Christian Post Report – A burka-clad babysitter has been arrested in Moscow after she walked through the streets carrying the severed head of a four-year-old girl, with video posted on February 29, 2016.
Woman Walks Around Moscow With Child’s Severed Head, Shouts ‘Allahu Akbar, I Am a Terrorist’
Police in Moscow have reportedly arrested a hijab-wearing woman who was found carrying around the severed head of a child whom she is believed to have killed. Video footage apparently depicts the woman shouting phrases like “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) and “I am a terrorist.”
BBC News said the woman is believed to have been the nanny of the child that she beheaded, before setting fire to the apartment of its parents.
CCTV video footage shows the woman walking around a metro station with the severed head in her hands, before a police officer wrestles her down to the ground.
The Moscow Investigative Committee has provided information about the case, noting that the remains of the child, believed to be 3 or 4-years-old, were found at the charred flat on Narodnoye Opolcheniye Street in northwestern Moscow.
“According to preliminary information, the child’s nanny, a citizen of one of the Central Asian states born in 1977, waited for the parents and elder child to leave the flat and then, for reasons not established, murdered the infant, set fire to the flat and left the scene,” the committee said.
Amateur video footage posted online, which the MailOnline shared, shows the woman walking around the metro station shouting “Allahu Akbar.”
“I am a terrorist,” she also says. “I am your death.”
Russian journalist Polina Nikolskaya, who witnessed the scene, told Reuters: “I was on my way to the metro station from home. She was standing near the metro entrance and caught my attention because she was screaming Allahu Akbar. I saw that she had a bloodied head in her arms but I thought it was not real. People in the crowd said it was real.”
Russian media has reportedly identified the suspect as 38-year-old Gyulchehra Bobokulova from Uzbekistan.
Local reports have also claimed that she told police she killed the child, a little girl, because of her own husband’s infidelity.
Investigators are saying that the babysitter appears to have planned the attack, as she waited until she was alone with the child in the apartment before carrying out the murder and starting a fire.
“She waited until the parents with the elder child left the flat, then for unknown reason she killed the child, set fire to the apartment and left the scene,” a source in the Investigative committee told TASS.
“She was detained at the metro station Oktyabrskoe Pole.”
The girl’s mother was reportedly rushed to hospital in an unconscious condition after learning of her daughter’s death. The parents have told police that the nanny had been working for them for 18 months.
The suspect, who had a valid residency permit for Russia but no work permit, has been placed in psychiatric care to determine whether she is capable of understanding her actions.
Russian police have said they are not treating the incident as terrorism.
Source : Christian Post
Saudi Court Sentences 28-Y-O to 10 Years in Prison and 2,000 Lashes for Atheist Tweets
Christian Post Report – Protesters holding a banner saying “Death is normal to us and our dignity from God is martyrdom” take part in a protest against the execution of Saudi Shi’ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr by Saudi authorities, in the village of Sanabis, west of Manama, Bahrain January 2, 2016.
A Saudi court has sentenced a 28-year-old man to 10 years in prison, a fine, and 2,000 lashings after he posted tweets critical of Islam and God.
News of the sentencing was first released by the Al-Watan newspaper on Saturday, which listed an anonymous 28-year-old atheist as being charged with blasphemy against Islam for a series of tweets that targeted God and the Muslim religion.
Last week, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice sentenced the young man to 10 years in jail, 2,000 lashings and a fine of $5,330.
PBS NewsHour reports that the atheist was charged based on the country’s strict anti-blasphemy laws, which condemn “calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based.”
The most recent sentencing comes after Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh was sentenced to eight years in prison and 800 lashings earlier this month after facing charges of apostasy for poems and photographs he had taken several years earlier.
Fayadh, who has no official citizenship but carries Egyptian identification documents, was originally sentenced to death but had his sentence reduced following international outcry and an appeal from his lawyer.
Although the Saudi government maintains that Fayadh was arrested and charged for the contents of his internationally published book of poetry, activists have argued that the artist was actually targeted because he posted a video online that showed religious police beating a man in public.
After Fayadh was sentenced to death in November, international groups spoke out against the ruling, and the Saudi government agreed to reduced his sentence after his lawyer argued he was not given a fair trial.
While the poet’s sentence reduction has been applauded by international activists, they have also argued that Fayadh shouldn’t have been charged in the first place.
“Instead of beheading Ashraf Fayadh, a Saudi court has ordered a lengthy imprisonment and flogging. No one should face arrest for peacefully expressing opinions, much less corporal punishment and prison. Saudi justice officials must urgently intervene to vacate this unjust sentence,” Adam Coogle, a Middle East researcher at Human Rights Watch, told The Guardian earlier this month.
There have been numerous cases of atheists and other religious dissidents suffering the brunt of Saudi Arabia’s strict anti-blasphemy laws.
As The Christian Post reported last June, the Saudi government has maintained its strict sentence against atheist blogger Raif Badawi, who was charged with 1,000 lashes, a $266,060 fine and 10 years imprisonment for being critical of religion in blog posts dating back to 2012.
Although Badawi suffers declining health and doctors have argued that his body can no longer sustain the scheduled lashings, Saudi officials have refused to reduce his harsh conviction.
In January 2015, officials did agree to postpone Badawi’s lashings after a board of doctors ruled that his body would not be able to sustain the physical beating given his poor health.
Said Boumedouha, Amnesty International’s deputy director of programs in the Middle East and Africa, said last year that the need for doctors to determine the severity of lashings proves the sentence is “macadre and outrageous.”
“Not only does this postponement … expose the utter brutality of this punishment, it undermines its outrageous humanity,” Boumhaha said, as reported by CP. “The notion that Raif Badawi must be allowed to heal so that he can suffer this cruel punishment again and again is macabre and outrageous.”
Source : Christian Post
Greg Laurie: Jesus Christ Calls on Every Christian to Share the Gospel, Refusing to Can Be a Sin
Christian Post Report – Pastor Greg Laurie preachinf at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, February 28, 2016.
Pastor Greg Laurie delivered a special sermon at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, on Sunday, just days before Harvest America, and encouraged the congregation not to hesitate in sharing the Gospel with the people they meet.
“Christ has given us our marching orders,” Laurie, the pastor of the Harvest Fellowship megachurch in Southern California, told the audience at Prestonwood. “Jesus didn’t say the whole world should go to the Church, but He did say the Church should go to the whole world.”
Talking about the big crusade, Harvest America 2016, which will be held at the AT&T Stadium where the Dallas Cowboys play on March 6, Laurie said about 4,000 host sites are participating in it, making the Gospel known to people not only in all the states in the U.S., but also 50 other countries.
It’s important for Christians to know the who, the where, the when and the how of sharing the Gospel, he continued.
“Who is called to go into all the world and preach the Gospel?” he asked. “Answer, we are,” he said, referring to Matthew 28:19-20. “Every Christian” is commissioned to do so, he said, adding that many, however, perceive the Great Commission as a “Great Suggestion” or even a “Great Omission.”
Laurie said not preaching the Gospel “can actually be a sin” for a Christian, explaining that there are sins of commission and sins of omission.
Where should we preach the Gospel? “Answer, everywhere,” he said. We cannot go everywhere literally, but we can go into our world, our family, our workplace, our neighborhood, our sphere of influence to preach the Gospel, he said.
“Why should we preach the Gospel?” he asked. “Because God’s primary way of reaching people is through people,” he answered, referring to Romans 10:14 and 1 Corinthians 1:21.
“When are we to share the Gospel?” the pastor continued. “Answer, all the time.”
God can call on you in an unexpected time to preach the Gospel “in season and out of season,” Laurie told the congregation.
“How are we to share the Gospel … the most difficult part?” he asked, and read John 4:3-10.
The passage reads: “So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, ‘Will you give me a drink?’ (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?’ (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.'”
Our objective is to build a bridge, not burn one, Laurie said, explaining that Christ has not called us to isolate, but to permeate. Our objective is not to win the argument; it’s to win the soul, he added.
Everyone’s favorite subject is themselves, he said, adding that, to get people talking, we should ask them about themselves.
When Jesus spoke to the woman at the well, He didn’t begin by condemning her, Laurie pointed out.
“Sharing starts with caring,” he stressed. “Evangelism, Jesus style, begins with a burden.”
If you don’t care for the lost people, nothing else can help, he said, adding that evangelism also involves going to people whom we may not like, just as Jonah, in the Old Testament, was asked to go to Nineveh.
If we want to evangelize, Jesus style, we need to use tact, Pastor Laurie continued, explaining that “tact” can be defined as the intuitive knowledge of saying the right thing at the right time.
Jesus spoke in the language that people understood, the pastor underlined. “Effective evangelism is a dialogue, not a monologue.”
There’s no one-size-fit-all method to evangelism, he added. Everyone’s different, so we shouldn’t be robotic when we share the Gospel; we need to adapt, he said.
The pastor told the worshippers that every Christian should be able to articulate the Gospel in three minutes or less.
The Gospel, in a nutshell, he said, is this: “We’re all separated from God by our sin, and no matter what we do, we can never reach God. We can never satisfy His righteous demands. One sin is enough to keep us out of Heaven. But, 2,000 years ago, God loved us so much He sent His Son to this Earth on a rescue operation. Jesus walked on our shoes, and He breathed our air, and He lived our life, and then He died our death. And He rose again from the dead. If we turn from our sin and ask Christ to come into our life and to forgive us, we can know with certainty we’ll go to Heaven when we die. And we can find the peace and hope and the purpose we’ve been searching for in life.”
Pastor Laurie concluded: “If you have memorized John 3:16 … you know more than you think you know. … There are opportunities everywhere. … Sometimes we just need to sow the seed, and sometimes we need to close the deal.”
Source : Christian Post
Vatican Envoys Are Risking Their Lives in Iraq and Syria to End World War III With ISIS, Says Archbishop
Christian Post Report – Priests offer prayers during a service for around 600 Iraqi Christian refugees at a church in Hazmiyeh, near Beirut, December 12, 2014. Iraqi Christians who sought refuge in Lebanon after Islamist militants tore through their homeland said they had no idea when they would be able to return as they gathered for prayers ahead of Christmas.
The Vatican minister of foreign affairs has said Vatican envoys in Iraq and Syria are risking their lives amid bombings and terror threats to help people and find a way to end what Pope Francis has called a “piecemeal” World War III.
“Let’s not be kidding ourselves about what the stakes are here: If we are going to bring peace, if we are going to reconcile nations, if we are going to secure countries and communities, particularly minorities, particularly people who are persecuted, we are going to have to make an unprecedented effort,” Archbishop Paul R. Gallagher told Catholic News Service last week.
Gallagher noted that IS, which has captured vast territory in Iraq and Syria, has persecuted Christians and other minorities, driving out tens of thousands of believers from their homelands. Still, the Archbishop remained hopeful that negotiations will help resolve the conflicts in the region.
“We hope that the negotiations that have begun will bear fruit, that there will be in these coming days a cessation of hostilities (and) the creation of humanitarian corridors,” he said.
He clarified, however, that the dialog in question concerns Catholics and Christians of other groups and other religious traditions that are standing up to “the death and destruction of their homeland,” and not actual dialog with IS.
“Unfortunately, it’s true that (with) the extremists, particularly extremists who are prepared to embrace violence and terrorism, one is completely at a loss to say what one can do with such people,” Gallagher continued.
There have been attempts at truce made in the Syrian civil war, with a relative ceasefire appearing to hold on Monday between rebel groups and the armed forces of President Bashar al-Assad.
BBC News reported that the ceasefire will allow close to 150,000 Syrians to receive aid in the besieged areas over the next week, while the United Nations hopes that 1.7 million people will receive much needed help by the end of March.
“Primarily we will try to deliver food by land because that is the most efficient way, it’s the way that we can deliver the largest amounts of food but there are some areas of the country where we can’t get across the front line,” said Greg Barrow, a spokesman for the U.N. World Food Programme.
Pope Francis has warned of a “piecemeal” Third World War on a number of occasions, and in September 2014 said that “war is madness.”
“Humanity needs to weep, and this is the time to weep,” Francis said. “Even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction.”
Gallagher noted that although Vatican diplomats are always free to leave hostile zones in the face of danger, many of them choose to stay and continue fighting for peace instead. He added, however, that everyone needs to contribute to the mission for peace.
“It’s something in which we’ve all got to be engaged,” the archbishop said.
“Whether it’s a question of awareness, or for the Christian and religious people, whether we get on our knees and we beg God for peace, and encourage our politicians to negotiate,” everyone must make an “extraordinary effort” to bring about world peace, he added.
Source : Christian Post
(Photo: Reuters/Wissm al-Okili)
