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In the US, Covid’s death exceeded 5 million, with Biden and Kamala Harris lighting candles in the White House; The White House flag was lowered in half
Washington —With sunset remarks and a national moment of silence, President Joe Biden on Monday confronted head-on the country’s once-unimaginable loss — half a million Americans in the COVID-19 pandemic — as he tried to strike a balance between mourning and hope.
Addressing the “grim, heartbreaking milestone” directly and publicly, Biden stepped to a lectern in the White House Cross Hall, unhooked his face mask and delivered an emotion-filled eulogy for 500,071 Americans he said he felt he knew.
“We often hear people described as ordinary Americans. There’s no such thing,” he said Monday evening. “There’s nothing ordinary about them. The people we lost were extraordinary.”
“Just like that,” he added, “so many of them took their last breath alone.”
A president whose own life has been marked by family tragedy, Biden spoke in deeply personal terms, referencing his own losses as he tried to comfort the huge number of Americans whose lives have been forever changed by the pandemic.
“I know all too well. I know what it’s like to not be there when it happens,” said Biden, who has long addressed grief more powerfully than perhaps any other American public figure. “I know what it’s like when you are there, holding their hands, as they look in your eye and they slip away. That black hole in your chest, you feel like you’re being sucked into it.”
The president, who lost his first wife and baby daughter in a car collision and later an adult son to brain cancer, leavened the grief with a message of hope.
“This nation will smile again. This nation will know sunny days again. This nation will know joy again. And as we do, we’ll remember each person we’ve lost, the lives they lived, the loved ones they left behind.”
He said, “We have to resist becoming numb to the sorrow. We have to resist viewing each life as a statistic or a blur or, on the news. We must do so to honor the dead. But, equally important, to care for the living.”
The president ordered flags on federal property lowered to half staff for five days and then led the moment of communal mourning for those lost to a virus that often prevents people from gathering to remember their loved ones. Monday’s bleak threshold of 500,000 deaths was playing out against contradictory crosscurrents: an encouraging drop in coronavirus cases and worries about the spread of more contagious variants.
Biden’s management of the pandemic will surely define at least the first year of his presidency, and his response has showcased the inherent tension between preparing the nation for dark weeks ahead while also offering optimism about pushing out vaccines that could, eventually, bring this American tragedy to a close.
After he spoke, the president along with first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff stood outside the White House for a moment of silence at sundown. Black bunting draped the doorway they walked through. Five hundred brilliantly lit candles — each standing for 1,000 people lost — illuminated the stairways on either side of them as the Marine Band played a mournful rendition of “Amazing Grace.”
The milestone comes just over a year after the first confirmed U.S. fatality from the coronavirus. The pandemic has since swept across the world and the U.S., stressing the nation’s health care system, rattling its economy and rewriting the rules of everyday society.
In one of his many symbolic breaks with his predecessor, Biden has not shied away from offering remembrances for the lives lost to the virus. His first stop after arriving in Washington on the eve of his inauguration was to attend a twilight ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to mourn the dead.
That somber moment on the eve of Biden’s inauguration — typically a celebratory time when America marks the democratic tradition of a peaceful transfer of power — was a measure of the enormity of loss for the nation.
The COVID-19 death total in the United States had just crossed 400,000 when Biden took the oath of office. An additional 100,000 have died in the past month.
Former President Donald Trump invariably looked to play down the total, initially claiming the virus would go away on its own and later locking into a prediction that America would suffer far fewer than 100,000 deaths. Once the total eclipsed that mark, Trump shifted gears again and said that scale of loss was actually a success story because it could have been much worse.
Outside of perfunctory tweets marking the milestones of 100,000 and 200,000 deaths, Trump oversaw no moment of national mourning, no memorial service. At the Republican National Convention, he made no mention of the suffering, leaving that to first lady Melania Trump.
And at campaign rallies across the nation, he erroneously predicted that the nation was “rounding the corner” on the virus while he disregarded safety measures such as masks and pushed governors to lift restrictions against public health advice. In audio tapes released last fall, it was revealed that Trump told journalist Bob Woodward in March that “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic.”
Biden, by contrast, has long drawn on his own personal tragedy as he comforts those who grieve. He has pledged to level with the American public on the severity of the crisis and has repeatedly warned that the nation was going through a “very dark winter,” one now challenged by the arrival of more contagious virus variants.
Biden also has deliberately set expectations low — particularly on vaccinations and when the nation can return to normal — knowing he could land a political win by exceeding them. He is on track to far exceed his initial promise to deliver 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days, with some public health experts now urging him to set a far more ambitious goal. The administration says it expects to have enough vaccine available for every American by the end of July.
Biden’s reference to next Christmas for a possible return to normalcy raised eyebrows across a pandemic-weary nation and seemed less optimistic than projections made by others in his own administration, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has suggested a summer comeback.
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Ex-Muslim Leads 100,000 to Jesus: ‘There Is Hunger in the Muslim World to Hear About Christ’
Harun Ibrahim was born in Israel to Arab-Muslim parents, studied in a Jewish school, and married a devout Christian woman. After years of examining these religions, he was faced with a choice: Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.
Ibrahim ultimately made a decision to follow Christ, thanks to his praying wife and a timely encounter with a random man on the street.
Ibrahim recalled the conversation during an appearance on The 700 Club. The man told him, “‘Well, you are not going to be in the kingdom of God because Jesus said that no one will come to the Father except through Him.'”
“And I really didn’t like that,” he recounted. “I said, ‘You are rude.'”
The man began to share the Gospel with the young Muslim and challenged him to actually read the Bible.
“He challenged me to read this Bible verse, and it was in the Gospel of John. And I read the Gospel of John seven times in a row. I just like really loved the person called Jesus. I couldn’t resist. I just had to accept him as my redeemer, as my Savior,” he shared.
Ibrahim began to burn with a desire to share the Gospel with Muslims and served many years as a missionary reaching Muslims in the Arab nations. He later started Al Hayat Ministries in 2003 to boldly preach the Gospel and challenge Islam. Since then, the ministry has seen more than 100,000 come to faith in Jesus Christ.
“Our vision extends to equipping believers who come from Muslim backgrounds with the necessary tools and knowledge to fulfill the Great Commission,” reads a statement on their website.
Ibrahim serves as the Director of Al Hayat Ministries, and recently told the Keeping It Real Israel podcast that they have reached millions of people with the Gospel in a short time.
“Just an example that [in] 2023 we received 109 million viewer reactions or responses and thousands of people accepting Christ,” he shared. “This means that there is hunger in the Muslim world to hear about Christ.”
Ibrahim explained that what makes his programming unique is that he is speaking to Muslims in the culture and language they understand.
“When Christian TV was first brought into the Arab world, it was programs that were made by Christians for Christians in the Christian language in the hopes that Muslims would watch the shows,” he told the 700 Club. ” When I started to produce TV programs, I was not happy to see that the whole year could be, maybe, 15 to 20 Muslims accepting Christ.”
His unique approach is giving many more people the opportunity to meet Jesus.
“I think that media, TV, internet are here to help us fulfill the Great Commission, and the Muslim world was [once] isolated. It was closed, and now through the satellite channels, internet, [and] social media, we can reach the Muslims.
“Many of them are finding the truth,” Ibrahim continued. “I do believe that a great revival is very soon to come to every single Muslim country.”
For many Muslims, accepting Christ means being rejected by family and potentially endangering their lives.
“Islam is a religion that does not allow people to change it, and if you reject Islam, you will be punished. You will be given three days as a chance to get back. If not, then you can be persecuted,” he told CBN News in 2020.
“In many of the countries, they don’t kill them, but in some of the countries, they do. Many people would lose their jobs, their families, their children, their wives, and then their families. Unfortunately, we can say that in some cases, they lose their lives,” Ibrahim explained.
He encouraged Christians who have a desire to reach Muslims to begin praying first.
“When you start praying for the Muslim world, God will guide you [in] what to do,” he explained.
Sources:CBN News
A massive crane lifted a 25-ton Jewish ritual bath from an excavation site in Israel, preserving a remarkably intact structure that had survived roughly 2,000 years.
The bath, unearthed in Kiryat Gat about 35 miles southwest of Jerusalem, dates to the Second Temple period, placing it in the world of Jesus’ earthly ministry. Its discovery also revealed something archaeologists had not previously known: A Jewish settlement once stood there.
The Israel Antiquities Authority announced the bath’s removal in September, explaining that the operation would protect it during construction of a new neighborhood.
For author Dinesh D’Souza, the discovery offers a vivid connection to the people and practices surrounding the Biblical accounts.
“It gives you a vivid picture. In some ways, it brings the Bible to life, both the Old Testament and the New, because this mikveh reflects the times right around the time of Jesus,” D’Souza told Fox News Digital.
A mikveh is a bath used for Jewish ritual purification. Alongside the structure, archaeologists uncovered stone measuring vessels, which were widely used during the Second Temple period because Jewish law did not consider them susceptible to ritual impurity.
Together, those discoveries provide evidence of the ancient community’s religious life.
D’Souza, whose new book, “The Stones Cry Out,” and documentary of the same name explore Biblical archaeology, said such finds help establish the historical world described in Scripture.
“This is confirming, describing, illuminating the world of the Bible,” he said. “That’s one of the things that biblical archaeology can do. It can authenticate the historicity of the Bible—not the theology, not the miracles, but the historicity of it.”
The ancient bath’s journey will eventually bring it back to the community where it was found. Rather than remaining removed from its original setting, it will become part of the neighborhood taking shape around it.
“When construction is completed, the mikveh will be returned to the site, and integrated into an open public space that will stand at the heart of the new neighborhood,” the IAA said.
Sources: Breaking Christian News
ഡാളസ്: വൈ.എം.ഇ.എഫ് ഡാളസിന്റെ ആഭിമുഖ്യത്തില് ‘ജോര്ജ് പീറ്റര് സംഗീതസന്ധ്യ’ ഒക്ടോബര് 17 ശനിയാഴ്ച വൈകിട്ട് 5:30-ന് നടക്കും. കരോള്ട്ടണിലെ ബിലീവേഴ്സ് ബൈബിള് ചാപ്പലാണ് വേദി.
ക്രൈസ്തവ കൈരളിക്ക് നൂറിലേറെ ഗാനങ്ങള് സമ്മാനിച്ച ഭക്തകവി ഇവാഞ്ചലിസ്റ്റ് ജോര്ജ് പീറ്റര് ചിറ്റൂര് രചിച്ച തിരഞ്ഞെടുത്ത ഗാനങ്ങളും അവയുടെ പശ്ചാത്തല അനുഭവങ്ങളും സംഗീതസന്ധ്യയില് അവതരിപ്പിക്കും. ‘യേശു എനിക്കെത്ര നല്ലവനാം’, ‘എനിക്കൊത്താശ വരും പര്വതം’, ‘കര്ത്താവിലെന്നും എന്റെ ആശ്രയം’, ‘വിശ്വാസ ജീവിതപ്പടകില്’, ‘എന്നെ കരുതുവാന് കാക്കുവാന്’ തുടങ്ങിയ ഗാനങ്ങളിലൂടെ ശ്രദ്ധേയനായ ഗാനരചയിതാവാണ് ജോര്ജ് പീറ്റര് ചിറ്റൂര്.
ഗായകന് ബിനോയ് ചാക്കോയും സംഘവും ഡാളസ് മലയാളികള്ക്കായി സംഗീതസന്ധ്യ ഒരുക്കും.
വേദിയുടെ വിലാസം: Believers’ Bible Chapel, 2116 Old Denton Rd, Carrollton, TX 75006.
Sources:nerkazhcha
ഒക്ടോബർ 15 മുതൽ രണ്ടായിരം രൂപയ്ക്ക് മുകളിൽ യുപിഐ പേമന്റുകൾ സ്വീകരിക്കില്ല-ഹോട്ടലുടമകൾ
കൊച്ചി: ഒക്ടോബർ 15 മുതൽ സംസ്ഥാനത്തെ ഹോട്ടലുകളിലും, റസ്റ്ററന്റുകളിലും 2000 രൂപയ്ക്ക് മുകളിലുള്ള യു.പി.ഐ. പേമന്റുകൾ സ്വീകരിക്കില്ലെന്ന് കേരള ഹോട്ടൽ ആൻഡ് റസ്റ്ററന്റ് അസോസിയേഷൻ അറിയിച്ചു. രണ്ടായിരം...
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Ex-Muslim Leads 100,000 to Jesus: ‘There Is Hunger in the Muslim World to Hear About Christ’
Harun Ibrahim was born in Israel to Arab-Muslim parents, studied in a Jewish school, and married a devout Christian woman....
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