‘God’ Quits Twitter: Famous User Posing as God Goes Offline

God Twitter (Photo: Twitter/@TheTweetOfGod)

Christian Post Report – @TheTweetOfGod Twitter account hacked, February 14th 2016.

Leaving behind almost three million followers, David Javerbaum is ending the incredibly popular parody account that has claimed the title of “God” on Twitter.

The Twitter account was founded in 2010 to accompany his novel, The Last Testament: A Memoir, which is now a Broadway play called “An Act of God.”

Javerbaum, who previously worked on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” explained to Southern California Public Radio The Frame, why he decided to call it quits.

“It’s been taking up too much of my time and energy and mental agility. And I have other things that I want to do in my life and I just have to, at a certain point, just cut that cord. And the point was this weekend,” Javerbaum said.

@TheTweetOfGod was hacked on Valentine’s Day with a post that read, “Vote Trump 2016.” Javerbaum admitted that being hacked led to his decision.

 “The triggering event was I got hacked. The Twitter account got hacked. God got hacked, which wasn’t surprising. There were a number of obscene messages put up there briefly and then removed,” he said.

The account, which is still live for the time being, was regularly used for satire and harsh ungodly commentary.

“Working on Twitter for a long time, it just miniaturised the way you think, because that’s the medium. You’re a miniaturist. And if I’m going to work on other things that require anything longer — i.e. anything else in the world — I need to stop doing that,” he ended.

One of the most popular tweets on the account was one posted after the death of David Bowie.

“David Bowie was the God I always wanted to be,” @TheTweetOfGod posted the day after the singer died. That post has been retweeted more than 21,000 times.

What is probably the accounts final tweet, the word “Justice” was posted on the day Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died.

While it might be goodbye for good, Javerbaum did not leave his followers without giving them a set of his own commandments. The revised set of commandments included “floss,” “don’t hate,” and “cut the bull****”.

Although the popular account is named God and people have professed that it in fact was “god,” Javerbaum said he never “claimed to be God.”

“In interviews I don’t claim to be God,” he told the radio station.

The writer concluded by admitting that he will miss the attention he received from the wacky Twitter account.

“I think the thing I’ll miss most is the thing I’m leaving deliberately. You tweet something and immediately you see people retweeting it and it feels like, Oh, you have made people laugh. You have caused people to react. And it’s a rush,” he ended.

Javerbaum was not specific about what his future projects would be.

Source : Christian Post

Pope Francis, Influenced by Nuns in Congo History, Allows Contraception in Zika Virus Case

Christian Post Report – Pope Francis waves to the crowd while arriving to celebrate Mass in San Cristobal de las Casas, February 15, 2016.

Pope Francis suggested Thursday that the use of contraception may be justified in countries combating the Zika virus.

The head of the Roman Catholic Church made his surprising statement on Thursday during his flight back to the Vatican from Mexico, where he spent six days touring the Latin American country and speaking on issues like government corruption, immigration, and drug trade.

When speaking about the fast-spreading Zika virus, Francis said the use of contraception “isn’t an absolute evil” in fighting the disease, which is spread by mosquitos and causes birth defects, including microcephaly in newborns.

The pontiff pointed to a statement made by Pope Paul VI in the 1960’s that stated nuns with a high risk of suffering rape in the Congo may use contraception to avoid pregnancy.

“Avoiding pregnancy isn’t an absolute evil, and in certain cases such as this one, as in that one I mentioned of Blessed Paul VI, it was clear,” the pope told reporters. “I would also ask doctors to do their utmost to find vaccines against these mosquitoes that carry this disease. This needs to be worked on.”

Francis also clarified that while contraception may be the lesser of two evils, abortion still remains “an absolute evil” that should never be considered when fighting the disease.

“Abortion is never the lesser evil, it’s a crime,” Francis continued. “It’s to discard one to save another one. It’s what Mafia does; it’s a crime, an absolute evil.”

However, contrary to Pope Francis’ statement on Thursday, several Catholic bishops in South America have said in past weeks that abortion and contraception are not acceptable methods for combatting the Zika virus.

Catholic bishops became more outspoken on the issue after the World Health Organization encouraged women living in or traveling to countries affected by the virus to postpone their pregnancy until the issue is resolved, or use safe sex.

“Contraceptives are not a solution,” Bishop Leonard Ulrich Steiner, the secretary general of the National Council of Bishops of Brazil, said in an interview with the New York Times this month. “There is not a single change in the church’s position.”

Steiner and other bishops have instead urged couples to use “natural family planning” to avoid pregnancy.

Currently there have been cases of the Zika virus in Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean.

Brazil is considered to be a major epicenter for the virus outbreak, with an estimated 1.5 million native cases in 2015 alone.

Although countries are continuing to caution pregnant women on the disease, the U.S. pharmaceutical company Inovio announced this week that it has had “promising” results in testing a new Zika vaccine on mice.

The company said in a statement that pre-clinical trials for the vaccine have yielded “robust and durable immune responses,” adding that it hopes to begin testing humans by the end of this year.

Source : Christian Post