Israel
Top UN Official Calls Jerusalem the Ancient Capital of Israel israeltoday.co.il
Irina Bokova, the director-general of UNESCO, which last year passed a motion denying the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, shocked many last week when she publicly affirmed the Jews’ historic connection to the Holy City.
Society
WATCH: University Students Stumble over Who Has Freedom to Live and Work According to Beliefs adflegal.org v
Don’t like President Trump? It’s fine to tell people you won’t write a speech supporting him. Muslim singer? No one should force you to perform at an Easter service under threat of government punishment. But for a Christian creative professional, photographer, writer, or artist, it seems they must live by a different standard. To get a sense of just how confusing this issue seems to be for some, we visited the University of Wisconsin-Madison to hear what students have to say.
Society
Meet the Trump admin official paid to promote LGBT ‘rights’ around the world lifesitenews
The decision to preserve open homosexual Randy Berry as Special Envoy for the Human Rights of LGBTI Persons was reported Monday by the homosexual newspaper Washington Blade. It is another blow to pro-family advocates who oppose the LGBT agenda and are counting on Trump to root out homosexual and abortion activists from the foreign affairs bureaucracy after eight years of Obama’s leftist policies.
“The Obama administration has systematically filled the ranks of State with LGBTQ and abortion activists,” Perkins wrote in December. “Unless the next Secretary of State is willing to resist and remove this embedded agenda, the promotion and protection of true human rights, like religious liberty, will continue to languish.”
Society
Meet CoverGirl’s first-ever CoverBoy, James Charles usatoday v
CoverGirl ambassador Katy Perry took to Instagram to break the news that the beauty behemoth had signed the 17-year-old New York-based makeup artist. "Just wrapped another great CoverGirl shoot. Honored to have the pleasure to announce the very first CoverBoy, James Charles!" the pop artist captioned a photo of herself posing alongside Charles in all his contoured glory.
Drugs
The Number of Workers Flunking Drug Tests Is at a 10-Year High fortune
Pulling data from more than 9.5 million urine, 900,000 oral fluid, and 200,000 hair laboratory-based tests that were performed by Quest questdiagnostics for employers in 2015, the study found that usage rates of amphetamines, marijuana, and heroin have all increased in the past five years in the general workforce.
Israel
[OPIONION] A historic moment may be looming on the horizon for Israel. jpost
Now...we hear a different tone in the Arab world. Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah Sisi has revealed that he talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a lot.” Israel is evidently cooperating with Egypt in the battle against Islamic fundamentalists in the Sinai. In July Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry visited Israel and declared that Israelis are not guilty of terrorism in the region. In August Sisi said that relations with Israel were “important” to Egypt and declared Egypt wanted close security ties with Israel.
Israel
PM: World silent as Palestinians seek ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Jews in West Bank timesofisrael v
Speaking in English in a video message posted on his Facebook page, Netanyahu asked whether people in other parts of the world would accept such demands in their own countries.
See also Netanyahu 'ethnic cleansing' comment against Palestinians draws U.S. rebuke reuters
Depravity of Man
Am I a good person? You asked Google – here’s the answer theguardian w!
But before we even get to the question of what would make a good person, there is a basic difficulty with our inquiry: if we ask ourselves, the answer we get will probably be tainted with lies. Even when we know we have done wrong, our minds set at work to scrub the knowledge out. A rather elegant study recently published in PNAS showed that we have difficulties even forming memories of the times we have behaved unethically, and if they ever are formed, they disintegrate faster than other ones. And this is a truth that was known long before lab science, by anyone who studies human nature, from St Augustine to Jane Austen.
While clearly not holding to a biblical view point (and effectivly calling Jesus just another man and totally misunderstanding the point of Job), this is a good reminder that the problem with defining "good" is good by whose standard? God declared it's by His standard that we must be good, and said no one is good (Psalm 53:3, c.f. Romans 3:12). Jesus pointed to the Pharasees and said our righteousness must exceed those who were so about obeying laws that they even made up more laws to obey (Matt 5:20). No one is good, and certainly no one is perfect as God is and demands (Matt 5:48), but that's why Jesus had to live and die. To not only pay our fine in a legal sense through His death for our sin, but to also live righteously so that HIS righteousness could be credited to our account (2 Cor 5:21). There's only been one good man (Jesus - fully God, fully man), which is why there's only one way to be saved from the wrath of God! (John 3:36)
Society
Constitution Check: Does the First Amendment protect a wedding cake as an art form? blog.constitutioncenter.org
Lyle Denniston, the National Constitution Center’s constitutional literacy adviser, looks at a potential Supreme Court test case about religious beliefs, same-sex marriage and a Colorado bakeshop.
Also see Masterpiece Cakeshop petition to the Supreme Court adflegal pdf
Drones
UK Royal Navy uses pilotless aircraft to navigate through ice vesselfinder v
The UK Royal Navy’s ice patrol ship HMS Protector has launched tiny pilotless aircraft from her decks for the first time to assist with navigating through the Antarctic. A quadcopter and a 3D-printed aircraft have scouted the way for the survey ship so she can find her way through the thick ice of frozen seas.
Abortion
Study: When tests detect birth defects, babies can still be born healthy worldmag
Researchers at the University of Cambridge, who published their results in the journal Nature Communications, found even when half the cells of an early-stage mouse embryo were abnormal, the embryo was still able to fully repair itself because the abnormal cells self-destructed and healthy cells replaced them. In many cases, the process completely repaired a defective embryo, leaving it with all healthy cells even though some of the placental cells were still abnormal. Even in cases where 75 percent of an early-stage embryo’s cells were abnormal, the ratio of normal cells increased as the embryo developed.
End Times
12 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE ANTI-CHRIST alliancenet.org
We, in the Calvinistic and Reformed church, have not done justice to the Scripture’s teaching on this matter. We often rightly respond to the “Left Behind” industry with dismay and sarcasm. In so doing, however, we have, perhaps inadvertently failed to sufficiently and soberly grasp Scripture’s teaching on this period of history which will be instrumental in bringing about a catastrophic and irreversible apostasy. Here then, are twelve biblical observations about the Man of Lawlessness (MoL) to help prepare us for that day.
This excellent look at the coming aspostasy within the church was shared by Tim Challies today, and I wanted to pass it along...
Military
Navy easing tattoo rules navytimes
The Navy is easing its tattoo policy in a bid to recruit and retain more sailors from the millennial generation, of whom more than 1 in 3 sport body art.
This is not a commentary on tattoos, nor to say that they are sinful in of themselves (some may disgree, but consider the argument Matt Slick makes on CARM.org for an appolgetic on this using Scripture). However, what I feel it shows is how a changing culture influences even those organizations which we feel to be the most 'reserved' in attire or behavior.
What's also interesting is the admitted difficulty and arbituary rules on deciding what is morally OK/not OK to have:
“There are just so many variables when you look at tattoo language and tattoo art that it’s just not reasonable to try and identify a set list of what is and what isn’t acceptable,” Stevens said. “This is one of those areas where we trust this senior leadership, our triads, to be able to look at something in its context, using the chain of command and having discussions amongst themselves as to whether something is appropriate or not.”
Aliens
Two scientists propose using lasers to cloak Earth … from aliens digitaltrends
In a nearly six-minute video posted to Cool Labs’ YouTube channel, Teachey details exactly how a planetary cloaking device might work and explains that “we humans could build a cloaking device for the Earth, right now.”
Sadly, this was NOT an April Fool's joke...
Nuclear
Nuclear terrorist threat bigger than you think edition.cnn
Cassandra's curse, however, was not that she was wrong, but that no one believed her. I don't know a single nuclear expert who thinks that the threat of nuclear terrorism is shrinking. I don't know a single one who thinks that the actions taken by world leaders at this week's Nuclear Security Summit are enough. We are fearful. And you should be, too.
This is an opinion piece that reveals how life without Christ, the certainty and totality of God's Soverienty, and knowledge that He is working all things for good (Rom 8:28) provides two options: living in wilful ignorance of the sin around, or live in fear of everything. If you are in Christ (Rom 3:23-25), then I encourage you to neither be foolishly ignorant of what's going on in the world, nor fearful of what is! And to keep looking up, for our redemption is nigh (Luke 21:28) :)
Israel a global leader in readiness for nuclear terror timesofisrael
Israel is one of the countries most prepared for scenarios of nuclear terrorism,” Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said Saturday at a nuclear security summit held in Washington.
Machine Learning
Advancing Machine Learning to Uncover New Insights infoworld
Machine learning holds the promise of not only structuring vast amounts of data but also to create true business intelligence
Climate
Superstorm’ climate shift can happen within decades not centuries, climate scientists warn independent.co.uk
Climate scientists are warning the threat of global warming could be even more dangerous than previously believed, suggesting “killer storms”, the rise of sea levels and the “disintegration” of large parts of the polar ice sheets can happen sooner than thought.
Sounds terrible, but the description doesn't even come close to the "climate change" our Creator promised in Rev 16:1-21, et al, leading up to the final judgement (Rev 20:11-15) before the earth and heavens are destroyed and made new (Rev 21:1)...
Islam
Startling Similarities (and Contrasts) Between the Bible and the Quran pjmedia
I have been a pastor for the past 28 years. I am a conservative evangelical who believes all the basic tenets of Christianity: the Trinity, virgin birth and sinless humanity of Jesus Christ, the vicarious death and physical resurrection of Christ, the future judgments of the saved and the lost, salvation by grace, and so forth. I have personally talked to and shared my faith with hundreds of Muslims, both here in America and overseas. In almost all my conversations with my Muslim friends, the conversations and debates have been polite and respectful. I have also read the entire Quran all the way through twice, in two different English translations (I cannot read Arabic, unfortunately).
Short, but interesting. I agree with his points, though I would say the part of his title that reads "similarities" is a bit misleading as it's mostly a contrast piece...
Other...
