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The Pope’s Top Climate Change Advisor Does Not
Believe In God – But He Does Appear To Believe In ‘Gaia’
Posted: 23 Jun 2015
04:43 PM PDT
 What kind of people is Pope Francis surrounding himself
with? The fact that this Pope decided to choose German professor John
Schellnhuber as his chief climate change advisor is raising a lot of
eyebrows. Schellnhuber doesn’t believe in God, but as you will see
below, he does appear to believe in ‘Gaia’. Schellnhuber has also advocated
for the establishment of an “Earth Constitution”, a “Global Council” directly
elected by the citizens of the world, and a “Planetary Court” that would
serve as the pinnacle of a planetary legal system. In addition, he
believes that the “carrying capacity” of our planet is less than one billion
people. This is the man that the Pope has chosen to advise him on the
issue that Pope Francis has made the centerpiece of his papacy.
The concept of ‘Gaia’ has deep roots in
ancient paganism. Many of the advocates of the ‘Gaia hypothesis‘
do not consider themselves to be religious, but in reality it is a kind of
“scientific pantheism”. This quasi-scientific theory was popularized by
James Lovelock in his book entitled “Gaia: A New Look At Life On Earth“, and apparently
this is a theory that Schellnhuber endorses. The following is an
extended excerpt from a recent article by William M. Briggs…
In the Gaia Principle, Mother Earth is alive,
and even, some think, aware in some ill-defined, mystical way. The Earth
knows man and his activities and, frankly, isn’t too happy with him.
This is what we might call “scientific
pantheism,” a kind that appeals to atheistic scientists. It is an updated version
of the pagan belief that the universe itself is God, that the Earth is at
least semi-divine — a real Brother Sun and Sister Water! Mother Earth is
immanent in creation and not transcendent, like the Christian God.
What’s this have to do with Schellnhuber? In
the 1999 Nature paper “‘Earth system’ analysis and the second Copernican
revolution,” he said:
Ecosphere
science is therefore coming of age, lending respectability to its romantic
companion, Gaia theory, as pioneered by Lovelock and Margulis. This hotly debated
‘geophysiological’ approach to Earth-system analysis argues that the
biosphere contributes in an almost cognizant way to self-regulating feedback
mechanisms that have kept the Earth’s surface environment stable and
habitable for life.
Geo-physiological, in case you missed it. Cognizant, in black and white. So dedicated is Schellnhuber to this belief
that he says “the Gaia approach may even include the influence of biospheric
activities on the Earth’s plate-tectonic processes.” Not the other way
around, mind you, where continental drift and earthquakes effects life, but
where life effects earthquakes.
He elaborates:
Although effects such as
the glaciations may still be interpreted as over-reactions to small
disturbances — a kind of cathartic geophysiological fever — the
main events, resulting in accelerated maturation by shock treatment, indicate
that Gaia faces a powerful antagonist. Rampino has proposed personifying
this opposition as Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction.
So why would the Pope rely on the “expertise”
of someone that does not believe in God, but that argues that “Gaia faces a
powerful antagonist”?
Perhaps someone should ask him.
And someone should also ask the Pope why he is
hanging around with someone that believes that our planet is
overpopulated by six billion people…
Schellnhuber is most famous for predicting
that the “carrying capacity” of the earth is “below” 1 billion people. When confronted with this, he called those who
quoted him “liars.” But he then repeated the same claim, saying, “All I said
was that if we had unlimited global warming of eight degrees warming, maybe
the carrying capacity of the earth would go down to just 1 billion, and then
the discussion would be settled.” And he has often said that this
temperature tipping point would be reached — unless “actions” were
taken.
Schellnhuber is also an unashamed
globalist. In a previous article, I discussed how he believes that we
need a global government, a global constitution and a global court that would
have authority over all the other courts on the planet. The following
is an excerpt from a very disturbing
article that he authored…
Let me conclude this short contribution with a
daydream about those key institutions that could bring about a sophisticated
— and therefore more appropriate — version of the conventional “world
government” notion. Global
democracy might be organized around three core activities, namely (i) an
Earth Constitution; (ii) a Global Council; and (iii) a Planetary Court. I cannot discuss these institutions in any detail here, but I
would like to indicate at least that:
– the Earth Constitution would transcend the UN
Charter and identify those first principles guiding humanity in its quest for
freedom, dignity, security and sustainability;
– the Global Council would be an assembly of
individuals elected directly by all people on Earth, where eligibility should
be not constrained by geographical, religious, or cultural quotas; and
– the Planetary Court would be a transnational
legal body open to appeals from everybody, especially with respect to
violations of the Earth Constitution.
So why is Pope Francis surrounding himself
with such people?
Does he have similar hopes for the future?
Without a doubt, the Pope’s latest encyclical
fully embraces Schellnhuber’s views on climate change, but it doesn’t stop
there. The Pope also expressed a very negative view of human progress,
and he appeared to be echoing many of the exact same talking points that
radical environmentalists have been hammering us with for years. The
following comes from a recent article by Steven
Malanga…
The encyclical, whose title is derived from a
line from St. Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Sun (“Be praised, My Lord,
through all your Creatures”), is being welcomed by some in the scientific
community because it proclaims that climate change is real and that humanity
must address it. But the nearly 38,000-word document—most of which is not
about climate change—actually reads like a giant step backward for the
Church’s social teaching: a rejection of technological progress; a dark,
narrow vision of human nature that ignores the enormous gains the world has
made in alleviating human suffering; and an almost antihuman call,
reminiscent of the most radical environmentalists, to reduce human activity
drastically as the only way to save the planet. As Michael Shellenberger,
president of the Breakthrough Institute and co-author of An Ecomodernist
Manifesto, observed: “When [the] Pope speaks of ‘irrational faith in human
progress’ I want him to visit the Congo to see what life is like when there
is no progress.”
So what does all of this mean?
Could it be possible that this Pope is far
more radical than most people ever imagined?
If so, what does that mean for the future of
Catholicism?
Please feel free to tell us what you think by
posting a comment below…
Michael Snyder is the
author of The Beginning Of The End and Get
Prepared Now. You can get his new DVDs entitled “Economic Collapse, World War III
& The Death Of America” and “The Regathering Of The Ten Lost
Tribes Of Israel” from the Prophecy Club.
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Friday 26 June 2015
The Pope’s Top Climate Change Advisor Does Not Believe In God – But He Does Appear To Believe In ‘Gaia’
You are Being Secretly Tracked With Facial Recognition, Even In Church
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We know that Facebook has a vast facial recognition database so
good that it can recognize you when your face is hidden, that the FBI has built
a millions-strong criminal facial recognition system, and that Google’s new
Photos app is so effective at face recognition that it can identify now-adults
in photos from their childhood. But now facial recognition is starting to pop
up in weird and unexpected places: at music festivals (to identify criminals);
at stadiums (to weed out “sports troublemakers“) and at churches. Yes,
churches.
Moshe Greenshpan, the CEO of Israel- and Las Vegas-based facial recognition software company Face-Six, says there are 30 churches around the world using his Churchix technology. He launched the service just four months ago and says churches are already using it to scan congregants’ earthly visages to keep track of attendance at events in order to know who wasn’t there so they can check up on them, or who attends most frequently so they can ask those people for donations. He declined to name any of the churches using the technology citing the controversy around facial recognition. I asked him if any of the churches are based in Texas or Illinois, the only two U.S. states that have laws on the books about getting permission to collect peoples’ faceprints. “I prefer not to say,” said Greenshpan.
(If a facial expression-detecting camera were trained on my own face, it would read “skeptical.” Without being able to talk to one of the churches using this technology, it’s impossible to verify Greenshpan’s claims.)
Greenshpan said the churches just have to upload one high-quality photo of a congregant to start scanning video or photos from gatherings to see if they were there. I asked him if the churches let people know they’re using the technology. “I don’t think churches tell people,” he said. “We encourage them to do so but I don’t think they do.”
That’s exactly the fear that privacy advocates have about the increasing roll-out of this technology: people’s faces are being put in databases and used to track them without any knowledge that it’s happening. Greenshpan argues that churches were already keeping track of who attended their events, but that his technology just makes it more efficient for medium-sized and mega-churches.
Greenshpan, who got his start with a facial recognition app called Skakash that was like a Shazam for celebrity faces, and then “followed the money” to business applications, is among the entrepreneurs who want to usher facial recognition into more common use. Some of the companies focus on their ability to create databases of “bad faces” — people who can be instantly identified for heightened scrutiny or even barred from entry. California-based FaceFirst tells retailers in an advertising brochure that they can get alerts when “pre-identified shoplifters” or “known litigious individuals” enter their stores.
FaceFirst also says retailers can create a database of “good customers,” so they can greet them by name when they walk through the door. Privacy advocates worry about the creation of face-tracking databases that could be used to track people’s movements in the offline world the same way advertising companies track them online from website to website using cookies.
“Instantly, when a person in your FaceFirst database steps into one of your stores, you are sent an email, text, or SMS alert that includes their picture and all biographical information of the known individual so you can take immediate and appropriate action,” says the Facefirst brochure. It doesn’t say what happens when that person isn’t you but is actually a doppelgänger with a bad reputation. Or how someone who doesn’t want to get greeted by name gets their face taken out of the database.
“There are no federal laws that specifically govern the use of facial recognition technology,” wrote Ben Sobel in a Washington Post editorial that discussed the only two states with relevant laws on the books. In lieu of a law, the Department of Commerce has been trying to establish facial recognition industry standards in a “privacy multistakeholder process.” For more than a year, industrial representatives and privacy advocates have been taking part in negotiations to come up with standards for how facial recognition should be deployed by businesses in the U.S. Last week, those negotiations broke down. Privacy groups involved in the process, including the ACLU and EFF, withdrew, saying in a letter that companies refused to agree to core principles of privacy.
“We asked the industry to agree that in general they need to get consent to put people’s images into facial recognition databases and they disagreed,” said Alvaro Bedoya, executive director of Georgetown’s Center on Privacy & Technology. “So we proposed the narrowest of narrow situations, that when someone is walking down a street, a company they haven’t heard of shouldn’t identify that person by name. And the industry representatives wouldn’t agree to that either. So we walked out.”
According to many a sci-fi book and at least one hilarious comic, technology-enabled facial recognition in the wild will eventually be as common as caller id on your phone — which also got heat from privacy advocates when first introduced in 1990. How mainstream society feels about it is still unclear, though people occasionally seem to be discomforted judging from lawsuits filed this year in Illinois alleging that both Facebook and Shutterfly created faceprints without their users’ consents. But proponents say, with the steady march of technology and image collection, face recognition everywhere is looking increasingly inevitable.
“You, I, everyone has the right to take photographs in public,” said Carl Szabo, a lawyer at online advertising trade group Netchoice who was on the other side of the Commerce debate. “Facial recognition can be applied immediately, or days later, or months later. If someone takes a photograph in public, and wants to apply facial recognition, should they really need to get consent in advance? Are they going to chase someone down the street to get them to fill out a form?”
Szabo said he was disappointed that the privacy groups had dropped out of the negotiations but that the Department of Commerce working group will still issue standards on facial recognition for industry. He thinks companies just need to be transparent about what they’re doing and put notices up about facial recognition being used. He says businesses will change their ways if consumers signal that they don’t like it. “I don’t know if society will get used to Carl Szabo being identified as he’s walking down the street,” he said. “But if a business makes people uncomfortable, there will be a backlash.”
Of course, if Greenshpan’s claims are true, there are congregants at churches who are currently being subjected to facial recognition scanning who have no idea it’s happening and thus no opportunity to raise holy hell about it if they object.
Moshe Greenshpan, the CEO of Israel- and Las Vegas-based facial recognition software company Face-Six, says there are 30 churches around the world using his Churchix technology. He launched the service just four months ago and says churches are already using it to scan congregants’ earthly visages to keep track of attendance at events in order to know who wasn’t there so they can check up on them, or who attends most frequently so they can ask those people for donations. He declined to name any of the churches using the technology citing the controversy around facial recognition. I asked him if any of the churches are based in Texas or Illinois, the only two U.S. states that have laws on the books about getting permission to collect peoples’ faceprints. “I prefer not to say,” said Greenshpan.
(If a facial expression-detecting camera were trained on my own face, it would read “skeptical.” Without being able to talk to one of the churches using this technology, it’s impossible to verify Greenshpan’s claims.)
Greenshpan said the churches just have to upload one high-quality photo of a congregant to start scanning video or photos from gatherings to see if they were there. I asked him if the churches let people know they’re using the technology. “I don’t think churches tell people,” he said. “We encourage them to do so but I don’t think they do.”
That’s exactly the fear that privacy advocates have about the increasing roll-out of this technology: people’s faces are being put in databases and used to track them without any knowledge that it’s happening. Greenshpan argues that churches were already keeping track of who attended their events, but that his technology just makes it more efficient for medium-sized and mega-churches.
Greenshpan, who got his start with a facial recognition app called Skakash that was like a Shazam for celebrity faces, and then “followed the money” to business applications, is among the entrepreneurs who want to usher facial recognition into more common use. Some of the companies focus on their ability to create databases of “bad faces” — people who can be instantly identified for heightened scrutiny or even barred from entry. California-based FaceFirst tells retailers in an advertising brochure that they can get alerts when “pre-identified shoplifters” or “known litigious individuals” enter their stores.
FaceFirst also says retailers can create a database of “good customers,” so they can greet them by name when they walk through the door. Privacy advocates worry about the creation of face-tracking databases that could be used to track people’s movements in the offline world the same way advertising companies track them online from website to website using cookies.
“Instantly, when a person in your FaceFirst database steps into one of your stores, you are sent an email, text, or SMS alert that includes their picture and all biographical information of the known individual so you can take immediate and appropriate action,” says the Facefirst brochure. It doesn’t say what happens when that person isn’t you but is actually a doppelgänger with a bad reputation. Or how someone who doesn’t want to get greeted by name gets their face taken out of the database.
“There are no federal laws that specifically govern the use of facial recognition technology,” wrote Ben Sobel in a Washington Post editorial that discussed the only two states with relevant laws on the books. In lieu of a law, the Department of Commerce has been trying to establish facial recognition industry standards in a “privacy multistakeholder process.” For more than a year, industrial representatives and privacy advocates have been taking part in negotiations to come up with standards for how facial recognition should be deployed by businesses in the U.S. Last week, those negotiations broke down. Privacy groups involved in the process, including the ACLU and EFF, withdrew, saying in a letter that companies refused to agree to core principles of privacy.
“We asked the industry to agree that in general they need to get consent to put people’s images into facial recognition databases and they disagreed,” said Alvaro Bedoya, executive director of Georgetown’s Center on Privacy & Technology. “So we proposed the narrowest of narrow situations, that when someone is walking down a street, a company they haven’t heard of shouldn’t identify that person by name. And the industry representatives wouldn’t agree to that either. So we walked out.”
According to many a sci-fi book and at least one hilarious comic, technology-enabled facial recognition in the wild will eventually be as common as caller id on your phone — which also got heat from privacy advocates when first introduced in 1990. How mainstream society feels about it is still unclear, though people occasionally seem to be discomforted judging from lawsuits filed this year in Illinois alleging that both Facebook and Shutterfly created faceprints without their users’ consents. But proponents say, with the steady march of technology and image collection, face recognition everywhere is looking increasingly inevitable.
“You, I, everyone has the right to take photographs in public,” said Carl Szabo, a lawyer at online advertising trade group Netchoice who was on the other side of the Commerce debate. “Facial recognition can be applied immediately, or days later, or months later. If someone takes a photograph in public, and wants to apply facial recognition, should they really need to get consent in advance? Are they going to chase someone down the street to get them to fill out a form?”
Szabo said he was disappointed that the privacy groups had dropped out of the negotiations but that the Department of Commerce working group will still issue standards on facial recognition for industry. He thinks companies just need to be transparent about what they’re doing and put notices up about facial recognition being used. He says businesses will change their ways if consumers signal that they don’t like it. “I don’t know if society will get used to Carl Szabo being identified as he’s walking down the street,” he said. “But if a business makes people uncomfortable, there will be a backlash.”
Of course, if Greenshpan’s claims are true, there are congregants at churches who are currently being subjected to facial recognition scanning who have no idea it’s happening and thus no opportunity to raise holy hell about it if they object.
Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2015/June24/242.html#elPdGwH7YtDwmZRC.99
Christianity Sees Explosive Growth In China
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In 1992, Bei Cun, considered to be one of China’s leading
avant-garde writers, did something that really shocked his readers and
admirers: He converted to Christianity.
But given the explosive growth of Christianity in China, it shouldn’t be all that surprising.
If you haven’t heard of Bei Cun, that’s okay. Neither had I, probably because his work hasn’t been translated into English. I only learned of his story because my BreakPoint colleague and friend Roberto Rivera recently read Philip Jenkins book, “The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South,” which tells Bei’s story.
After becoming a Christian, Bei wrote what Jenkins calls a “Kafkaesque story” entitled “The Marriage of Zhang Sheng.” In it, the protagonist, a scholar, opens a Chinese-language Bible and happens upon Romans 1:18, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.”
The passage leaves Zhang’s “intellectual assumptions in ruins.” Bei, just like his literary creation and hopefully his readers, interprets it as pointing out “the failure of relying upon mere human ideologies that neglect God.”
In an officially communist state, this is an “explosive” thing to say. The story ends with Zhang embracing Christianity just as Bei did.
In China, intellectuals and the avant-garde are running toward Christianity, while their Western counterparts tend to run away from it, if they’re not denouncing it.
It’s not just intellectuals and the avant-garde. In his award-winning book, “Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China,” Evan Osnos writes that China is “in the midst of a full-fledged revival.”
While Osnos mentions Christianity mostly in passing, his mentions hint at a remarkable story. He says that there are “sixty to eighty million Christians.” It’s so large that “as [he] traveled around China, [he] stopped being surprised by [his] encounters with Christians.”
These numbers are even more astounding when you take recent Chinese history into account. At the time of the Communist takeover in 1949, there were an estimated five million Christians in China.
The Communists, as Osnos tells us, set out to destroy China’s old belief systems, including its small Christian community, and by the time of Mao’s death in 1976 had largely succeeded. Even after Mao’s death, Christians are still subject to harassment, arrest, and imprisonment for practicing their faith.
Yet there are now as many Christians as there are members of the Communist Party. By some estimates there’ll be more Christians in China than in the U.S. by 2030. And this doesn’t take into account the level of commitment required to be a Christian in China. Think about it: being a member of the Communist Party comes with real political and economic benefits. Being a Christian invites discrimination and even a knock on the door in the middle of the night.
So why the explosive growth of Christianity in China? While a change in economic policies and the individual pursuit of fortune could address China’s economic problems, it could not provide people or the nation with a “sense of purpose.”
So what emerged was a “spiritual void.” For many Chinese, that void is being filled by Jesus Christ.
This puts the Communist Party, however, in a bind. On one level, they know that Christianity is good for China, especially in the area of morals. On the other hand, they’re afraid of a movement they can’t control.
As I said on yesterday’s broadcast, Aslan is on the move. Extraordinary things are happening. I pray you find this as exciting and encouraging as I do.
But given the explosive growth of Christianity in China, it shouldn’t be all that surprising.
If you haven’t heard of Bei Cun, that’s okay. Neither had I, probably because his work hasn’t been translated into English. I only learned of his story because my BreakPoint colleague and friend Roberto Rivera recently read Philip Jenkins book, “The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South,” which tells Bei’s story.
After becoming a Christian, Bei wrote what Jenkins calls a “Kafkaesque story” entitled “The Marriage of Zhang Sheng.” In it, the protagonist, a scholar, opens a Chinese-language Bible and happens upon Romans 1:18, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.”
The passage leaves Zhang’s “intellectual assumptions in ruins.” Bei, just like his literary creation and hopefully his readers, interprets it as pointing out “the failure of relying upon mere human ideologies that neglect God.”
In an officially communist state, this is an “explosive” thing to say. The story ends with Zhang embracing Christianity just as Bei did.
In China, intellectuals and the avant-garde are running toward Christianity, while their Western counterparts tend to run away from it, if they’re not denouncing it.
It’s not just intellectuals and the avant-garde. In his award-winning book, “Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China,” Evan Osnos writes that China is “in the midst of a full-fledged revival.”
While Osnos mentions Christianity mostly in passing, his mentions hint at a remarkable story. He says that there are “sixty to eighty million Christians.” It’s so large that “as [he] traveled around China, [he] stopped being surprised by [his] encounters with Christians.”
These numbers are even more astounding when you take recent Chinese history into account. At the time of the Communist takeover in 1949, there were an estimated five million Christians in China.
The Communists, as Osnos tells us, set out to destroy China’s old belief systems, including its small Christian community, and by the time of Mao’s death in 1976 had largely succeeded. Even after Mao’s death, Christians are still subject to harassment, arrest, and imprisonment for practicing their faith.
Yet there are now as many Christians as there are members of the Communist Party. By some estimates there’ll be more Christians in China than in the U.S. by 2030. And this doesn’t take into account the level of commitment required to be a Christian in China. Think about it: being a member of the Communist Party comes with real political and economic benefits. Being a Christian invites discrimination and even a knock on the door in the middle of the night.
So why the explosive growth of Christianity in China? While a change in economic policies and the individual pursuit of fortune could address China’s economic problems, it could not provide people or the nation with a “sense of purpose.”
So what emerged was a “spiritual void.” For many Chinese, that void is being filled by Jesus Christ.
This puts the Communist Party, however, in a bind. On one level, they know that Christianity is good for China, especially in the area of morals. On the other hand, they’re afraid of a movement they can’t control.
As I said on yesterday’s broadcast, Aslan is on the move. Extraordinary things are happening. I pray you find this as exciting and encouraging as I do.
Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2015/June24/245.html#c9RBGxYJCWGJSTYt.99
Pastor To Be Prosecuted For ‘Hate Crime’ Of Calling Islam ‘Satanic,’ ‘Heathen’ During Sermon
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A pastor in Northern Ireland will be prosecuted with a hate crime
for denouncing the Islamic religion during a Sunday sermon last year.
As previously reported, James McConnell, 78, pastor of the Whitewell Metropolitan Church in North Belfast, discussed Islam during an evening sermon in May 2014. During the message, McConnell denounced the religion and said that the contrast between it and Christianity is stark.
“The God we worship and serve this evening is not Allah,” he proclaimed, according to a video of the sermon. “The Muslim god—Allah—is a heathen deity. Allah is a cruel deity. Allah is a demon deity.”
McConnell then criticized the “foolish” British government for attempting to appease Muslims financially, saying that Islam is “Satanic” and “a doctrine spawned in Hell.” He also noted that Christians around the world are persecuted for their faith by the “fanatical worshipers” of Allah.
According to the Belfast Telegraph, McConnell’s remarks were inspired by the plight of Meriam Ibrahim—a Sudanese woman who was sentenced to hang after she was convicted of apostasy for refusing to deny her faith and convert to Islam.
But following McConnell’s sermon, the Police Service of Northern Ireland investigated the preacher for allegations of a hate crime. Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness described the preacher’s comments as “hate mongering” and said the anti-Muslim statements “must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.”
John McCreedy, assistant pastor at Whitewell Metropolitan Church, also soon resigned from his position because McConnell would not retract his statements. McConnell apologized for any offense he may have caused, but would not recant his sentiments.
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“I spent many days trying to sort this, without success, and I could not continue after the pastor’s initial remarks were not withdrawn,” McCreedy told the Belfast Telegraph.
“The theological arguments presented by the pastor are a contradiction to my own beliefs—religious, political and moral—in relation to New Testament evangelism,” he continued. “Neither are they the views of many others I have spoken to at Whitewell, who have for years reached out to others from every ethnic background and denomination.”
Now, because McConnell refused a lesser punishment by the government following police questioning, prosecutors have decided to move the matter forward in court. The hate crimes charge appears to be related to the sermon being streamed online.
“I can confirm that following consideration of a complaint in relation to an internet broadcast of a sermon in May 2014, a decision was taken to offer an individual an informed warning for an offence contrary to the Communications Act 2003,” a spokesperson for the Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service told the publication Premier.
“That offence was one of sending, or causing to be sent, by means of a public electronic communications network, a message or other matter that was grossly offensive,” he continued. “The offer of an informed warning was refused by the defendant and accordingly the matter is now proceeding by way of a summary prosecution in the Magistrates Court.”
It is not yet known when McConnell’s trial will begin.
As previously reported, James McConnell, 78, pastor of the Whitewell Metropolitan Church in North Belfast, discussed Islam during an evening sermon in May 2014. During the message, McConnell denounced the religion and said that the contrast between it and Christianity is stark.
“The God we worship and serve this evening is not Allah,” he proclaimed, according to a video of the sermon. “The Muslim god—Allah—is a heathen deity. Allah is a cruel deity. Allah is a demon deity.”
McConnell then criticized the “foolish” British government for attempting to appease Muslims financially, saying that Islam is “Satanic” and “a doctrine spawned in Hell.” He also noted that Christians around the world are persecuted for their faith by the “fanatical worshipers” of Allah.
According to the Belfast Telegraph, McConnell’s remarks were inspired by the plight of Meriam Ibrahim—a Sudanese woman who was sentenced to hang after she was convicted of apostasy for refusing to deny her faith and convert to Islam.
But following McConnell’s sermon, the Police Service of Northern Ireland investigated the preacher for allegations of a hate crime. Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness described the preacher’s comments as “hate mongering” and said the anti-Muslim statements “must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.”
John McCreedy, assistant pastor at Whitewell Metropolitan Church, also soon resigned from his position because McConnell would not retract his statements. McConnell apologized for any offense he may have caused, but would not recant his sentiments.
Connect with Christian News
“I spent many days trying to sort this, without success, and I could not continue after the pastor’s initial remarks were not withdrawn,” McCreedy told the Belfast Telegraph.
“The theological arguments presented by the pastor are a contradiction to my own beliefs—religious, political and moral—in relation to New Testament evangelism,” he continued. “Neither are they the views of many others I have spoken to at Whitewell, who have for years reached out to others from every ethnic background and denomination.”
Now, because McConnell refused a lesser punishment by the government following police questioning, prosecutors have decided to move the matter forward in court. The hate crimes charge appears to be related to the sermon being streamed online.
“I can confirm that following consideration of a complaint in relation to an internet broadcast of a sermon in May 2014, a decision was taken to offer an individual an informed warning for an offence contrary to the Communications Act 2003,” a spokesperson for the Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service told the publication Premier.
“That offence was one of sending, or causing to be sent, by means of a public electronic communications network, a message or other matter that was grossly offensive,” he continued. “The offer of an informed warning was refused by the defendant and accordingly the matter is now proceeding by way of a summary prosecution in the Magistrates Court.”
It is not yet known when McConnell’s trial will begin.
Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2015/June24/244.html#Gl2leKuxL6Eo72Kp.99
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