EU-DIGEST

RCCG leader speaks hope to 60,000 Christians assembled in London - by Maria McKay

The General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God was in London last night to reinvigorate Christians for mission and cast off doom and gloom in the midst of the credit crunch. Speaking ahead of the event, Pastor Enoch Adeboye told Christian Today it was imperative that believers look to God to help them through difficult times. Pastor Adeboye said he believed Europe was on the brink of a major revival. Festival of Life has grown to become the largest all night non-denominational gathering of Christians in Europe, gathering tens of thousands year-on-year since it first began in 1996. The night features preaching, worship and prayer for revival.

Labels: Britain, Christians, EU, God, Religion

Sandra Samuel and Moshe Holtzberg escape from Chabad House in Mumbai

An EU-Digest editorial on the dramatic events at the Rohr Chabad House in Mumbai

Sandra Samuel and Moshe Holtzberg - The Mumbai Miracle: God lives in all

Last Thursday, as the world watched the horrors unfolding in Mumbai, many of us saw Moshe Holzberg being carried out of the Rohr Chabad House by Sandra Samuel (44), an Indian nanny who had worked at the Jewish community center for years. She had found Moshe crying beside his parents’ bodies, drenched in blood. The parents, his mother Rivkah Holtzberg, 28, was an Israeli citizen, while his father, Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, 29, had dual American and Israeli citizenship. They had come to Mumbai in August 2003 to operate a home for the Jewish community, where travelers could get a kosher meal, attend Shabbat services, and relax in a library filled with a variety of works, including many books even some by Woody Allen and manuscripts on Jewish philosophy.

Last week their lives on earth abruptly ended, when they were executed in their home by a highly trained, tightly knit, and well-financed, ruthless group of Islamic militants.

When the attack on the Rorh Chabad House began last Wednesday, Sandra Samuel heard explosions and gunshots on an upper floor of the center and locked herself and fellow employee Zaki Hussein in a downstairs utility room. Late Thursday morning, she heard Moshe screaming, ran upstairs, eluded roaming gunmen, even stared some of them down, and found the child beside the bodies of his parents, carried him downstairs, and brought Moshe to safety. Mr. Hussein helped Ms. Samuel conceal Moshe, as the three escaped from Rorh Chabad House.

Sandra Samuel now continues to help care for Moshe Holtzberg in Israel. Her emigration from India was expedited when the Israeli government declared her one of the “Righteous Among the Nations” and issued her an immigration permit. Recipients of this honor, awarded by a special commission headed by a Supreme Court Justice in Israel, include Oskar and Emilie Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg, and Corrie ten Boom. People and groups that receive this title, have risked their lives to save others, many during the Holocaust. Sandra Samuel is the first citizen of India to receive this honor.

As dramatic as this report may sound, it underscores the fact that God does not belong to any religion, but that he lives in all of us. Moshe Holtzberg and Sandra Samuel are a living proof of that, and as difficult as this is to say, also in those militants, who decided not to kill Moshe, after they killed his parents.

Labels: God, India, Israel, Moshe Holtzberg, Mumbai, Religion, Sandra Samuel, Terrorism

Is God Liberal or Conservative? - by Bruce A.Ritter and Jeffrey D.Davis

Speaking about the U.S. presidential campaign, author Paul Kengor expressed the following in an interview with Frontpage Magazine: “Hillary Clinton realizes that if she is to win in 2008, she needs more than the atheist vote. She needs to win a sizable enough sliver of those 2000 and 2004 moral-religious ‘values voters’ who twice elected George W. Bush. Those who attend church weekly or more went overwhelming for Bush, by two-to-one ratios, and each time provided him with an absolutely decisive vote margin of about five million ballots. “It became clear in the immediate days after the November 2004 vote…that [presidential candidate Hillary Clinton] was going to go after that values voter. She angrily complained that it was a sign of ‘such disrespect’ to think that liberal Democrats who believe in God cannot be attractive to these religious voters. Ever since, she has pursued a strategy to win them over in 2008.”

Since both the Conservative Right and now the Liberal Left, in effect, claim that the God of the Bible is on their side, this naturally begs the question, “Is God liberal or conservative?” In other words, what “social issues” and positions does He support?

Labels: God, Religious

We are meant to be here - by Steve Paulson

"People are not the result of a cosmic accident, but of laws of the universe that grant our lives meaning and purpose, says physicist Paul Davies. More and more physicists point to various laws of nature that have to be calibrated just right for stars and planets to form and for life to appear. For instance, if gravity were just slightly stronger, the universe would have collapsed long before life evolved. But if gravity were a tiny bit weaker, no galaxies or stars could have formed. If the strong nuclear force had been slightly different, red giant stars would never produce the fusion needed to form heavier atoms like carbon, and the universe would be a vast, lifeless desert. Are these just happy coincidences? The late cosmologist Fred Hoyle called the universe "a put-up job." Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson has suggested that the universe, in some sense, "knew we were coming."

British-born cosmologist Paul Davies calls this cosmic fine-tuning the "Goldilocks Enigma." Like the porridge for the three bears, he says the universe is "just right" for life.Without ever invoking God, Davies argues for a grand cosmic plan. The universe, he believes, is filled with meaning and purpose."

Labels: God, Humanity, the Universe