Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

Rick Warren does it, again
Jul 4th, 2009
CommentaryWND - Joseph Farah
Categories: Commentary;Warning

While millions of other Americans will be celebrating Independence Day weekend, Rick Warren, often called "America's Pastor," will be serving as the keynote speaker for a Saudi-backed Muslim group that promotes a radical strain of Wahhabi Islam in about 80 percent of U.S. mosques.

I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of Rick Warren's bad judgments.

This time Warren will be schmoozing with the Islamic Society of North America, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood – just as are al-Qaida, Hamas and most other Muslim terrorist organizations.

ISNA puts on a façade of moderation, yet, according to terrorism expert Steven Emerson, it "convenes annual conferences where Islamist militants have been given a platform to incite violence and promote hatred."

After Hamas leader Mousa Marzook was arrested in 1997, ISNA raised money for his defense. He was eventually deported.

ISNA condemned the U.S. government's seizure of the financial assets of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad after Sept. 11.

Brigitte Gabriel combats politically correct notions about the "religion of peace" in "They Must be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How we Can Do It"

"I think ISNA has been an umbrella, also a promoter of groups that have been involved in terrorism," explains Emerson. "I am not going to accuse the ISNA of being directly involved in terrorism. I will say ISNA has sponsored extremists, racists, people who call for jihadagainst the United States."

I could go on with many more details about ISNA. Suffice it to say it is no friend of Christianity and no friend of America.

So what is Rick Warren doing speaking at the group's national conference?

I don't know what Warren's agenda is. He would probably say he doesn't have one. But I can tell you the effect of his appearance – it is designed to disinfect and rehabilitate a group that is dangerous and subversive to U.S. national security.

But it should surprise no one, at this point, that Rick Warren will be there. One of the first times I ever wrote about Rick Warren was in 2006 when he took an equally misguided trip to Syria to meet with dictator Bashar Assad and praise him for his pleasant treatment of Christians. Syria was then and remains today one of the world's leading state sponsors of Islamic terrorism. Almost every terrorist group in the world maintains offices there. Nevertheless, Rick Warren said, while in Syria, that the country "does not allow extremism of any kind."

Less than a week after Warren's absurd proclamations in Syria, a Christian leader in Lebanon, former President Pierre Gemayel, was assassinated in the streets of Beirut. Everyone in Lebanon knows who killed him – the Syrian government.

As I wrote at the time, "it is imperative that Christians – and especially Christian leaders – have discernment about evil in our world. And true, unadulterated evil is what you have running Syria today. The government led by Bashar Assad, who met with Rick Warren last week, is anti-American, anti-freedom, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish and pro-terrorist.

"Rick Warren should know this. Yet, he has placed himself in a position of apologizing and excusing the government in Damascus, one of the most evil on the face of the earth.

"It is not an exaggeration to say that government got cover last week as a result of Warren's shameful public relations on its behalf. I won't go so far to say there was a direct cause-and-effect relationship between Warren's embrace of Assad and the assassination of Gemayel yesterday, but it is both a coincidence of striking proportions as well as an illustration of the true character of Damascus' totalitarian police-state regime."

In 2007, Rick Warren was one of 100 or so "evangelical leaders" who signed a document begging forgiveness from Muslims for all the evil deeds perpetrated against them by Christians.

Rick Warren loves to apologize for things he didn't do, for things other people did that weren't wrong, even for things that occurred hundreds of years before he was born – such as apologizing to Muslims worldwide for atrocities committed against their ancestors during the Crusades.

In 2007, he also apologized for American "excesses in the war on terrorism."

And he has apologized for the church because it hasn't done enough about the spread of AIDS and problems like global warming.

Yet, I must observe that despite his predilection for apologies, he has a great deal of trouble owning up to his own personal mistakes.

Once again, just like his trip to Syria, serving as the keynote speaker to the Islamic Society of North America is a very, very bad personal mistake – one that demonstrates a complete lack of spiritual discernment.

N. Korea marks July 4 with missile barrage
Jul 4th, 2009
Daily NewsAP
Categories: Today's Headlines;Warning

Pyongyang sends 'message to the U.S.' by firing 7 ballistic weapons

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea fired seven ballistic missiles off its eastern coast Saturday, South Korea said, a violation of U.N. resolutions and an apparent message of defiance to the United States on its Independence Day.

The launches, which came two days after North Korea fired four short-range cruise missiles, will likely further escalate tensions in the region as the U.S. tries to muster support for tough enforcement of the U.N. resolution imposed on the communist regime for its May nuclear test.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said three missiles were fired early Saturday, a fourth around noon and three more in the afternoon. The Defense Ministry said that the missiles were ballistic and are believed to have flown more than 250 miles.

"Our military is fully ready to counter any North Korean threats and provocations based on strong South Korea-U.S. combined defense posture," the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

Muslims Attack 110 Homes of Christians in Pakistan
Jul 4th, 2009
Daily NewsCompass Direct News
Categories: Today's Headlines;Persecution

LAHORE, Pakistan, July 3 – After a Muslim beat a Christian field worker for asking him to let him pass on Tuesday (June 30), a cleric in a village near here used a mosque loudspeaker to announce a call to attack Christians that resulted in more than 500 Muslims ransacking and looting at least 110 houses. With the mosque falsely broadcasting the accusation that the Christian had blasphemed Islam, the Muslim recruits rampaged through Kasur district’s Bahmaniwala village, breaking down gates, wrecking and plundering homes and in some cases beating Christian women. They set various items ablaze including vehicles, though Compass found fire damage to homes was minimal. “We don’t even have potable water, as they have damaged the turbine,” villager Zareena Bibi told Compass. “We knew about the incident, but could never imagine that they would wreak such devastation. They have not spared a single house here.” Outraged that the lower-class Christian field worker on his tractor had asked Muslim Muhammad Hussein to move out of his way, 15 to 20 Muslims had previously mounted a hatchet attack on the family of the field worker, 37-year-old Sardar Masih, wounding his brother’s head, family members told Compass.

Iranian cleric: British Embassy staff to be tried
Jul 4th, 2009
Daily NewsAP
Categories: Today's Headlines;Warning

Claim of employees' 'confessions' alarms EU, fuels calls for tougher actionEditor's note: Iranian authorities have barred journalists for international news organizations from reporting on the streets and ordered them to stay in their offices. This report is based on the accounts of witnesses reached in Iran and official statements carried on Iranian media.

A top Iranian cleric said Friday that some of the detained Iranian staffers of the British Embassy in Tehran will be put on trial, and he accused Britain of a role in instigating widespread protests that erupted over the country's disputed presidential election.

The announcement by Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati alarmed European nations and fueled calls for tougher action against Tehran. Britain is pressing for members of the European Union to pull their ambassadors out of Tehran to protest the arrest of its embassy staffers last week — a step that the EU so far has hesitated to take.

After Jannati's comments, French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday expressed backing for Britain, saying "our solidarity with our English friends is total." He said France backs sanctions "so that Iranian leaders will really understand that the path that they have chosen will be a dead end."