World politics
fromwww.aljazeera.com
6 days agoIsrael is trying to change Jerusalem's religious identity
Israel is undermining the Status Quo to exert control over Muslim and Christian religious practices at holy sites in Jerusalem.
Pastor Josh Howerton, leading Lakepointe Church, stated, 'The gospels tell us Jesus was taken outside the city walls to be crucified. This fits. It's within walking distance.' He emphasized the geographical context of the crucifixion.
According to the Gospel of John, Roman soldiers broke the legs of the two men executed alongside Jesus to hasten their deaths. But when they came to Jesus, they did not break his legs because they saw he was already dead. This detail has long intrigued historians and doctors because crucifixion victims often survived for many hours, and sometimes days.
My patient's plea echoed in my ears as anguish and panic reverberated throughout the world in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a modern plague that, at that time, felt almost Biblical in scale. Her question also brought me back to a discussion about the book of Job that took place in my study group of psychoanalysts, who met monthly for over a decade examining Biblical texts through a psychoanalytic lens.
An ancient Egyptian papyrus held by the British Museum has been cited as possible evidence supporting some of the Bible's most controversial claims about giants. The 3,300-year-old document, known as Anastasi I, has been in the museum's collection since 1839 and has recently resurfaced on the Associates for Biblical Research, renewing interest in its possible links to biblical accounts. The papyrus describes encounters with the Shosu people, said to stand 'four cubits or five cubits' tall, up to eight feet in height.
Mathematician Peter W Stoner tackled this question in his 1960 book Science Speaks, calculating the odds of a single first-century individual fulfilling just 48 of these prophecies by chance. The result was staggering: one in 10 followed by 157 zeros, a number so vast it far exceeds the total number of electrons in the observable universe. To make the math easier to grasp, Stoner began with eight key prophecies, including being born in Bethlehem, descending from David, and performing miracles.
The Book of Genesis describes Eden as a paradise watered by a single river that split into four: Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates. While the Tigris and Euphrates are well-known rivers in modern-day Iraq, the Pishon and Gihon have long been lost to history, until now. The dry riverbed, called Wadi al-Batin, stretches from the western highlands of Hejaz near Medina northeast to the northern Persian Gulf near Kuwait.
King Nebuchadnezzar II himself 'speaks' in the text, proudly describing how he restored an old, crumbling stepped temple tower in the city of Kish that was dedicated to the Mesopotamian god and goddess of war, Zababa and Ishtar. He explained that earlier kings had built and fixed the ziggurat before, but it had fallen into disrepair again from age and rain.
Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, also known as the Promised Messiah and the Imam Mahdi, wrote a 1905 poem describing massive earthquakes and destruction across the world, which some have now interpreted as a warning of World War III. In the poem, published around the time of his death in 1908, Ahmad predicted streams of blood flowing from widespread death, entire regions being wiped out, a massive earthquake, and even strange sky events beyond scientific explanation.