Now I believe in miracles And a miracle has happened tonight
But, if you're thinkin' about my baby It don't matter if you're black or white I said if you're thinkin' of being my baby
It don't matter if its even brown or yellow!!!
Fresh world protests against racism and police violence
Thousands marched in cities around the world for a second week of rallies Saturday to support the US Black Lives Matter movement, but also to highlight racism and police brutality in their own countries.
There were rallies in cities across Europe, with thousands demonstrating in several French cities, and clashes breaking out in Paris and Lyon.
Police arrested several far-right demonstrators in London after violence when they challenged people supporting racial quality there, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson denouncing their "racist thuggery".
The weeks of historic demonstrations have been ignited by the May 25 killing of African American George Floyd by a police officer -- the latest in a long line of unarmed black men being killed by white law enforcement in the US.
His agonising death as the officer knelt on his neck was filmed by bystanders and swiftly went viral, triggering fury first in the US and then around the world.
The mass unrest has forced an unprecedented global conversation on the legacy of slavery, European colonialism and white violence against people of colour, as well as the militarisation of police in America.
Police stopped protesters in Paris Saturday from marching through the capital, firing tear gas after some demonstrators pelted them with projectiles.
In the southeast city of Lyon, police used water cannons and tear gas at the end of a demonstration attended by about 2,000 people.
What if Adam had been Yellow?
Look at the stars
Look how they shine for you
And everything you do
Yeah they were all yellow
I came along I wrote a song for you And all the things you do And it was called "Yellow"
So then I took my turn Oh what a thing to have done And it was all yellow
John Paul, the head of the Catholic church for nearly 40 years, would “not condone the use of tear gas and other deterrents to silence, scatter or intimidate them for a photo opportunity in front of a place of worship and peace,” Archbishop Wilton Gregory, the top Catholic leader in the nation’s capital, said in a statement Tuesday.
Hundreds of shouting protesters lined the street near the monument to the pope, holding signs that read, “Racist in Chief,” “Trump Mocks Christ” and “Our Church is not a Photo Op.”
Susan Gunn, director of the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, a Catholic group that helped organize the protest, said she was disappointed that Trump had not used either occasion to try to bring people together.
“Our society’s splintering. We are in the middle of a pandemic with 100,000 dead,” she said speaking of the coronavirus outbreak, which she noted has disproportionately affected people of color.
“President Trump identifies himself as a Christian and avid reader of the Bible. And I just call him and all of our hurting communities to remember the great commandment to love your neighbor as yourself,” Gunn said.
Bishop Michael Curry, the chief pastor and chief executive of the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church, also criticized Trump for using a church building and the Bible for partisan purposes.
Why do you think over the last two weeks people have been demonstrating all over the world in the mainly white countries? The murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who was killed in Minneapolis on 25th May 2020 is not the reason. That was mainly the trigger. The reason is because racism, double standards and hypocrisy exists in almost all the white countries.
Most theists or religionists, especially Muslims, believe in aqidah, loosely translated to mean faith. That means nothing happens without God allowing it to happen. And nothing happens without God making it happen. Be it good or bad, things does happen for a reason and only God knows the reason why. Likewise, does God knows that Adam had been dreaming of Eve? Or does God pretend not to know so as to be the greatest hacker to hack into Adam's mind?
It may be a tragedy or a bad thing; it may also be a good thing too for god's sake, God will cause this tragedy or bad thing to happen to punish you for the crimes or sins someone else committed. It may sound cruel but then God has a right to be cruel since God is God and the Bible is full of cruel things that God has done over more than 3,000 years. The first sin, or so call bad things to happen is 'disobedience against god' resulting in the banishment of both Adam, Eve & the serpent from the Garden of Eden / Heaven.
All my life Is changing every day In every possible way... In all my dreams It's never quite as it seems Never quite as it seems I know I've felt like this before But now I'm feeling it even more Because it came from you Then I open up and see The person falling here is me A different way to be...
God created Hitler so that he could later kill six millions Jews, God’s chosen people, who prayed every day non-stop to be saved but which God turned a deaf ear and ignored.
If that is what God does to His chosen people then I am better off not being one of God’s chosen people. And Hitler also caused 80 million deaths when he started WWII, all because God decided to create him and allowed him to be born.
Divine Intervention
But then that is just divine intervention? We must be very careful about divine intervention and learn how to read the signals from God. The Plagues of Egypt(Hebrew:מכות מצרים,Makot Mitzrayim), in the story of thebook of Exodus, are ten disasters inflicted on Egypt by the God of Israel in order to force the Pharaoh to allow the Israelites to depart from slavery;[1]they serve as "signs and marvels" given by God to answer Pharaoh's taunt that he does not know Yahweh: "The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD".
Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. 19 And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. 20 But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.21 She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” 22 Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 23 “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which translated means, “God with us.” 24 And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took Mary as his wife, 25 but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he called His name Jesus. Matthew 1:18-25
Reverend Howard Bess notes:
Jesus did not go to the temple to cleanse. He came to the temple to announce the destruction of a whole way of life. Those who operated the temple had no power to silence Jesus and put him to death. Those powers were held by the Roman retainers.
The charges that were leveled against him can be summed up as insurrection. There were three specific charges: encouraging non-payment of taxes, threatening to destroy property (the temple), and claiming to be a king. It was the temple incident that took Jesus from being an irritating, but harmless country rebel from the rural north to a nuisance in a city that controlled the great tradition. Rome’s retainers killed him on a cross.
Jesus was also threatening a useful source of income for the Temple priests.
The Temple apparatus brought in huge revenues for simple matters like purification and the forgiveness of sins. Archaeologists have discovered 150 mikvehs around the Temple. Mikvehs are ritual baths which Jews use in order to purify themselves before any act of worship.
Jewish people could only enter the Temple if they were ritually pure and almost everyone arriving in Jerusalem for Passover was deemed ritually unclean. They had to use a mikveh before they could fulfil their religious obligations. The priests controlled the mikvehs and charged people to use them.
There were so many regulations requiring ritual purification that control of the mikvehs was a way of making money.
Jesus thought the whole thing was rubbish. He taught that the elaborate purity rituals were unnecessary - the Kingdom of God was available to everyone and they didn't have to go through these rituals or pay the money in order to get there.
Bad news for the Temple apparatchiks. A quick way to raise a revolt was to tell people that they were being ripped off. This could cause a riot in the Temple if it got out of hand.
But there was worse. Jesus stormed into the Temple and accused the money changers and sacrificial dove sellers of extortion and of turning the Temple into a den of thieves.
The ultimate challenge to any religious leaders: What you are doing is against God and God will destroy you and cleanse the whole religious apparatus. And God, as every Jew knew, had the power to do it - he'd demonstrated that many times before.
Jesus was doing this in the Temple, in front of the crowds and without any fear or respect for Caiaphas and his staff.
Caiaphas had to do something to show that he was still boss, and he had to do it quickly; Jesus was on a roll, and who knew what he was going to do next.
What Caiaphas did
You don't get to stay High Priest without being able to take the tough decisions and follow them through.
Caiaphas decided Jesus had to be stopped and he called a meeting of the chief priests. Matthew's Gospel tells us that Caiaphas told them that Jesus had to be killed.
The priests weren't at all sure about this. If Jesus was killed, there might be riots. But Caiaphas got his decision and put it into effect at once.
The Temple guards arrested Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane that night and he was put on trial before the High Court.
We might disapprove of some of the self-interested motives behind Caiaphas' actions: protecting his income and his power-base; but it doesn't amount to a crime of any sort.
Jesus was causing trouble in Jerusalem. He was a known rebel and he was endangering public peace at a time when large and volatile crowds were thronging the city. It was entirely reasonable to arrest him.
The rigged trial
At this point Caiaphas crossed to the wrong side of the law. He rigged the trial.
Caiaphas took on the usually incompatible roles of chief judge and prosecuting lawyer.
Scholars know the rules that applied to Jewish trials at that period and the trial of Jesus broke many of those rules:
It was at night - Jewish trials had to take place during the day
It took place on a feast day - this was not allowed
It took place in Caiaphas's house - it should have been conducted in the council chamber
The trial went wrong for Caiaphas. He needed to prove that Jesus had threatened to destroy the Temple, which would have been both treason and an offence against God. But the witnesses couldn't agree on what Jesus had said. So that charge failed.
Caiaphas decided to see if he could induce Jesus to utter blasphemy.
He asked Jesus, point blank, "Are you the Son of God, the Son of the Blessed? Are you The Messiah?"
The Gospels vary a little, and only in Mark's account does Jesus answer that he is.
It's enough. Caiaphas announces that Jesus has spoken blasphemy. The rest of the Court agree. Jesus deserves the death sentence.
Just one problem; the court didn't have the power to execute people. And that's where the Romans come into the story.
Actually, there are two problems: blasphemy against the God of Jews was not a crime under Roman Law, and unless Caiaphas could think of something better, it might not be enough to persuade the Romans to execute Jesus.
Say for 35 years a Christian Evangelist knocks on your door every weekend to talk to you about Christ. And every weekend you curse that Christian and tell him to fuck off and then slam the door in his face. Sometimes you even let loose your dog on him and a couple of times he was actually bitten by your dog.
Nevertheless, this Evangelist still very patiently keeps visiting you to try to convince you that your salvation is through Christ and you, as usual, curse him and tell him to go fuck his Christ. Finally, however, after 35 years, you convert to Christianity and the Evangelist praises the Lord that finally you have seen the light and have accepted Christ as your saviour.
Not long after you become a Christian, you suddenly turn into a fanatic. You scream that it is time for a new Christian crusade to be launched so that the infidel non-Christians can be exterminated and erased from the face of this earth. You say that Hitler who was a Christian was right in trying to exterminate the Jews who had killed Christ. Your only regret is that only 6 million Jews were killed. You only wished Hitler had succeeded in ridding the world of all the Jews.
Then you go to the Evangelist’s house and knock on his door and start preaching Christianity to him. You shout and scream and call the Evangelist a coward for not taking up arms against the infidel non-Christians. The Middle East, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and so on, should be bombed, you argue. No non-Christians should be left alive.
The Evangelist does not agree and you accuse him of selling out. You allege that he has been bought. You vilify him and disparage him and call him a friend of Satan.
After months of haranguing and cursing, one day the Evangelist can take it no more he slaps your face and says that you are a disgrace to Christianity.
I feel just like that Evangelist. For 35 years I tried preaching to you. And each time you cursed me and chased me away and even set your dog on me. I was in fact bitten quite badly a few times. You called me all sorts of nasty names. You laughed at me. You even declared me a lunatic.
Then, one day, after 35 years since the 1980s, you suddenly saw the light. In 2018 you converted. And after you converted you started cursing me and said that I am a traitor to the cause.
Now you try to preach to me. You tell me what is good and what is bad. You forgot that for 35 years you acted like a bastard. Suddenly you are the chosen one and Christ came to you in your dream. You tell me about all the bad things that are going on. You refuse to admit that things are so bad mainly because you allowed them to become bad.
And today these are the same people who are claiming the moral high ground and with self-righteousness are trying to teach me what for 35 years I had tried to teach them and which they rejected.
Isn’t life strange?
Beauty Beauties on the Wall
Will the pandemic be over now?
Beauty Beauties on the Wall
Will Beauty and Beast be the cure to make it over now?
Beauty Beauties on the Wall
Will Beauty with Beast Someday Now?
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