except, apparently, me.

        Anybody who supports, condones or even accepts what the israelis have done and continue to do in Palestine has NO legitimate right to complain about what the other nazis did to the jews all those years ago.

        ….nor call themselves ‘christians’.

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  9. PS:-

    [2] and when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, AND SHOW NO MERCY TO THEM.

    Now go and smite Am’alek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.'”

    Saul killed most of the Amalekite people (1 Samuel 15:7). If anything, Saul is accused of being morally lax for not killing everyone, but sparing a few.2

    …………..In addition, Joshua takes all the material possessions, but kills women and children, thus undermining the very idea the biblical authors always valued human life above material objects.

    SO, DO MODERN AUTHORS SHOW AS MUCH DISDAIN AND CONTEMPT for biblical authors as they might show for Nazi genocidal theorists?
    GOOD QUESTION, HEY MON??

    http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/ava368013.shtml

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  10. 😦
    This planet witnessed much horrors inflicted by man kind not only to man kind, but to everything.No nation today can claim innocence. Not even individual person can. We all have been savages in some form at some point of time, in some form. It could be non physical, but how much damage can we inflict by mental and emotional abuse. The Jews have lot to answer for their vendetta on the non Jews. Much of the arrogance stems from the believe they are the chosen people. As if there is such thing. The old testament went through so much distortion, as much as the new testament did. The tragedy of it is, that people today think and believe it is the truth. Bible as we know it is an interesting and helpful book, but if one reads it as a letter, much misunderstanding and untruth will creep in. It says the letter kills, spirit gives life.
    To dabbles, you can hold on your truth, mostly correct, but remember how many times you have snapped on someone and hurt them. Just because blood is not drawn doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
    To Monica, why you feel you need to defend the Jews? They very able to do so themselves and it is time to forgive for them. They have been holding on victimization ever since Hitler. They have been dispersed by the Romans and still sour about that also. I know lot of Jews and most of them will happily ignore you if you not a Jew. I was in the second World War myself and can tell you every side was cruel. That is what wars bring out in people. The Germans herded a whole village into a school just few kilometres away and lit it. Anyone trying to escape from the flames was shot. At the end of the war German soldiers were hanged by their feet and petrol lit under them. Screaming they died. And the following communist system murdered more people then Hitler ever did. I have seen much injustice in my life, but still believe there are no victims. We get what we need to get for our best involvement as a soul. The physical being is usually unaware of the purpose of the soul and resists as a rule. I can assure you you will find the truth at your passing out of this world. And you will be your own judge. Better is though to find now, while we still in the body. Only so can we change anything. This is the game play, the arena where we play our lives as best as we can. If we finish not quite ready, we re-enter the arena anew and carry on in our play. Will it be a tragedy, comedy or pleasant journey? Your choice, you all choose by the way you think, speak and act. The NOW is preparing the tomorrows. Don’t drag god into that. He is an observer. You are the actors.

    Happy dreaming everyone.

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    • We musn’t forget the evil we are (each) capable of.

      And it has been my personal experience that the Jews I have spoken to over the years, hate the label “chosen” because they believe they were chosen to suffer .

      Am I defending them? No fossall. I just love what the Christians are doing to help the aged Holocaust SURVIVORS, not victims, by providing them with a warm and loving community home to live out the rest of their numbered lives in peace and love. And so we should help them! We owe them that much at least, considering the sad legacy of Christian anti semitism. We surely have played a significant role both in anti-Judaism and the persecution of the Jewish people!

      Dr. Susanna Kokkonen in WORD from Jerusalem, May 2013 issue says:

      “The teachings of various established churches included the charge that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus, and thus they deserved to be punished. The prolonged suffering and dispersal of Jews among the nations were seen as just retribution for their monumental crime of killing God. Another theological concept basically claimed that Christianity had replaced Judaism, due to the Jewish people’s poor performance as the Chosen People of God.

      All in all early Christianity, spearheaded by the early Church fathers, began to view Judaism as inferior to Christianity and Jews themselves as evil and cursed, unworthy of mercy and love. In essence, a Jew was regarded as worse than a pagan.

      One of the most well known detractors of Jews was the Church father John Chrysostom (354-430), who accused the Jews of, among other things, idolatry and housing the Devil himself in their synagogues.

      In his “First Homily Against the Jews”, Chrysostom insisted that, “Jews are dogs, stiff-necked, gluttonous, drunkards. They are beasts unfit for work….The Jews had fallen into a condition lower than the vilest animals…The synagogue is worse than a brothel and a drinking shop; it is a den of scoundrels, a temple of demons, the cavern of devils, a criminal assembly of the assassins of Christ…I hate the Jews, because they violate the Law…It is the duty of all Christians to hate the Jews.

      Several centuries later, this visceral anti-Jewish propaganda was refuelled by the influential reformer Martin Luther. When asked, “What shall we do with this damned, rejected race of Jews?” Luther responded:

      “First, their synagogues should be set on fire…Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed…Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayer books and Talmuds in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught….Fifthly, travelling privileges must be absolutely forbidden to Jews….If however we are afraid that they might harm us personally…then let us settle with them for that which they have extorted usuriously from us, and after having divided it up fairly, let us drive them out of the country for all time.”

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      • “Centuries later, such pronouncements were a source of inspiration to the Nazis. Both Chrysostom and Luther were quoted by Nazi officials and their works were reprinted by the Third Reich. Quite strikingly, their views were also quoted by the defence in the Nuremberg war crimes trials. For instance, Julius Streicher, editor of the anti-Semitic weekly Der Sturmer , asserted at his trial that Martin Luther also should have been there presenting his case. Thus one can clearly see the link between classic Christian anti-Judaism and modern racist anti-Semitism.

        Because Christianity shared a tradition with Judaism, the Jews constituted a perpetual challenge to Christian truth. Even more disturbing was the fact that the Christian Messiah hailed from the House of David. One way of overcoming this dilemma was to increasingly diminish and blot out the Jewish identity of Jesus.

        As a consequence, the Jewish character of Jesus was removed and he became first and foremost a Christian, leaving little to connect Christians to Judaism. However, Jesus was indeed a Jew, as were his family and disciples, and there is nothing in the New Testament which negates that.

        In Matthew 5:17, Jesus states clearly; “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.”

        Similarly, the Gospels record Jesus celebrating the Jewish holidays, and describe him as wearing the garments of a religious Jewish male.

        Perhaps the saddest attempt at removing any traces of Jewishness both from Church practices in general and from Jesus’ persona in particular took place in the Nazi era and the effort to ‘de-judaize’ Germany. To this end “Deutsche Christen”, the so-called German Christian Church, disassociated Christianity from the Old Testament altogether and turned Christ into a perfect “Aryan Jesus”. They also published their own de-judaized New Testament, altered their hymn books, and updated their catechism, all in the effort to rid German Christianity of all Jewish influence.”

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      • “It is no wonder then that when Kristallnacht —the ‘Night of the Broken Glass’—took place on November 9, 1938 the churches of Germany were silent. The mass pogrom saw 30,000 Jews rounded up and taken to concentration camps, while 1,000 synagogues were burned all over Germany. The lack of public criticism left the Nazis with a sense that they now had a license to forge ahead with anti-Jewish actions, including the confiscation of Jewish property. As far as I know, there was only one church leader who publicly lamented that “synagogues too are houses of God”.

        By the time Germany ignited World War Two in 1939, many opportunities to react had been lost. Increasingly, churches throughout Europe mostly kept silent while Jews were persecuted and murdered. Any protest was exceptional.

        Several factors lay behind this deafening silence; anti-Judaism in churches expressed in sermons and by other means; Europe’s identity as a primarily Christian continent and a perceived need to protect the church institutions themselves. This, in turn, raises a very profound question: In times of crisis, is it more important for a church to protect its institution or to be a voice of morality?

        What does come through clearly are the limits of human compassion. In such a situation, how was it possible for only some to react to the Lord’s leading while most of humanity were deaf to His gentle voice?

        Let us all remember the words – very serious words – of the detained pastor and concentration camp inmate Martin Niemoller: “Christianity in Germany bears a greater responsibility before God than the National Socialists, the SS and the Gestapo. We ought to have recognised the Lord Jesus in the brother who suffered…”

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      • Martin Niemoller: “Christianity in Germany bears a greater responsibility before God than the National Socialists, the SS and the Gestapo. We ought to have recognised the Lord Jesus in the brother who suffered…”

        I see people suffering today that are being ignored. There are even Christian facebook sites supporting them.

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      • …and that raises another issue no-one ‘bears witness’ to these days.
        The nazis went to a lot of trouble to get rid of the jews PRIOR to the ‘holocaust’ by sending them away to other places around the world. (even suggesting a homeland for them in palestine or the coast of africa.

        …..and nobody wanted them. The british, the americans and all the loudest disapprovers (AFTER the fact) were not willing to accommodate the jews. If they had, the ‘holocaust’ might never have happened.

        Lest we forget
        ……and wonder why they were persona-non-grata around the globe

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    • Well said fossall. There are no ‘victims’ in the natural world either, substantiating your comment. Just blood and guts and food-providing territory. And thought the other animals can be vicious brutally unsympathetic they generally don’t indulge in premeditated cruelty, or destruction for the sake of self-aggrandisement.

      And just for the record I try not to ” have snapped on someone and hurt them.” … at least not spontaneously (as distinct from a reaction to provocation), because for most of my adult life I’ve recognised such ‘snapping’ to be a form of (inferiority-complex) bullying ~ my pet hate! ~ and something for which I’ve always thought there’s no excuse.

      Still, I guess we don’t always see ourselves as other people do.

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    • Chosen? Many Jews take the attitude that they were chosen to be God’s servants, like ‘the suffering servant’ beloved of God. There are Jewish organisations such as Australian Jews Against the Occupation, and Jews for Peace, amongst others, which are striving for social justice, equality, etc.

      Fossall, I too believe we get in life what we need for development of the soul, but it’s not that black and white. We can alter things, and prayer can alter things.

      The biggest problem I feel with teachings such as you have been given, is that we can lose compassion, say “That’s the way it’s meant to be, we need do nothing, it’s all for your own good.” I can’t help feeling that compassion, doing what we can to ease others’ burdens, is THE most important thing.

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  11. Bubba, I was watching this and I thought of you (that is, my brain had a chemical reaction).
    Watch from 6:00 onwards, or all of it if you like 🙂

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    • I should’ve known better than to even ‘click’ this entirely UNqualified idiot into ‘existence’.
      …..or waste my time in talking about him to anyone so uncritical or ignorant
      of the facts that they’d even hand him a dunny-roll to wipe his mouth with.
      …..So I won’t.

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  12. Is the world getting better? Since 1977, opinion pollster Win/Gallup International has been asking this question of people around the world. Do responses for 2013 paint an optimistic picture?

    Win/Gallup interviewed 67,806 people in total, in 65 countries either face-to-face, by telephone on online, between September and December 2013. The margin or error is +/- 3.5%. The global average was calculated according to the share of the covered adult population of the surveyed countries.

    The US is the country most people want to move to. A surprising one is Saudi Arabia is also a sort after place for people to move to. Does not fit the profile that Western Media give it.

    Most people are happy to stay where they are in the Middle East. Most people want to leave Europe. Another surprising find that won’t be covered in any details by the media.

    The US is seen as the biggest threat to world peace. The number of people that believes this is triple the next country which is Pakistan.

    Middle East believe the most that female leaders will make things worse.

    http://christianchat.com/christian-news-forum/81986-bbc-poles-reveal-interesting-finds.html

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    • hmmmmm “Middle East believe the most that female leaders will make things worse.”
      Perhaps I’d better slip out and get myself a tea-towel!
      …and a camel.
      Having hens ruling the roost is a travesty; that’s what ….er, roosters are for.

      Just because women can (arguably) ‘lead’ draws a parallel with declaring you can cut firewood with a pen-knife.

      You can; but a chainsaw does it better.
      A penknife, though, carves a much more elegant toothpick than a chainsaw ever could,

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    • My vote:- (“The US is seen as the biggest threat to world peace. The number of people that believes this is triple the next country which is Pakistan.”)
      …goes to israel.

      The US is past it; and I think the only real threat from there is the lashing out of a scorpion in it’s death-throes, willing to take everyone down with it to prove how powerful it WAS.

      ……..” I coulda been somebody, ..”

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      • I second that vote dabbles, even if I did get hacked by NAS after I voiced my disgust on some other forum publicly. Ever since that I can’t access that forum freely.
        The Yanks feel for some reason they can dictate the behaviours to the rest of the world. Ever since WW2 they meddle in sovereign countries affairs at their will.
        Americans are fear filled and controlled people. I lost respect ever since the shot Kennedy.
        They are facing a real competition from the Chinese, who outnumber them vastly and economically will surpass them shortly. Not sure which dominance is better, but for the Yanks, they will face oblivion if they don’t change. Many empires faltered in the past, mightier that the US of America. My suspicion is that Jewish money men are pulling the strings in the US anyway.
        We human beings are funny mob. Hungry for power, thirsty for blood.

        And yet unbeknown to most we are truly one on the metaphysical level. Any harm to other means harm to oneself at that level. Something we painfully realize when we “die.” The moment of release from the body changes into full awareness of who I am and the I m recounts all the deeds of one lifetime. Viewing it without excuses and VERY factually. Not a pleasant re-entry if you like if our life was full of negative actions and thoughts. Nobody else will ever judge us but the I am we call the soul within. The last Adam.

        As far the comments here, each of us writes on the level of consciousness we are. None is more or less advanced. We all travel through the physical world to experience who we think we are, ever so slowly edging to perfection. We can help each other but not do it for each other. This is very personal and individual journey of each.

        So I wish you all a very good journey at the beginning of the year 2014. Wish you that your lives journey takes through less turbulent seas and have more of smooth sailing.

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      • And I think the main cause of the US degeneration is both seen in and caused by the women being allowed to wear the pants (see above)

        Watching about three episodes of ‘Every Loves Raymond’ will make everything clear.

        …..where did that camel get to???

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  13. Sound advice
    An Old Farmer’s Advice:
    Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.
    Keep skunks and bankers and lawyers at a distance.
    Life is simpler when you plough around the stump.
    A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.
    Words that soak into your ears are whispered…not yelled.
    Forgive your enemies. It messes up their heads.
    Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.
    It doesn’t take a very big person to carry a grudge.
    You cannot unsay a cruel word.
    Every path has a few puddles.
    When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.
    The best sermons are lived, not preached.
    Most of the stuff people worry about ain’t never gonna happen anyway.
    Don’t judge folks by their relatives.
    Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
    Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll enjoy it a second time.
    Don’t interfere with somethin’ that ain’t botherin’ you none.
    Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
    If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin’.
    Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.
    The biggest troublemaker you’ll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every mornin’.
    Always drink upstream from the herd.
    Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.
    Lettin’ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin’ it back in.
    If you get to thinkin’ you’re a person of some influence, try orderin’ somebody else’s dog around.
    Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Leave the rest to God.

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