Recent WND articles on the Temple Mount

A Burdensome Stone Temple Mount becoming mosque for Muslims only Israel allows minaret over Temple Mount Al Aqsa official: Jewish temples existed Jews, Christians shut from Temple Mount Israeli dig to spark Temple Mount violence? Al Aqsa leader: Jews have no right to Mount Arabs, Israelis prepare Temple Mount showdown Arab mob lynches Israeli who killed 4 Terrorist sneaks past Temple Mount security Temple Mount march protest leaders arrested Temple Mount completely unprotected Jerusalem police abound at Temple Mount area Muslims protest Jewish Temple Mount visit Mass Temple Mount visit to spur violence? Muslims plan to disrupt Temple Mount visit Israel bans Temple Mount ascent of 10,000 Jews 10,000 Jews to ascend Temple Mount Temple Mount: No Prayer Zone

Edwards: "Perhaps the Greatest Short-Term Threat to World Peace Is the Possibility That Israel Would Bomb Iran's Nuclear Facilities"

A Burdensome Stone NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE BLOGS>THE HILLARY SPOT – Jim Geraghty Reporting – February 22, 2007 -- Hillary Spot reader Michael points out this little gem in Peter Bart's column on John Edwards' comments in Hollywood: There are other emerging fissures, as well. The aggressively photogenic John Edwards was cruising along, detailing his litany of liberal causes last week until, during question time, he invoked the "I" word — Israel. Perhaps the greatest short-term threat to world peace, Edwards remarked, was the possibility that Israel would bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. As a chill descended on the gathering, the Edwards event was brought to a polite close. Really? Israel is the biggest threat? Not Ahmedinijad? Not al-Qaeda? Not a coup attempt in Pakistan? Not a complete breakdown in Iraq drawing in the Saudis, Turks, and Iranians? Or, you know, perhaps not. http://hillaryspot.nationalreview.com/ FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

We Are Family: King David’s Descendants Gather for ‘Reunion’

Romans 11:25-26 For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery--so that you will not be wise in your own estimation--that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, "THE DELIVERER WILL COME FROM ZION, HE WILL REMOVE UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB." FORWARD - By David Twersky - November 10, 2006 -- I don’t know about you, but talk of bloodlines leaves me queasy. We Jews have had more than our share of grief from notions of blood purity. If you’re like me, you just don’t want to go there. Imagine my surprise, then, to find myself spending a Thursday evening in October at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust (of all places), taking part in a reunion of King David’s dynastic line (of all things). I write these words with the full knowledge that my family name links me to a branch of Jewish life that reached great heights of rabbinic authority and passed it from father to son. A case can be made that bloodlines deserve critical respect — that is, modest respect for what those lines might tell us about heritage and past achievement, with due caution not to overplay their predictive impact. The openly stated goal of the Davidic Dynasty is hardly modest. The dynasty is aimed at “reuniting Jewish descendants of King David, reinforcing Jewish roots in Israel and evoking pride and unity.” This effort, the evening’s celebrants were told, comes “at this critical time when the world questions Jewish sovereignty in Israel.” Heritage, after all, implies inheritance. The New York dinner was just a warm-up for the main event, “an historic reunion in Jerusalem next spring” in which organizers expect more than “1,000 Jewish descendants of King David from around the world… to participate.” Future plans include the opening of a Davidic Dynasty Museum in Jerusalem. The evening’s co-chair and main organizer, Susan Roth, makes no personal claim of Davidic descent, although she does have her own pride of lineage: She once performed with her parents, Yiddish stage stars Lillian Lux and Pesach Burstein, and her twin brother, Mike Burstein, in a legendary act known as The Four Bursteins. Today, Roth is a self-published author and activist. Her Eshet Chayil (“Woman of Valor”) Foundation describes the coming Davidic reunion on its Web site as “an Historic and Majestic event to declare our Eternal Right to our Homeland and restore Jewish Pride in our Glorious Past and in the promise of our Future.” For all its big plans, the October 19 dinner attracted a rather smallish crowd, with invitees seemingly outnumbering the actual mishpokhe. In the latter category were the evening’s three main honorees: Robert Morgenthau, the 87-year-old district attorney of Manhattan; the popular Orthodox inspirational speaker Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis and a revered Hasidic sage, Grand Rabbi Yitzhak Twersky, who happens to be a distant relative of mine. Speaking of distant relatives, we were informed at the evening’s outset that Morgenthau, the rebbetzin and the grand rabbi were all related, because they all shared a common ancestor, King David. Also declaring his blue-and-white blood was event co-chair Mitch Dayan, whose family came to these shores from Aleppo, Syria. He claims direct father-to-son descent from King David, and he was kind enough to announce that all the King’s men (and women) were part of one big family. At about this point in the evening, I was wondering when I might hit up Dayan for some help with my children’s college tuition in lieu of missed bar mitzvah gifts. After all, I thought, this could be big. The organizers said that they have traced (or are in the process of tracing) all the descendants of King David and are in the process of reconstituting what is, in effect, a royal family. This is a royal line with considerable pretension, promising to produce no less than the fated messiah, son of David, reborn king of Israel and harbinger of the End of Days. There was no talk at the New York dinner of launching a full-blown Israeli monarchist party. But there have been some preliminary meetings among Israeli far-rightists, aimed at precisely that. Morgenthau, in his after-dinner remarks, spoke movingly of his struggle to affirm his Jewish identity and that of his family, including his famous grandfather and father, Henry Sr. and Jr. — one a diplomat, the other a Cabinet secretary — who played crucial roles in saving Jewish lives during the First and Second World Wars. If anyone on that dais deserved to wear a royal Jewish signet, my vote was for the DA. Still, for all the drama and significance in the claim of Davidic descent, the authenticity of the claim appears difficult to nail down. The Davidic Dynasty project relies for its fundamental assertion on the work of genealogist Chaim (Keith) Freedman. Organizers offer some history to back up the idea that, blood being blood, King David’s descendants are all witty, wise and successful. Among famous Jews tracing their ancestry back to David, Dynasty organizers say, are the talmudic sages Hillel the Elder (who thus outranked his arch-rival, Shammai), Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Yehuda Ha-Nassi and Yochanan Ha-Sandlar, along with the medieval scholar Yosef Karo (which would put his descendant, historian Robert Caro, into The Family). Family members over the past four centuries were said to include the Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, the Lubavitcher rebbe and the late president of Israel, Chaim Herzog. Of course, “We Are Family” is a great old song. Lately it’s even become a commercial slogan for a popular restaurant chain — “Olive Garden: When you’re here, you’re family!” (As if your Uncle Morris would ever charge you $19.95 when you come over for gefilte fish and pasta.) But can we really trace back family histories over 3,000 years? According to David Einsiedler, writing in the same scholarly journal, “Avotaynu: The International Review of Jewish Genealogy,” “Careful examination of all available sources leads to the inescapable conclusion that there is no complete, reliable and positive proof of claims of descent from King David, whether via Rashi, Judah Loew the Elder, or any of the other families claimed. There are at present no known sources that could fill the gaps or set the record straight. It is possible that there may be actual descendants somewhere, but at present, no one can produce sufficient and unquestionable proof of this claim.” The counter-argument is that recent genetic breakthroughs have led to real progress along these (blood) lines. There was, for example, a 1997 study finding common DNA markers among Jewish males, and even more so among the kohanim, the priestly caste traditionally believed to trace its lineage directly to Aaron, the brother of Moses. More recent studies have shown a close genetic kinship between Jews and the descendants of their presumed neighbors in the ancient Near East, including Kurds and Palestinians. Jews, it’s worth recalling, have tended, at least until the past century or so, to marry in, preserving common DNA traits. But I don’t think the organizers of the Davidic Dynasty Reunion were trying to gain bragging rights about familial ties to the Arabs. None of these details has to stop you from affiliating with the Davidic Dynasty. You can even pick your level of DNA confidence, opting either for the $70 per year “Royal membership” level, or, for sympathetic commoners, the $40 per year “Loyal membership” level. Be forewarned, however: While tradition does specify that the messiah will come from King David’s family, and while that understandably might reinforce the urge to identify the King’s descendants, there is a paradox at the heart of all this. David, after all, was not born into “royalty.” He was a shepherd boy, a hick from the sticks. If that isn’t enough to make the concept of a royal bloodline suspect, there is always the tradition of David’s own blood heritage, which takes him back to Ruth the Moabite, a convert to Judaism. Thus, the great king hails from a family with an unimportant rural pedigree compounded by a combination of Jewish and non-Jewish lineage. With deference less to Robert Penn Warren than to Humpty Dumpty, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that all King David’s children cannot put him back together again. http://www.forward.com/articles/we-are-family-king-david-s-descendants-gather-f/ FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Churches back plan to unite under Pope

All roads lead to Rome Galatians 1:6-10 I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed! For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ. THE TIMES of LONDON - By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent - February 19, 2007 --Radical proposals to reunite Anglicans with the Roman Catholic Church under the leadership of the Pope are to be published this year, The Times has learnt. The proposals have been agreed by senior bishops of both churches. In a 42-page statement prepared by an international commission of both churches, Anglicans and Roman Catholics are urged to explore how they might reunite under the Pope. The statement, leaked to The Times, is being considered by the Vatican, where Catholic bishops are preparing a formal response. It comes as the archbishops who lead the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion meet in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in an attempt to avoid schism over gay ordination and other liberal doctrines that have taken hold in parts of the Western Church. The 36 primates at the gathering will be aware that the Pope, while still a cardinal, sent a message of support to the orthodox wing of the Episcopal Church of the US as it struggled to cope with the fallout after the ordination of the gay bishop Gene Robinson. Were this week’s discussions to lead to a split between liberals and conservatives, many of the former objections in Rome to a reunion with Anglican conservatives would disappear. Many of those Anglicans who object most strongly to gay ordination also oppose the ordination of women priests. Rome has already shown itself willing to be flexible on the subject of celibacywhen it received dozens of married priests from the Church of England into the Catholic priesthood after they left over the issue of women’s ordination. There are about 78 million Anglicans, compared with a billion Roman Catholics, worldwide. In England and Wales, the Catholic Church is set to overtake Anglicanism as the predominant Christian denomination for the first time since the Reformation, thanks to immigration from Catholic countries. As the Anglicans’ squabbles over the fundamentals of Christian doctrine continue — with seven of the conservative primates twice refusing to share Communion with the other Anglican leaders at their meeting in Tanzania — the Church’s credibility is being increasingly undermined in a world that is looking for strong witness from its international religious leaders. The Anglicans will attempt to resolve their differences today by publishing a new Anglican Covenant, an attempt to provide a doctrinal statement under which they can unite. But many fear that the divisions have gone too far to be bridged and that, if they cannot even share Communion with each other, there is little hope that they will agree on a statement of common doctrine. The latest Anglican-Catholic report could hardly come at a more sensitive time. It has been drawn up by the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission, which is chaired by the Right Rev David Beetge, an Anglican bishop from South Africa, and the Most Rev John Bathersby, the Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane, Australia. The commission was set up in 2000 by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey of Clifton, and Cardinal Edward Cassidy, then head of the Vatican’s Council for Christian Unity. Its aim was to find a way of moving towards unity through “common life and mission”. The document leaked to The Times is the commission’s first statement, Growing Together in Unity and Mission. The report acknowledges the “imperfect communion” between the two churches but says that there is enough common ground to make its “call for action” about the Pope and other issues. In one significant passage the report notes: “The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the ministry of the Bishop of Rome [the Pope] as universal primate is in accordance with Christ’s will for the Church and an essential element of maintaining it in unity and truth.” Anglicans rejected the Bishop of Rome as universal primate in the 16th century. Today, however, some Anglicans are beginning to see the potential value of a ministry of universal primacy, which would be exercised by the Bishop of Rome, as a sign and focus of unity within a reunited Church. In another paragraph the report goes even further: “We urge Anglicans and Roman Catholics to explore together how the ministry of the Bishop of Rome might be offered and received in order to assist our Communions to grow towards full, ecclesial communion.” Other recommendations include inviting lay and ordained members of both denominations to attend each other’s synodical and collegial gatherings and conferences. Anglican bishops could be invited to accompany Catholic ones on visits to Rome. The report adds that special “protocols” should also be drawn up to handle the movement of clergy from one Church to the other. Other proposals include common teaching resources for children in Sunday schools and attendance at each other’s services, pilgrimages and processions. Anglicans are also urged to begin praying for the Pope during the intercessionary prayers in church services, and Catholics are asked also to pray publicly for the Archbishop of Canterbury. In today’s Anglican Church, it is unlikely that a majority of parishioners would wish to heal the centuries-old rift and return to Rome. However, the stance of the Archbishop of Canterbury over the present dispute dividing his Church gives an indication of how priorities could be changing in light of the gospel imperative towards church unity. Dr Rowan Williams, who as Primate of the Church of England is its “focus for unity”, has in the past supported a liberal interpretation of Scripture on the gay issue. But he has made it clear that church unity must come before provincial autonomy. A logical extension of that, once this crisis is overcome either by agreement or schism, would be to seek reunion with the Church of England's own mother Church. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article1403702.ece FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

CNN/DOBBS: W FULFILLS HIS DAD'S DREAM OFA NEW WORLD ORDER

See Lou Dobb spell it out in no uncertain terms on "Liberal" CNN - George W. Bush is installing a New World Order.