CHRISTIAN NEWS FROM RAY
A free service of Jesus Christ is Lord Ministries
News written by Ray Mossholder
MORNING EDITION, March 17, 2014
A RUSSIAN CUB IS BORN. ITS NAME IS CRIMEA.
The Russian bear has given birth, much to the consternation and anger of nearly all other powerful nation’s leaders. A nearly unanimous vote Sunday for making Crimea a part of Russia, 97%, has made it official. Crimeans could have voted to become independent of Ukraine, but the citizens there overwhelmingly voted instead to instantly change their geography.
The superpowers aside from Russia and China have threatened severe retaliation to Vladimir Putin for kidnapping Crimea, but Putin has responded that he hasn’t kidnapped anyone. Quite the contrary, he says,Russia will simply cooperate with Crimea’s wholly honest democratic vote.
Now the ball is in the court of the embarrassed superpower’s and the sanctions game is on. Red China’s top envoy to Germany has immediately and strongly warned these nations that “Sanctions could lead to a retaliatory chain reaction that would trigger a spiral with unforeseeable consequences.” He added, “We don’t want this.”
Only God knows what the final score will be, but this coming week will not be a quiet one. And where the ball stops nobody knows except God. – Ray
A MADDENED PILOT OR A TERRORIST PLOT,
MALAYSIAN FLIGHT 370 IS STILL MISSING
26 countries, including the United States, continue to search for a needle in a haystack – Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a Boeing 777 with 239 people aboard. The vanished plane remains missing, most likely under the Indian Ocean. The latest conspiracy theory points to one of the pilots.
Britain’s Daily Mail yesterday reported that Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, was a dedicated and obsessive supporter of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who was sentenced to five years in prison on the charge of sodomy just hours before the Malaysian airplane took off. Ibrahim’s supporters say the verdict was manipulated and the charge falsified. The theory goes that Shah was so mentally disturbed by Ibrahim’ssentencing that he hijacked his own plane as a form of political protest.
An even more plausible theory is one that came from Britain’s Sunday Telegraph telling his readers that investigators are trying to discover whether the jet’s disappearance was tied to a 9/11–style plot masterminded by Al Qaeda’s Khalid Sheik Mohammed. This plot was mentioned by British-born Saajid Badat during the trial this past week Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law Sulaiman Abu Ghaith. Badat had first mentioned it from his jail cell in 2012.
Badat said that a Malaysia-based and very small Al Qaeda cell had planned to take control of an airplane, using a shoe bomb to gain access to the cockpit. Badat then told the story of his being at a terror camp in Afghanistan where he was given a shoe bomb to use himself. Badat has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for his part in a conspiracy to blow up a transatlantic flight with shoe bomber Richard Reid.
British security experts called Badat’s evidence “credible,” with one of them telling the paper “These spectaculars take a long time in the planning.”
CHRISTIANS ARE CONSTANTLY BEING SLAUGHTERED IN NIGERIA
It should be an extremely sobering thought for any Christian to recognize that their brothers and sisters in Christ continually give up their lives for their faith. The truth is, more Christians have died as followers of their Lord in the past hundred years than in all 19 centuries, including the first century, since Christwas here on Earth.
Slaughter of Christians is on a constant rise in many countries with nothing being done about it by their governments. This weekend in Nigeria, officials say Fulani Muslims – sheepherders – attacked three Christian villages and murdered more than 100 Christians. At the same time, they set fire to hundreds of thatched–roof huts.
In Nigeria, thousands of Christians have been killed in recent years in competition for land and water rights,between the Fulani Muslim tribe and Christian farmers across Nigeria’s Middle Belt. More than 100 people were killed in similar attacks on neighboring Kastsina state last week. Chenshyi village chief Nuhu Moses said today that gunmen killed more than 50 Christians in those attacks, including the pastor’s wife and children. He said the entire village in the southern part of Kaduna state had been destroyed.
Editor’s Note: Please don’t be so busy today that you don’t stop and pray for the Christians in Nigeria. None of us who aren’t going through the fear. agony, and despair Christians there continually suffer can really identify with them. But we can all pray for them. – Ray
IN PAKISTAN 200 ISLAMISTS BURN HINDU CENTER TO REVENGE ALLAH
Police say a crowd set fire to a Hindu community center in southern Pakistan in the middle of the night after allegations circulated among them that a Hindu had desecrated Islam’s holy book. Police officer Anwar Laghari said the incident took place in the early morning hours of Sunday. The destruction took place in the city of Larkana after some people said they saw burned pages of the Quran in a garbage bin near the home of a Hindu man. A crowd of 200 gathered and attacked the community center, which was next to a Hindu temple.
Leghari said the building was partly gutted and the alleged desecrater was taken into protective custody.
Violence triggered by allegations of blasphemy is common in conservative Pakistan. Militants in the Sunni Muslim-majority state have also targeted religious minorities including both Hindus and Christians.
Editor’s Note: Stop today and pray for this madness to end. – Ray
AT OUR NATION’S BOX OFFICES THIS THIRD WEEKEND
“SON OF GOD” RANKED SEVENTH
Family entertainment, thrills, and violence drew America’s movie audiences to the theaters across our nation this weekend while “Son of God” ranked seventh in attendance. Here are the top 10 movies viewed this weekend:
1. Mr. Peabody & Sherman, $21.2 million; $63.2 million, second week
2. 300: Rise of an Empire, $19.1 million; $78.3 million, second week
3. Need for Speed, $17.8 million, first weekend
4. Non-Stop, $10.6 million; $68.8 million, third week
5. Tyler Perry’s The Single Moms Club, $8.3 million, first weekend
6. The LEGO Movie, $7.7 million; $236.9 million, sixth week
7. Son of God, $5.4 million; $50.9 million, third week
8. The Grand Budapest Hotel, $3.6 million; $4.8 million, second week
9. Frozen, $2.1 million; $396.4 million, 17th week
10. Veronica Mars, $2 million, first weekend
It is significant that three of these top 10 movies that drew crowds this weekend are family oriented. But many are asking why “Son of God,” which placed first in it’s first week out, fell to fifth last weekend, and seventh this weekend. Hollywood is already saying that biblical movies like this one aren’t evidently major cashcows which is just the opposite of what Christian leaders had predicted. But I think the following answers do go a long way in explaining why many, even Christians have stayed away from this particular film.
First, the television series The Bible ranked first week after week with both Christian and non-Christian television viewers last year. It ran for months on a channel many people seldom watch. It could easily be assumed by the vast majority who watched the series that the movie regarding Christ’s ministry is simply a repeat of what they’ve already seen. Going to the movies is expensive and just because the film is enlarged on a movie screen doesn’t mean the Christian crowd wants to spend their money watching same-old same-old.
Second, many were horrified, Christians included, to watch the gory crucifixion scene of Jesus in Mel Gibson’s film, “The Passion of the Christ.” As Goober Boober says in my book Five Real Friends about being in a theater to see it, “We couldn’t even eat our popcorn!” So if the Christian crowd who dominated movie theaters the first week to see “Son of God” then went out and told others about the equally gory crucifixion scene, many other Christians may have dropped the thought of seeing the movie at all.
Third, keeping #2 in mind, most people today in America pay for Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime or other companies that stream movies into their home. Because “Son of God” is factual and therefore necessarily emotional, they would prefer to watch it alone in their own living rooms where they could cry and not be embarrassed. This is highly understandable, but it misses the point that tickets for this particular movie that are paid for at the box office of a movie theater are exactly like voting to keep this kind of film being produced. If Hollywood isn’t greatly impressed with the movies revenue, it will gladly conclude such movies don’t at all need to be made.
Fourth, because “Son of God” cost many millions of dollars to film, certain license had to be taken with the script and with editing. As I’ve already mentioned in an earlier Christian Report, verses are often spoken at different moments than where the New Testament records them, many important moments of Christ’s ministry are completely left out, and minor details are missed or changed. So some Christians object to these things and verbally condemn them to others. How many times have you stayed away from a movie because you heard that it wasn’t worth seeing?
Fifth, so many American Christians desperately need revival in their own lives. They are lukewarm and are more and more becoming just a part of this world. They talk about a Bible they never read. Their prayer life is a shallow as a dried- up pond. And they look much more forward to going out to lunch with friends after church then attending church itself. So why would they attend “Son of God” when so many other movies they can sit through look more enticing?
Here is my response to the above five points:
1. “Son of God” is not a television episode brought to the big screen. It has been redone not from the series, but from the Bible. Georgia and I have seen it twice and couldn’t recommend it more.
2. However gripping and emotionally disturbing the crucifixion scenes are in both “Passion of the Christ” and “Son of God,” they don’t even begin to show what Jesus Christ did for for mankind to make salvation available to whosoever will believe in Him. What neither film can show is your, my, and the world’s sins that came upon Him on the cross like a million tons of maggots. If you had been there in the first century I like Mary and John were, you would not have held back your tears or be ashamed when they fell. Remember, God said that He loves you so much that He saves your tears in a bottle and even records them in a book (Psalm 58:6.)
3. Waiting until “Son of God” becomes a DVD played on a small screen TV will shrink the power of the film, at least to some extent. That doesn’t mean it won’t still be a great movie to watch, but some motion pictures are best seen in their largest form to capture it all. This is one of that kind.
4. It’s true, Georgia and I would love to see a sequel to “Son of God” that would include many more scenes from the Gospels that were necessarily not seen in this film because of time restraints and cost. But there is nothing in this film that should disturb anyone’s sense of biblical knowledge. It is a profound and faithful presentation of what the Gospels tell us.
5. If you in any way recognize that your zeal for the Lord is diminishing, read my son’s article on reachmorenow.com titled Getting Ready to Dive. It was posted there yesterday.
With all of these points covered, seventh place in the third week of any movies release is in no way a disgrace. The competition is extreme among Hollywood films and to be anywhere in the top 10 is outstanding. There is still time to see this great film. But if “Son of God” does not continue to show large crowd attendance, it will stop being shown in the theaters. So, if you’re going to see it, or see it again as Georgia and I have, see it now.
– Ray
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THOUGHT FOR TODAY
The best some of us will get on the Day of Judgment
is a suspended sentence.
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CHRISTIAN NEWS FROM RAY – MORNING EDITION – March 17, 2014
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