Desktop Calendar Software

How to recover a calendar on Calendar Creator? This is an old version -- Calendar Creator 4.0 -- I have two calendars that I use from this program. One works fine and I can still get into it. The one I can't get into anymore starts to pull up then freezes -- It goes into the "program not responding" thing. Is there a way I can repair this particular calendar so I can get to the information I have stored? Thanks for any help you can give me. :)

Where can i download a Calendar Creator software!? We have a project in our Social Science class. We are told to create a calendar of important events in Egypt, India, Islam Hystory, Civilization of America, Mesopotamia and The Beginning of Civilization!

Which Calendar creator program is the best for the price? So far, I have used something called "GreenStreet", which I purchased at a dollar store. It worked fine, a few times, but, now, it wont load, period. The official name, of the program, was "Calendar Maker". I know that my CD-Rom drive is operational, since I have used it, over the past week, to review the contents of dozens of disks. This is why I want to know which calendar program is the best buy. I would prefer a free program, unless there is a better, paid, program, available. Any sugestions for a program, which would be compatable with Windows XP system?

creator of microsoft outlook appointment accidentally deleted the appointment from his calendar, what happend? Appointment accidentally deleted from the meeting organizer's calendar, will the appointment in invitee's calendar disappear too.

Who/When was the creator/creation of the modern calendar? the 0 point was at the birth of Christ - I am sure that means this calendar was decided sometime after that date.

How come I lost the ability to edit/cancle events in my outlook calendar? Had my IT guy upgrade my computer to Windows 7 while on vacation and now when I go to Outlook my original calendar is there but when I try to change/cancle appointments it says that I am not the creator of the event but it still has my name as the creator. "This meeting was copied to your calendar and will not recieve updates. To recieve updates contact the organizer XXXX<me." is what it says. How do i make those entries not copies?

How do I make the description show on Google Calendar? I made a around 6 calendars (categories) and they all show up on one calendar. When I click each event from the calendar, the bubble tells me the event, date, and creator. How do I make the description also show up in that bubble?

inexpensive bulk calendar maker? I've been taking nature and animal photos for my Agri-science class, and my teacher said i should make stuff like postcards, calendars, stamps, etc. to sell at our town's fair this fall. However, every bulk calendar maker i find is extremely expensive. Does anyone know any great websites that offer bulk calendar creators that are inexpensive to order? If anyone knows any other websites that i can make products from photos for cheap, I'd really appreciate that as well. Thankyou :)

Who would you choose to be the best website creator for a site like this? Some of the things I would like my site to include: Forum, Home, member profiles, games, and a calendar. Me and my friends are supposed to try to create a cool site for a technology class were taking. Thanks to all who answered! ~Cody We aren't allowed to use freewebs.

Is it logical or reasonable to deny the existence of One Creator? The mutual assistance and co-operation of beings in the universe and the fact that they respond to one another show that all creatures are raised by a single Nurturer, are organized by a single Director, are under the jurisdiction of a single Disposer, are the servants of a single Lord. For through an all-embracing law of mutual assistance, the sun cooks the necessities for the lives of living beings on the earth through a command, and the moon acts as a calendar, and light, air, water, and sustenance hasten to the assistance of living beings, and plants hasten to the assistance of animals, and animals hasten to the assistance of human beings, and the members of the body hasten to assist one another, and particles of food even hasten to the assistance of the cells of the body. This most wise and generous mutual assistance of these beings, and their responding to one another’s needs and their supporting and strengthening one another in accordance with a law of generosity, a law of compassion, a law of mercy, show clearly and self-evidently that they are the servants, officials, and creatures of a sole, unique Single One of Unity, a Peerless Eternally Besought One, an Absolutely Powerful, Absolutely Knowing, Absolutely Compassionate, Absolutely Generous Necessarily Existent One. What do you think about it?

Looking for help with my computer? Is there a calendar creator plus software for Windows-Vista Need to change the system from Windows 98 to Windows Vista?

Which vedic holiday was dedicated to god Brahma(creator of this universe)? ...tell me please sanskrit name&time in lunar calendar

What are the good Web Based GUI Web Page Creator ? Preferable includes capability to create one or more of the following like simple database, forms, calendars, tables, password files and ecommerce ability ?

LDS- was it right to excommunicate a member of the church for Men on a Mission calendars? Was it right to excommunicate Chad Hardy LDS “Men on a Mission” calendar creator? Sure it was sex, but couldn't you guys give him another chance to be Mormon again? Or does the Church have some sin to hide that the public knows nothing about?

What are your feelings on the excommunication from the LDS Church, of Chad Hardy? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/2301139/Mormon-beefcake-calendar-creator-excommunicated.html

Mayan Calendar shift in Consciousness? What have you done to know yourself as a creator? as we move into the next age of creation which is Conscious co creation in 2011. We are leaving the galactic cycle as we are now leaving the 5th night (thank god) and moving to the 6th day. The 6th day of this cycle is a flowering cycle and that means we will understand more of the law of attraction.

Display the current date in Java Studio Creator? Can someone PLEASE tell me how you simply display the current date in a staticText component in Java Studio Creator??? I'm going INSANE with this. I can get the current date regularly with a simple: Calender d = Calendar.getInstance( ) ; But, my problem is converting it into the proper string format. Normally, I would use: String currDate = String.format( "%tD\n" , d ) ; But, Java Studio Creator doesn't seem to allow "String.format". I mean, come on. Please tell me there's an easy way to display the current date... please!

christians, is this quote from the daily The Secret calendar blasphemy? You are God in a physical body. You are Spirit in the flesh. You are Eternal Life expressing itself as you. You are a comic being. You are all power. You are all wisdom. You are all intelligence. You are perfection. You are magnificent. You are the creator, and you are creating the creation of You on this planet.

The original 1611 KJV had a calendar/Almanac for each month of the year.? Where it Listed Catholic Feast Days for the 100% KJB believers to celebrate These calendars/Almanacs included many feasts paying honor to many early Christians and Church fathers as the fallowing few [and these are just a few of them]: Mar. 12 St Gregorie [ A Pope of the Catholic Church] Aug. 28 St Augustine [one of the greatest Catholic writers of all time] Sept. 26 St. Cyplian, [Catholic of Antioch who suffered martyrdom during the persecution of Diocletian at Nicomedia, 26 September, 304, the date in September being afterwards made the day of his feast] Sept. 30 St. Jerome, [The creator of the Latin Vulgate, died at Bethlehem, 30 September, 420] Oct. 9 St. Denis [Bishop of Paris, and martyr. Born in Italy, nothing is definitely known of the time or place, or of his early life. His feast is kept on 9 October. . Denis with his two companions were seized and as they persevered in their faith were beheaded (about 275) after many tortures] Oct. 26 St. Crispine [beheaded during the reign of Diocletian; the date of their execution is given as 26 October, 285 ] Nov. 23 St Clement [ A Pope of the Catholic Church] gee and i thought this was not biblical no wonder it was edited so many times huh Are you sure you are talking about the King James Bible 100% original KJV 1611 If it is true it sure is true as a 1005 KJV believer you should know this but your reason is far fetched remember they were inspired 2000 years following a Jewish carpenter and his church As for the Saints departed, I honour their memory, and in honour of them do we in our Church observe the days of so many of them as the Scripture doth canonize for saints" [From A Premonition to All Most Mighty Monarchs, Kings, Free Princes, and States of Christendom Works, ed. James Montague, Bp. of Wint hester (1616), pp. 301-308.]

The original 1611 KJV had a calendar/Almanac for each month of the year to celerbrate Catholic Saints.? Where it Listed Catholic Feast Days for the 100% KJB believers to celerbrate These calendars/Almanacs included many feast paying honor to many early Christians and Church fathers as the fallowing few [and these are just a few of them]: Mar. 12 St Gregorie [ A Pope of the Catholic Church] Aug. 28 St Augustine [one of the greatest Catholic writers of all time] Sept. 26 St. Cyplian, [Catholic of Antioch who suffered martyrdom during the persecution of Diocletian at Nicomedia, 26 September, 304, the date in September being afterwards made the day of his feast] Sept. 30 St. Jerome, [The creator of the Latin Vulgate, died at Bethlehem, 30 September, 420] Oct. 9 St. DDenis [Bishop of Paris, and martyr. Born in Italy, nothing is definitely known of the time or place, or of his early life. His feast is kept on 9 October. . Denis with his two companions were seized and as they persevered in their faith were beheaded (about 275) after many tortures] Oct. 26 St. Crispine [beheaded during the reign of Diocletian; the date of their execution is given as 26 October, 285 ] Nov. 23 St Clement [ A Pope of the Catholic Church] As for the Saints departed, I honour their memory, and in honour of them do we in our Church observe the days of so many of them as the Scripture doth canonize for saints" [From A Premonition to All Most Mighty Monarchs, Kings, Free Princes, and States of Christendom Works, ed. James Montague, Bp. of Wint hester (1616), pp. 301-308.] Nov. 23 St Clement [ A Pope of the Catholic Church] Gee they even honored a Catholic Pope nd we all know who he was Pope Clement I (called CLEMENS ROMANUS to distinguish him from the Alexandrian), is the first of the successors of St. Peter so much for the king james bible belivers who say that the catholic church started in 300 ad it's not in the Bible to celebrate catholic saints... specially in the KJV 1611 Try reading the original 1611 not the one edited by the scottish bible society gee i wonder why they wanted to keep the truth from you you can find it on the net it's not in the Bible to celebrate catholic saints... specially in the KJV 1611. i'm a baptist Christian and the KJV was translated for angelicans bozo

Nokia 6300 Theme Creator? Is there a free online one I can do that wont change from the background image when I go into calendar etc.?

what is your take on the Mayan calendar? do believe in it or not? why? I'm pretty sure you all probably already heard about the Mayan calendar an what it's all about. I recently came to question the existence and the creation of this stone. How could the creators possibly know what will happen in the future. I try to wrap my head around it but I still can't figure out how and why. The main question that comes to mind is, should we believe it?, should we trust it?, and why should we believe or trust something that we don't understand?. I t seems like some people put their faith in it, it's like putting your faith in a god or something of the sort and I don't mean to question where their faith lies or anything like that I just want to know why? I would also like to here what the people who don't believe in it have to say. Your opinion would greatly be appreciated.

Why does the calendar say "2008", but it often feels like 1972 on here? "It's conceivable that if Maude were around today, its controversial episodes would never make it to the air." MAUDE'S CHOICE "On those rare occasions when TV dares to deal with the volatile issue of abortion, it would be unthinkable to play the subject for laughs. But then, to paraphrase the All in the Family spin-off's theme song, there was Maude. In its second month on the air, Maude grabbed headlines as the first sitcom that dared to deal with the subject, setting a caustic, politically charged tone for the CBS series that would endure throughout its six-year run. On Nov. 14, 1972, 47-year-old Maude (Bea Arthur) announced she was pregnant. In the following week's episode, she made the decision to have an abortion, which was legal in New York (the locale of the series) but not nationally. Despite the timing-three months before the Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade-series creator Norman Lear denies his motivation was political. ''We weren't trying to make a statement,'' he insists today. ''(At first) we asked, what's a good, funny story and pregnancy was a great comedic idea.'' And one idea led to another. Though pregnancy-related themes were already a sure bet for sitcoms, it was considered downright racy when a horrified Maude proclaimed, ''The rabbit died, laughing no doubt,'' and a puzzled friend responded, ''Aren't you using the pill?'' Maude's liberated daughter, Carol (Adrienne Barbeau), a divorced single mother living at home, was the first to suggest that her mother had a choice: ''You don't have to have the baby.... Abortion was a dirty word; it's not anymore.'' Later, in the gentlest way possible, Maude's husband, Walter (Bill Macy), said, ''In the privacy of our own lives, you're doing the right thing.''

can you give me any info please? Someone has made the shocking discovery from the Bible that the seventh-day Sabbath cannot be found except on the Creator's calendar. In His calendar, the weekly Sabbath always falls on the 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th of each month.

Do you think many of us living on this planet are living against the ways of our creator? many native americans state that we are living on this planet against God- we don't have many who are spiritual, we have the government controlling everything, we are slaves to this economy, this inflation, these corporations, and this greed. people put their jobs before they put themselves, and nature, and i'm wondering if people don't see how wrong all of this is. here are some videos for thought. you might want to check out. we live off of this wealth, and this technology, and are not responsible for the Earth like we should, and in such nature will force us to love her and treat her better. this is part of the mayan calendar, and hopi prophecy. there is a lack of respect, a lack of love for plants, animals, and humans, seeing them as resources, and not caring about their worth, or their rights. THERE IS SOMETHING VERY WRONG WITH HOW THIS WORLD IS STRUCTURED. IF YOU ARE AWAKE, YOU CAN SEE, PAYING SOMEONE WHETHER AN ATHLETE, OR AN ENTERTAINER, MILLIONS/BILLIONS AND MANY ARE SICK WITHOUT THE RIGHT MEDICINE AND FOOD, YOU ARE WRONG. THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF MEDICINE IN THE HOSPITALS IS FULL OF THINGS THAT ARE NOT GOOD FOR HUMANITY, THE FOOD, THE WATER, AND THE MEDICINE ALL LACK THE NUTRIENTS, THEY NEED FOR PEOPLE TO LIVE HEALTHY. Here are the videos. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7cylfQtkDg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqfvUA2vRAM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9piIziXU9RE this isn't a vent this is a serious question.

Need a Name for My New Software? I have developed a software that will handle most of any companies internal operations. It has a training conductor, a website creator, newsletter, policy manager, calendar and company directory. It is easliy managed by a non it person and will bring organization to an unorganized company thereby improving the overall bottom line by creating better work results and retaining employees. It also provided doccumentation that is somtimes necessary in HR lawsuits. I can't think of a cool name. It needs to be someting that is registerable as a domain name and something that is a quick word.. that everyone can say.. Any ideas would be appreciated.

How does one mythological theory (e.g. Creationism) get singled out for teaching in schools but not others? for example, it seem that the Mayan account is just as valid as the Genesis version... The Maya gods included Kukulkán (also known by the K'iche' name Gucumatz and the Aztec name Quetzalcoatl) and Tepeu. The two were referred to as the Creators, the Forefathers or the Makers. According to the story, the two gods decided to preserve their legacy by creating an Earth-bound species looking like them. The first attempt was man made from mud, but Tepeu and Kukulkán found that the mud crumbled. The two gods summoned the other gods, and together they decided to make man from wood. However, since these men had no soul and soon lost loyalty to the creators, the gods destroyed them by rain. Finally, man was constructed from maize, the Mayans staple and sacred food. The deity Itzamna is credited to being the creator of the calendar along with creating writing or the Australian Aborigine myth... time came when time itself split apart, and sleeping time separated from waking time. This moment was called the Dreamtime. At this moment everything started to burst into life. The sun rose through the surface of the Earth and shone warm rays onto the hollows which became waterholes. Under each waterhole lay an Ancestor, an ancient man or woman who had been asleep through the ages. The sun filled the bodies of each Ancestor with light and life, and the Ancestors began to give birth to children. Their children were all the living things of the world, from the tiniest grub wriggling on a eucalyptus leaf to the broadest-singed eagle soaring in the blue sky. Rising from the waterholes, the Ancestors stood up with mud falling from their bodies. As the mud slipped away, the sun opened their eyelids and they saw the creatures they had made from their own bodies.

do u no abot the new google series? # Google Page Creator beta # Google Print # Google Calendar beta # Google SketchUp etc http://reviews.cnet.com/Google_Base/4652-9239_7-31839875.html?tag=series

do you like any of these things? any of these things? kindergarden ball bat bed book boy bun can cake cap car cat cow cub cup dad day dog doll dust fan feet girl gun hall hat hen jar kite man map men mom pan pet pie pig pot rat son sun toe tub van 1st Grade apple arm banana bike bird book chin clam class clover club corn crayon crow crown crowd crib desk dime dirt dress fang field flag flower fog game heat hill home horn hose joke juice kite lake maid mask mice milk mint meal meat moon mother morning name nest nose pear pen pencil plant rain river road rock room rose seed shape shoe shop show sink snail snake snow soda sofa star step stew stove straw string summer swing table tank team tent test toes tree vest water wing winter woman women 2nd Grade alarm animal aunt bait balloon bath bead beam bean bedroom boot bread brick brother camp chicken children crook deer dock doctor downtown drum dust eye family father fight flesh food frog goose grade grandfather grandmother grape grass hook horse jail jam kiss kitten light loaf lock lunch lunchroom meal mother notebook owl pail parent park plot rabbit rake robin sack sail scale sea sister soap song spark space spoon spot spy summer tiger toad town trail tramp tray trick trip uncle vase winter water week wheel wish wool yard zebra 3rd Grade actor airplane airport army baseball beef birthday boy brush bushes butter cast cave cent cherries cherry cobweb coil cracker dinner eggnog elbow face fireman flavor gate glove glue goldfish goose grain hair haircut hobbies holiday hot jellyfish ladybug mailbox number oatmeal pail pancake pear pest popcorn queen quicksand quiet quilt rainstorm scarecrow scarf stream street sugar throne toothpaste twig volleyball wood wrench 4th Grade advice anger answer apple arithmetic badge basket basketball battle beast beetle beggar brain branch bubble bucket cactus cannon cattle celery cellar cloth coach coast crate cream daughter donkey drug earthquake feast fifth finger flock frame furniture geese ghost giraffe governor honey hope hydrant icicle income island jeans judge lace lamp lettuce marble month north ocean patch plane playground poison riddle rifle scale seashore sheet sidewalk skate slave sleet smoke stage station thrill throat throne title toothbrush turkey underwear vacation vegetable visitor voyage year 5th Grade able achieve acoustics action activity aftermath afternoon afterthought apparel appliance beginner believe bomb border boundary breakfast cabbage cable calculator calendar caption carpenter cemetery channel circle creator creature education faucet feather friction fruit fuel galley guide guitar health heart idea kitten laborer language lawyer linen locket lumber magic minister mitten money mountain music partner passenger pickle picture plantation plastic pleasure pocket police pollution railway recess reward route scene scent squirrel stranger suit sweater temper territory texture thread treatment veil vein volcano wealth weather wilderness wren wrist writer

How do you like this idea? Okay, so I want to ask this guy to prom, and I wanted to do it with a little creativity. So, what do you think of this idea? I gave him a piece of paper with this written on it. Read this all the way through before asking questions… Zac, we have talked a lot, and we are rather good friends…right? Can you pull out some sort of calendar, and will you take a look at 05/12/07? What I want you to do is keep this date in mind… “Long ago… Lands a great distance away Young Men and Women were taught of their creator above, now unless these Young Men and Young Women meet someone special, they were guided to stay within their “own kind”. One particular Young Woman is who this tale is about. One day, while walking in school, she over heard of a dance coming up, and about to take place. Prom, they called it, the Young Woman got very excited, but soon reality came back to her. She wanted to follow the organizations leaders counsel, and to find a Young... Sorry, ran out of room :) Man to attend Prom with her, to be a wholesome date. Hastily, the Young Woman came up with an idea of how to ask the Young Man to Prom. She sat in class, in her room at home, and even in the car, thinking of ideas of how to ask this Young Man about maybe coming with her to have a fun evening as good friends.” Now, this Young Woman came up with an idea and soon after, put her plan into action. Many questions still lay ahead. Did the Young Man say yes or no? Did she go to Prom? What happened?! Unfortunately, this is not part of the story that I am capable of writing by myself. I need your help! Now, look back over the writing in blue. Take the first letter of each line. They make up a phrase. Answer the question given, and you would have taken part in completing this story. So, what do you think? I appreciate the help! The phrase is... Zac will you go to prom with me? Some of the lines didn't work out.

End of ages, supposed spiritual transitions, such as those of 2012, I'm not concerned with. Are you? If so why? In the '60s it was supposed to be the Age of Aquarius. In the 80's an earthy spiritual re-enlinement. But there's no real difference. There is so much talk on the internet about the year 2012 and prophecies surrounding it. But it will sputter and die out just like the Millerites' predictions of 1844 and the various ones ofJehovah's witnesses, as well as televangelists. But the original Western calendar, the Julian, after it's creator Julius Caesar had errors. Scholars of Pope Gregory corrected those so that we have a calendar as accurate as possible. But in doing so, it moved the birth of Jesus Christ accurately to 4 B.C. Logically, it would follow, events prescribed for the year 2012 fall back to 2008, which is history.

What steps do we need to take to understand ourselves as conscious co creators? The reason i ask this question is because this is the next stage our consciousness is going. The Mayan calendar (which is not a doomsday event) is a time line of how subconscious and conscious works. The current cycle is understanding right and wrong. The last one was Power, the previous one was the intervention of rules and law. The next one is co-creating and I like many others can feel myself as the creator that I am and I want to make this forum for those whom have ideas on what has helped them in understanding themselves as the creator they are. If you would like to know more about the mayan calendar it is explained at amazing level by the late IAN XEL LUNGOLD (Google search that name) I also have helped share my research on my channel http://www.youtube.com/user/endlessmountain

Do you believe in the 2012 Phenomenon? So, do you believe this will happen? I know I believe that it could happen at any time, but the same exact date is a bit suspiciously coincidental. With so many things that have been happening this year, and as well as looking at how humanity treats the earth. It's highly possible for it to happen very soon. So, what do you think!? Do you believe in this "Junk" as other people say. What about the Mayans, do you trust that their Calendar will tell us the end of this world. As well as the Birth of a new one. What if their population of scientist and the creators of the calendar have died off? "What if" we haven't "Flipped the Page" of the calendar? How about the alignment of the planets and sun? Coincidental, ain't it, as the Mayans were very smart and used the stars/solar system for various things. I'm sure Underground Scientist of Scientists with High Security levels know the answer, or they don't.... Let's hear your story!

Honest question for Muslims? In Islam, Allah is the only God. Before Islam, Arabs worshipped a Moon God called also Allah which means the God (Al-Ilah). He had three daughters: Aluzza, Allat (Al-Ilahat which means the Goddess) and Manat. Before Islam, Nanna was another Moon God in Middle East who demanded sacrife and lunar calendar like the God of Islam. He was a creator God and Lord of Destiny. His symbol was the Crescent like the symbol of Islam. Don't you think that Islam can be a new version for the cult of Pre-Islamic Allah or Nanna? Thank you very much for your answer. 1) I don't insult Muslims or Islam, so why do you insult me? Is it a part of your religion? 2) I didn't say Muhammad prayed to the Moon. 3) What I stated above is a true fact, not an insultment or a manipulation. Please, first do a research like I did and then comment. 4) There are lots of Moon Gods or Sun Gods in many cultures. 5) I didn't say that those Gods are the same. I spesifically stated the renewal.

Muslims Contribution To Science? Lost of Christians left christianity & the reason was clearly : It contradicts science ! What about Muslims ? Here you can read a breif information about Muslims & Science in the past .. Astronomy : Muslims have always had a special interest in astronomy. The moon and the sun are of vital importance in the daily life of every Muslim. By the moon, Muslims determine the beginning and the end of the months in their lunar calendar. By the sun the Muslims calculate the times for prayer and fasting. It is also by means of astronomy that Muslims can determine the precise direction of the Qiblah, to face the Ka'bah in Makkah, during prayer. The most precise solar calendar, superior to the Julian, is the Jilali, devised under the supervision of Umar Khayyam. The Qur'an contains many references to astronomy. "The heavens and the earth were ordered rightly, and were made subservient to man, including the sun, the moon, the stars, and day and night. Every heavenly body moves in an orbit assigned to it by God and never digresses, making the universe an orderly cosmos whose life and existence, diminution and expansion, are totally determined by the Creator." [Qur'an 30:22]

Is 604 wrong claims by Jehovah's Witnesses enough to keep you from taking them seriously? Failed prophecies The Watchtower Society has a long history of making prophecies and then changing them after they proved false. Dozens of references could be quoted and documented, but a few will suffice to prove the point. For example, the 1920 booklet Millions Now Living Will Never Die, declares, ...we may expect 1925 to witness the return of these faithful men of Israel from the condition of death, being resurrected... Therefore we may confidently expect that 1925 will mark the return of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the faithful prophets of old. -- pages 89-90 This failed to come true, of course. Starting in the mid-1960's numerous discussions in the Society's publications pointed to the year 1975: This seventh day, God's rest day, has progressed nearly 6,000 years, and there is still the 1,000-year reign of Christ to go before its end. (Rev. 20:3, 7) This seventh 1,000-year period of human existence could well be likened to a great sabbath day. . . . In what year, then, would the first 6,000 years of man's existence and also the first 6,000 years of God's rest day come to an end? The year 1975. -- Awake! October 8, 1966, page 19 The August 15, 1968 Watchtower indicates that there might be a slight delay between the end of humanity's first six thousand years in autumn 1975 and the end of the world -- corresponding to the interval of time between Adam's creation and Eve's -- but assures that the delay will be only a few weeks or months, not years: Are we to assume from this study that the battle of Armageddon will be all over by the autumn of 1975, and the long-looked-for thousand-year reign of Christ will begin by then? Possibly, but we wait to see how closely the seventh thousand-year period of man's existence coincides with the sabbathlike thousand-year reign of Christ. If these two periods run parallel with each other as to the calendar year, it will not be by mere chance or accident but will be according to Jehovah's loving and timely purposes....It may involve only a difference of weeks or months, not years." -- page 499 Such predictions led Jehovah's Witnesses to believe that the end would come toward the end of 1975 or early in 1976. The most recent prophetic failure is likely to have the greatest impact on JWs: 'New truths' in the November 1, 1995 Watchtower magazine changed the beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses concerning "the generation that saw the events of 1914," and the November 8, 1995 Awake! drops that magazine's long-standing prophecy. Ever since the late 1940's Awake! magazine had been promising the "sure hope for the establishment of a righteous New World" on page 2 of each issue. Then in 1964 it added the thought that this would happen "in this generation" -- "...reflecting sure hope for the establishment of God's righteous new order in this generation." In 1975 it was no longer Awake! magazine's promise but now became the Creator's promise: "...the Creator's promise of a new order of lasting peace and true security within our generation." -- January 8, 1975 It was a very serious step to add this expression, "the Creator's promise," since it meant that the Watchtower Society (the magazine's publisher) was now prophesying in the Creator's name -- in God's name. The Creator warns in the Bible against doing this without receiving a command from Him to do so: But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, must be put to death. You may say to yourselves, "How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD?" If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him. -- Deuteronomy 18:20-22 NIV Did the Creator really command the Society to say that He promised the new order would come "within our generation"? Elsewhere, the Society specified more precisely what it meant by "our generation": "Jesus was obviously speaking about those who were old enough to witness with understanding what took place when the 'last days' began....Even if we presume that youngsters 15 years of age would be perceptive enough to realize the import of what happened in 1914, it would still make the youngest of 'this generation' nearly 70 years old today....Jesus said that the end of this wicked world would come before that generation passed away in death." -- Awake! October 8, 1968, pages 13-14 In 1982 the Watchtower Society changed the prophecy on page 2 of each Awake! issue to include the same thought about 1914. It was no longer a vague "our generation" that would see the world's end, but the generation that saw the events of 1914: "...the Creator's promise of a peaceful and secure new order before the generation that saw the events of 1914 C.E. passes away." (January 8, 1982) Nearly identical wording repeated the same prophecy in each issue until January 8, 1987, when Awake! magazine's statement of purpose was moved to page 4 in a redesigned format. Starting with that issue, the 1914 generation prophecy was dropped entirely. Then it was restored on page 4 of the March 8, 1988 issue -- "...the Creator's promise of a peaceful and secure new world before the generation that saw the events of 1914 passes away" -- wording that continued to appear through October, 1995. By then, however, the generation that saw the events of 1914 had largely passed away. All that remained were a relatively few surviving individuals in their late 90's -- people nearly a hundred years old. Obviously, the prophecy had failed. Continuing to print it as spiritual food for Jehovah's Witnesses was like serving meat or milk long after the "sell before" date stamped on the package. Like spoiled food, the expired prophecy began to stink. JW leaders in Brooklyn finally replaced it in the November 8, 1995 Awake! by returning to language similar to that used prior to 1964. Awake! now declares "...the Creator's promise of a peaceful and secure new world that is about to replace the present wicked, lawless system of things." Actually the prophecy on page 4 of each Awake! is only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. It is the most prominent part of a whole chronological system of Bible interpretation that has proved false. This is the most noticeable revision, so far, in a process of changing beliefs that has only just begun. The October 15, 1995 Watchtower (pages 22-23) changes the Watchtower Society's interpretation of when Christ sits down to separate sheep from goats at Matthew 25:31-33. It transforms this from a process that began when Christ allegedly returned invisibly and became king in 1914 to a future event associated with his judging mankind at the Battle of Armageddon. The old teaching is presented clearly in the Society's 1982 book You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth (page 183 original edition): Yes, since Christ returned and sat down on his heavenly throne, all humankind has been on judgment...During the present judgment people are being separated as "goats" to Christ's left hand or as "sheep" to his right. The October 15, 1995 Watchtower (pages 22-23) rejects this interpretation and substitutes a new one: Does this parable apply when Jesus sat down in kingly power in 1914, as we have long understood?... ...the parable points to the future when the Son of man will come in his glory. He will sit down to judge... Understanding the parable of the sheep and the goats in this way indicates that the rendering of judgment on the sheep and the goats is future. It will take place after "the tribulation" mentioned at Matthew 24:29, 30 breaks out and the Son of man 'arrives in his glory.' The change introduced here is two-fold. The Society re-interprets Matthew 25:31-32 so that (1) Christ's sitting down on his throne does not refer to his becoming king in 1914, as the Society has long taught. Instead, it refers to his sitting as judge during the future great tribulation. (2) The separating of the sheep from the goats is also a future event -- even though JWs had long been taught that their preaching work was accomplishing that separation right now and throughout much of this century. Even more significant is the 'new truth' introduced in the November 1, 1995 issue of The Watchtower. On pages 17-19 it changes the Society's interpretation of Jesus' words at Matthew 24:34, "I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened." (NIV) On page 17 it admits that "Jehovah's people have at times speculated about the time when the 'great tribulation' would break out, even tying this to calculations of what is the lifetime of a generation since 1914." Now it says, instead (page 17): Rather than providing a rule for measuring time, the term "generation" as used by Jesus refers principally to contemporary people of a certain historical period, with their identifying characteristics. Then it goes on to identify the generation that Jesus supposedly pointed to at Matthew 24:34-35 in this way (page 19): Therefore, in the final fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy today, "this generation" apparently refers to the peoples of earth who see the sign of Christ's presence but fail to mend their ways. This new interpretation drops the thought that the world will end during the lifetime of the people who were alive to see the events of 1914. Instead, it has Jesus speaking of the "wicked generation" -- people who see the sign of his invisible presence but fail to become JWs -- with no time period attached. BORED TO DEATH? Yes, the info needed to reach JWs can be tedious. Think of it as comparable to learning Chinese to share the Gospel in China. Was the recently abandoned teaching about the 1914 generation really a false prophecy spoken by a false prophet? Or was it merely an instance of faithful Christians manifesting eagerness for Christ's return? Deuteronomy 18:20-22, quoted earlier, supplies the basis for determining the answer. It states that its words of condemnation apply when what a "prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true." Obviously, the prediction did not come true, and so the Watchtower Society has now stopped making that prediction. Was the prediction spoken "in the name of the LORD"? Yes, because it was introduced as "the Creator's promise." The Watchtower has said elsewhere: Those who are convinced that The Watchtower is publishing the opinion or expression of a man should not waste time in looking at it at all... Those who believe that God uses The Watchtower as a means of communicating to his people, or of calling attention to his prophecies, should study The Watchtower..." -- The Watchtower January 1, 1942, page 5 More recently, the Watchtower Society has tried to escape the "false prophet" label by saying Jehovah's Witnesses have not made prophecies in God's name. "Never did they say, 'These are the words of Jehovah.'" (Awake! March 22, 1993, p. 4) But the Watchtower Society actually did describe its prediction that the 1914 generation would live to see 'the end' as Jehovah's prophetic word through Jesus Christ. "Jehovah's prophetic word through Jesus Christ is: 'This generation [of 1914] will by no means pass away until all things occur.' (Luke 21:32) And Jehovah, who is the source of inspired and unfailing prophecy, will bring about the fulfillment... ... "Just as Jesus' prophecies regarding Jerusalem were fulfilled within the life span of the generation of the year 33 C.E., so his prophecies regarding 'the time of the end' will be fulfilled within the life span of the generation of 1914. ... "...Yes, you may live to see this promised New Order, along with survivors of the generation of 1914 -- the generation that will not pass away." -- The Watchtower May 15, 1984, pages 6-7 (The bracketed expression "[of 1914]" is in the original.) So, the Watchtower Society fits the description of a false prophet found at Deuteronomy 18:20-22. The Society made the prediction in God's name, and the prediction failed to come true. Was this false prophecy simply a one-time offense? No, because the prediction was published repeatedly over the years, not only in Awake! magazine's masthead, but also in other places -- sometimes even with minor variations which indicate that thought was given to the matter on a number of occasions: "...the generation alive in 1914, some will see the major fulfilment of Christ Jesus' prophecy and the destruction..." -- Awake! October 8, 1973, page 19 "Which generation is this, and how long is it?... "Thus, when it comes to the application in our time, the 'generation' logically would not apply to babies born during World War I. It applies to Christ's followers and others who were able to observe that war and the other things that have occurred in fulfillment of Jesus' composite 'sign.' Some of such persons 'will by no means pass away until' all of what Christ prophesied occurs, including the end of the present wicked system." --The Watchtower Oct. 1, 1978, p. 31 "What, then, is the 'generation' that 'will by no means pass away until all these things occur"? It does not refer to a period of time, which some have tried to interpret as 30, 40, 70 or even 120 years, but, rather, it refers to people, the people living at the 'beginning of pangs of distress' for this condemned world system. It is the generation of people who saw the catastrophic events that broke forth in connection with World War I from 1914 onward. ... "And if the wicked system of this world survived until the turn of the century, which is highly improbable in view of world trends and the fulfillment of Bible prophecy, there would still be survivors of the World War I generation. However, the fact that their number is dwindling is one more indication that the 'conclusion of the system of things' is moving fast toward its end. ... "Yes, there was a generation of people that was living in 1914, and that saw the major historical changes...We can be happy, therefore, for Jesus' assurance that there will be survivors of 'the generation of 1914' -- that this generation will not have completely passed away -- when the 'great tribulation' rings down the curtain on this wicked world system." -- The Watchtower October 15, 1980, page 31 "Jesus used the word 'generation' many times in different settings and with various meanings. But what did he mean when he spoke of a "generation that would not pass away"? ...a generation is really related to people and events, rather than to a fixed number of years. ... ...the babies of that generation are now 70 years old or older. And others alive in 1914 are in their 80's or 90's, a few even having reached a hundred. There are still many millions of that generation alive. Some of them 'will by no means pass away until all things occur.'" -- The Watchtower May 15, 1984, page 5 Thus judgment would be executed sometime during the life span of people seeing the first evidence of the time period foretold by Jesus. ...this time period began in 1914. Thus before the 1914 generation completely dies out, God's judgment must be executed. -- The Watchtower May 1, 1985, page 4 "a peaceful and secure new world before the generation that saw the events of 1914 passes away" ... "The Hebrews...reckon seventy-five years as one generation...". "...today, most of the generation of 1914 has passed away. ...Jesus' words will come true, 'this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.' This is yet another reason for believing that Jehovah's thieflike day is imminent." -- Awake! April 8, 1988, pages 4 and 14 In fact, this episode of making predictions concerning "the generation of 1914" was not the first time the Watchtower Society made such prophecies. Years before 1914, it published volume 4 of Studies in the Scriptures, in which it calculated a hundred-year "generation" stretching "from 1780, the date of the first sign" and including the gathering time beginning October 1874; the organization of the Kingdom and the taking by our Lord of his great power as the King in April 1878, and the time of trouble or "day of wrath" which began October 1874 and will end October 1914 -- 1908 edition, page 604 Alternatively, it calculated the generation of Matthew 24:34 as spanning 36 1/2 years, "the 'generation' from 1878 to 1914." (page 605) Interestingly, the Society encountered similar problems back then as time limits ran out and prophecies proved false. The length of the "generation" was adjusted to accommodate later reinterpretations, in a manner similar to the recent adjustments during the 1970's-1990's. Thus, later editions of the same Studies in the Scriptures volume were reprinted with alterations in the dates. In the reference quoted above from page 604, for example, the words "will end October 1914" were changed to "will cease about 1915" in certain later editions. Who is Superman Verde talking to? Is this an alcohol abuse problem again? HE...LOL doubt it...but we can still be friends.

Why Twelve Apostles (What Makes 12 So Special)? There were: 12: brothers of Joseph Patriarchs from Seth to Noah and his family, and twelve from Shem to Jacob. Sons of Israel (though actually thirteen in number, there are never more than twelve names in any one list. There are about 18 enumerations altogether, but in each list one or other is omitted. Generally it is Levi, but not always. In Revelation 7 both Dan and Ephraim are omitted but the enumeration is still twelve, Levi and Joseph being introduced. 12 Judges 12 gates 12 pearls 12 angels New Jerusalem's measurements "Number of the Sealed" in Rev 7:4 12 anointed 1. Aaron, Exodus 29:7,9, etc. 2. Nadab, Exodus 29:7,9, etc. 3. Abihu, Exodus 29:7,9, etc. 4. Eleazar, Exodus 29:7,9, etc. 5. Ithamar, Exodus 29:7,9, etc. 6. Saul, 1 Samuel 10:1. 7. David, * 1 Samuel 16:13. 8. Absalom, 2 Samuel 19:10. 9. Solomon, 1 Kings 1:39. 10. Jehu, 2 Kings 9:6. 11. Joash, 2 Kings 11:12. 12. Jehoahaz, 2 Kings 23:30. It will be observed from the above list that Saul, the man of man's choice, is thus stamped with the number 6. (ps, remember "Saul" from the NT?) David, the man of God's choice is stamped with the number seven. Interestingly, the 6th Zodiac sign is “Virgo.” In astrology, Virgo is considered a "feminine", negative (introvert) sign. It is also considered an earth sign. (Are all Abrahamic religions Patriarchal?) Jesus was 12 years-old when he first appears in public (Luke 2:42). 12 legions of angels mark the perfection of angelic powers (Matthew 26:53). "6" In the Bible is the number of man, sometimes denoting interruption or defect in human government. The number twelve appears in many ancient Sun-Myths, dating to well before the Old Testament (The “creation story notwithstanding, as “Moses” could not have written the Pentateuch before 1,400 BCE.) Ask yourself: Is it just a coincidence that the year has twelve months and that the Zodiac is divided into twelve "houses," representing the twelve divisions of the year? There are twelve cycles of the moon in a year. The Jewish calendar is actually a Lunar calendar, with twelve months following the twelve cycles of the moon (Nisan, Iyyar, Sivan, Tammuz, Ab, Elul, Tishri, Cheshvan, Kislev, Tebeth, Shebat, Adar.) Occasionally it is necessary to throw in an extra month, Adar2, to keep the Jewish Lunar calendar in sync with the solar year, just as we occasionally throw in an extra day (Feb. 29) to keep our calendar in sync with the solar year. The prominence of the number 12 is always a strong sign that the story is an astrological allegory for the passage of the year. Modern scholarship tells us that the number "12" that we find in the New Testament concerning the number of Jesus' disciples refers to the twelve hours of the day or night, or the twelve moons of the lunar year (Cox, Aryan Mythology, vol. i. p. 165; Bonwick, Egyptian Belief, p. 175). In addition, Is it just a coincidence that Osiris, the Egyptian Savior, had twelve apostles (Bonwick, Encyclopedia of Egyptian Belief, p. 175)? In all religions of antiquity the number twelve, which applies to the twelve signs of the zodiac, are reproduced in all kinds and sorts of forms. For instance, such are the twelve great gods; the twelve apostles or Osiris; the twelve apostles of Jesus; the twelve sons of Jacob; the twelve tribes; the twelve altars of James; the twelve labors of Mars; the twelve brothers of Arvaux; the twelve gods Consents; the twelve governors in the Manichean System; the adectyas of the East Indies; the twelve asses of the Scandinavians; the city of the twelve gates in the Apocalypse; the twelve wards of the city; the twelve sacred cushions, on which the Creator sits in the cosmogony of the Japanese; the twelve precious stones of the rational, or the ornament worn by the high priest of the Jews, etc. (Dupuis, Origin of Religious Belief, pp. 39-40). Is there any rational doubt that the account of Jesus' having 12 Apostles is not a development from the influence of ancient Sun-Myths?

Why is Islam the worlds fastest growing religion ? FIVE PILLARS OF ISLAM Islam has five pillars or basic foundations to act. Acting correctly and sincerely on these foundations will transform a Muslim's life into the line of the Creator. Faithful practice of these duties inspires him to work towards the establishment of justice, equality and righteousness in society, and the eradication of injustice, falsehood and evil. 1. SHAHADAH, the first of the five basic foundations, is the declaration, knowingly and voluntarily, of: La ilaha illal lahu Muhammadur rasulullah MEANS "There is no god except Allah, Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah" This declaration contains the two basic concepts of Tawhid and Risalah. This is the basis of all actions in Islam, and the four other basic duties follow this affirmation. 2. SALAH (compulsory prayer) is offered five times a day. It is a practical demonstration of faith, and keeps a believer in constant touch with his Creator. The benefits of Salah are far reaching, long lasting and immeasurable. It develops in a believer the qualities of self-discipline, steadfastness and obedience to the Truth, leading him to be patient, honest and truthful in the affairs of his life. The five daily prayers are: FAJR between dawn and sunrise ZUHR between midday and mid-afternoon ASR between mid-afternoon and sunset MAGHRIB immediately after sunset ISHA between nightfall and dawn 3. ZAKAH (welfare contribution) is a compulsory payment from a Muslim's annual savings. It is an annual payment of around 2.5% on the value of cash, jewelry and precious metals; a separate rate applies to animals, crops and mineral wealth. Zakah can only be spent on helping the poor, needy, the disabled, the oppressed, debtors and other purposes as defined by the Qur'an. Zakah is one of the fundamental principles of Islamic economy, which insures an equitable society where everyone has a right to contribute and share. 4. SAWM ( fasting ) is the annual obligatory fasting during the month of Ramadan - the ninth month of Islamic calendar. A Muslim, every day of this month, refrains from eating, drinking, smoking, and sex, from dawn to sunset. Sawm (fast) develops a believer's moral and spiritual standard and keeps him away from selfishness, greed, extravagance and other vices. Sawm (fast) is an annual training program which increases a Muslim's determination to fulfill his obligation to the Almighty Lord. 5. HAJJ ( pilgrimage to the House of Allah ) is an annual event, obligatory on those Muslims who can afford to undertake it, at least once in their lifetime. It is a journey to the House of Allah (Al-Ka'bah) in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, in the month of Dhul Hijjah - the twelfth month of the Islamic calendar. Hajj symbolizes the unity of mankind; Muslims from every race and nationality assemble together in equality and humanity to worship their Lord. The pilgrim, in the ritual clothing of Ihram, has the unique feelings of being in the presence of his Lord. THE QUR'ÂN The Qur'ân is the final Book of guidance from Allah, sent down to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) through the angel Gabriel (Jibra'il) (AS). Every word of the Qur'an is the word of Allah. It was revealed in a period of 23 years in the Arabic language. Muslims learn to read it in Arabic and many memorize it completely. Muslims are expected to try their best to understand the Qur'an and practice its teachings. The Qur'an is unrivaled in its recording and preservation. The astonishing fact about this book is that it has remained unchanged even to a letter for over fourteen hundred years. The Qur'an deals with man and his ultimate goal in life. Its teachings cover all aspects of his life and the life after death. THE HADITH The Hadith is the collection of sayings, actions and silent approvals of Prophet Muhammad (SAW). It explains the Qur'an, and how to practice it. The Hadith were recorded meticulously by the Prophet's companions. Six particular collections have become prominent and are regarded as the most Authentic: Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi, Abu Dawud, Nasa'i and Ibni-Majah. PROPHET MUHAMMAD (SAW) Muhammad (SAW), the final messenger of Allah and the best of creation, was born in Makkah, Arabia, in the year 571 CE. His father, Abdullah, died before his birth and his mother, Aminah, died when he was only six. Later on he was looked after by his uncle Abu Talib. He married Khadijah, a noble lady of Makkah, when he was twenty five. He first received revelation from Allah at the age of forty, marking the beginning of his work as the messenger of Allah. The people of Makkah at that time used to worship idols. The prophet (SAW) invited them to Islam. Some of them responded favorably and became Muslims, while others rebuked him and turned against him. He continued to preach the message of Allah and, gradually, the number of his followers increased. In the thirteenth year of his Prophethood, in 622 CE, Muhammad (SAW) migrated from Makkah to Madînah. The people of Madînah a

Why did the Nazis agree to class Karaite Jews as non-Jews, therefore exempting them from the holocaust? Karaite Jews = Jews who only follow the Torah & Tanakh the dismiss the Talmud, approx 30,000 Karaites Jews in Israel today. "In January of 1939 the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Germany noted in a special resolution that Karaites did not belong to the Jewish religious community and that their "racial psychology" was not Jewish. As a result, the Karaites were not persecuted during World War II. In 1942 the Nazis questioned three Jewish scholars, M. Balaban, Z. Kalmanowicz, and I. Schiffer, as to the descent of the Karaites. Understanding the mortal implications of this for the Karaites, all three affirmed the non-Jewish ancestry of the Karaites. In the same year, however, the Karaite populations of Krasnodar and Novorossiisk were killed "by mistake" along with the Talmudic Jews." http://www.everyculture.com/Russia-Eurasia-China/Karaites-History-and-Cultural-Relations.html Other sources http://www.karaite-korner.org/holocaust.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Karaites#During_the_Holocaust http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/20569/karaites-keep-their-faith-and-distance-from-other-jews-in-israel/ http://www.zionism-israel.com/dic/Karaites.htm The Karaite "Declaration of Faith" - The uniqueness and oneness of YHWH as God and Creator. - The truth of the Torah given to Moses. - The perfect nature of the Torah which requires no additions or supplement (i.e. the Rabbanite Oral Law is extraneous). - The concept of an ultimate reward for those who keep the Torah. - The holiness of the Temple in Jerusalem and its status as a place to turn in prayer. - The beginning of months in the Biblical calendar according to the visibility of the Crescent New Moon - The beginning of years in the Biblical calendar according to the state of the barley crops (Abib) in the Land of Israel. - The truth and prophetic nature of the entire Hebrew Bible. - The truth and holiness of the Biblical Holidays and Feasts. - The eternal nature of God who rules the universe. - The concept of an Eschatological or "Messianic" Era in which all mankind will worship the one true God, YHWH.

Bible and the Zodiac: How many of you have actually taken a deep, hard look at Revelation and Ezekiel? In these books, four very important images are formed: That of the four creatures/chrubim which praise God... One with the face of a man (air/Aquarius), lion (fire/Leo), Ox (earth/Taurus) and Eagle (water/Scorpio – which can be represented by the Scorpion, Eagle and Serpent). These four signs are the “fixed signs” of the zodiac and represent the four elements of ancient knowledge and alchemy… These are the four elements that are combined to make everything that we know of on this planet. These are the elements known to all ancient cultures, and although there in true Christianity (esoteric), lost in traditional Christianity (exoteric). Also remember... Jesus tells the Apostles to follow the man carrying the pitcher of water (Aquarius) to the Last Supper. Follow Him to the New Age… the New Age of Christ, of the deification (theosis – an extremely Orthodox idea and term of the early Church in recognition of the divine potential of Man through our Saviour, Jesus Christ) of the human species through Jesus Christ, of the New Heaven and New Earth. In the end, this is what it all points to... Jesus Christ is the Son who sustains our spiritual life, as the Sun sustains our physical life. The ancient Sun worship of all true religions (including Christianity) – while the pagan religions worship the creation instead of the Creator (a big no no), Christianity is really no different, it also worships the Sun in a symbolic manner (although symbolic is the key phrase – as the Sun merely is representative of Jesus as the giver our True Life, as Christians in reality, worship the Creator), and that is why we worship on Sunday with the fulfillment of the New Covenant through Jesus Christ. Think about it! Jesus Christ is the Light of the World, the Son, just as the Sun is the physical light of the world! The Son/Sun... in the end, Christianity is a retelling of all ancient wisdom of the ages -- warning that the Sun, while the sustainer of physical life, will also destroy it when the events of Revelation come to pass (my guess is 2012 based on Mayan end-date calendar, where time as we know it stops – the ancient Chinese I Ching also validates this date – but you never know, that’s just the most likely date we have to go on at this time). This is the end of the 26000 year Great Cycle, as depicted in one full rotation of the zodiac constellations around the night sky. December 12, 2012, is the date that our solar system, for the first time in thousands of years, will eclipse the galactic core on its plane, and this very well may be the beginning and/or cause of those events which will come to pass in Revelation. Make no mistake, they WILL pass, and also make no mistake, they will be of natural origin (although of divine happening, which happens on a cyclical basis). There is a scientific basis and truth to all in the Bible, and Revelation too. It will come to pass, whether on December 12, 2012 or at some later date. The zodiac is an ancient way that our ancestors tried to warn us of the impending disaster… there’s nothing we can do, but at least we know. The Bible tells us again, what the ancients had known for many thousands of years. Revelation is God’s warning to us, I hope you all pay heed. God bless! Gnostic Christian Universalist (of the Orthodox variety!) And yes... in most circles, the above would be considered "occult knowledge" -- although it's taken right out of the Bible itself! "Occult" is not a bad word, it simply means "hidden", and much of the ancient secret knowledge of all true religions is hidden within the Bible, and is tied into the Sacred Apostolic Tradition that is handed down from Jesus to Apostle to disciple. Tradition AND Scripture, otherwise, you are missing fully half of the story and gospel!!! Julia D... yay you! Very and all true, I was also aware of the zodiac tiles on ancient synagogues. Christianity today is so very blind to the absolute truth of God and Christianity unfortunately. I totally agree about not needing to consult astrology or any of those types of things... God tells us not to since we have a direct relationship with Him through Jesus Christ (to Christians). That is why although I have occult knowledge, I will not ever use it, because what for? Everything I do, I do directly through and with God's Presence abiding in me, and who needs anything else??? In_His_Steps... Jesus Christ Himself said that the Sabbath is made for mankind, and not mankind for the Sabbath. That to me, tells me that the Sabbath is any day we make it, as long as we have one day of rest per week, as God did. Rest is good for the soul and spirit ("all work and no play make Johnny a dull boy" eh?)... and God wants what is good for us. That is the purpose of the Sabbath, a day of our choosing for rest, not for one day to be imposed on us. Saturday was the Sabbath for the Jews... it was a part of their law. But Jesus Christ fulfilled that law with love, and allowed us to become free of its constraints.

The New Age of Aquarius: The coming of the Age of Cosmic Christ? In the books of Ezekiel and Revelation, four very important images are formed: That of the four creatures/chrubim which praise God... One with the face of a man (air/Aquarius), lion (fire/Leo), Ox (earth/Taurus) and Eagle (water/Scorpio – which can be represented by the Scorpion, Eagle and Serpent). These four signs are the “fixed signs” of the zodiac and represent the four elements of ancient knowledge and alchemy… These are the four elements that are combined to make everything that we know of on this planet. These are the elements known to all ancient cultures, and although there in true Christianity (esoteric), lost in traditional Christianity (exoteric). Also remember... Jesus was the fish, who made “fishers of men” (Age of Pisces), born of a Virgin (Virgo), and tells the Apostles to follow the man carrying the pitcher of water (Aquarius) to the Last Supper. Follow Him to the New Age of Aquarius (yes, it has been dawning for a while now)… the New Age of Christ, of the deification (theosis – an extremely Orthodox idea and term of the early Church in recognition of the divine potential of Man through our Saviour, Jesus Christ) of the human species through Jesus Christ, of the New Heaven and New Earth. Yes, His atonement is accounted for, for this current, godless Age (Pisces), where His blood covers our sins since we are not capable of being responsible for our own. However, in the next Age of Aquarius, where we are called to realize our divine nature, once one puts on Christ, becomes a partaker of the divine nature, becomes responsible for their own salvation (work it out with fear and suffering as Paul said!). Thus, Jesus’ blood covers us in the Age, but not the next Age… In the end, this is what it all points to... Jesus Christ is the Son who sustains our spiritual life, as the Sun sustains our physical life. The ancient Sun worship of all true religions (including Christianity) – while the pagan religions worship the creation instead of the Creator (a big no no), Christianity is really no different, it also worships the Sun in a symbolic manner (although symbolic is the key phrase – as the Sun merely is representative of Jesus as the giver our True Life, as Christians in reality, worship the Creator), and that is why we worship on Sunday with the fulfillment of the New Covenant through Jesus Christ. Think about it! Jesus Christ is the Light of the World, the Son, just as the Sun is the physical light of the world! The Son/Sun... in the end, Christianity is a retelling of all ancient wisdom of the ages -- warning that the Sun, while the sustainer of physical life, will also destroy it when the events of Revelation come to pass (my guess is 2012 based on Mayan end-date calendar, where time as we know it stops – the ancient Chinese I Ching also validates this date – but you never know, that’s just the most likely date we have to go on at this time). This is the end of the 26000 year Great Cycle, as depicted in one full rotation of the zodiac constellations around the night sky. December 12, 2012, is the date that our solar system, for the first time in thousands of years, will eclipse the galactic core on its plane, and this very well may be the beginning and/or cause of those events which will come to pass in Revelation. Make no mistake, they WILL pass, and also make no mistake, they will be of natural origin (although of divine happening, which happens on a cyclical basis). There is a scientific basis and truth to all in the Bible, and Revelation too. It will come to pass, whether on December 12, 2012 or at some later date. The zodiac is an ancient way that our ancestors tried to warn us of the impending disaster… there’s nothing we can do, but at least we know. The Bible tells us again, what the ancients had known for many thousands of years. Revelation is God’s warning to us, I hope you all pay heed. God bless! And yes... in most circles, the above would be considered "occult knowledge" -- although it's taken right out of the Bible itself! "Occult" is not a bad word, it simply means "hidden", and much of the ancient secret knowledge of all true religions is hidden within the Bible, and is tied into the Sacred Apostolic Tradition that is handed down from Jesus to Apostle to disciple. Tradition AND Scripture, otherwise, you are missing fully half of the story and gospel!!! Also think of ancient Judaism which had a strong reverence for the Zodiac… this is a fact which has been lost in modern Christianity, although the Zodiac is truly a strong base for the true, esoteric, faith.

Creationists: What would kids learn from creationism being taught in their science classrooms? And which version should we teach them? Yoruba The Yoruba creator is called Olorun or Olodumare and is often assisted by the spirit, or "lesser god", Obatala. In the beginning, there was only water and chaos. The supreme being sent Obatala or Orishanla down from the sky to create some land out of the chaos. He descended on a long chain (umbilical cord) and brought with him a rooster, some iron, and a palm kernel. First, he put the metal on the earth and the rooster on top of that. The rooster scratched the metal and spread it out to create land. Then he planted the palm seed and from it grew the Earth's vegetation. Olurun named earth "Ife" and the first city "Ile-Ife." Orshilana created humans out of the earth and got Olurun to blow life into them. Digueno The Digueno creation narrative tells of the beginning of creation with the male sky coming down upon the female Earth. The extant deities were weighed down by the sky being so close to the ground and all walked with a stoop. To combat this problem, a creator deity, Tu-chai-pai, separated the Earth from the heavens by blowing on rubbed tobacco three times. He had his brother, Yo-ko-mat-is, do the same, and then the two brothers placed the four cardinal directions at the ends of the Earth. Tu-chai-pai then proceeded to create hills, valleys, forests and lakes for the benefit of humanity. The brothers made men easily but had trouble making women. Initially, human beings were not subject to fatigue, but to prevent them from hurting themselves in the dark they were made to sleep at night. Tu-chai-pai then made the Sun and Yo-ko-mat-is made the moon to help humanity find the light they were instructed to race towards. Finnish Ancient Finns believed that the world was formed from an egg that was broken. A bird was flying above the sea, seeking a place to make a nest and lay her eggs. She searched everywhere, but found nothing but water. Then she noticed the first dry place. In some stories it was an island, in other stories it was a boat and in other stories it was a body part of a floating being, like the wizard Väinämöinen. The place was too unstable for a nest: a big wave came and broke the eggs, spreading their parts all over. However the eggs were not wasted: the upper part of egg covers formed the sky, yolk became the sun, and lower parts of egg formed the mother earth. The first human was Väinämöinen, he was born from the maiden of air Ilmatar that was made pregnant by the sea. Väinämöinen ordered forests to be planted, and started human culture. Babylonian The Babylonian creation myth is recounted in the "Epic of Creation" also known as the Enûma Elish. The Mesopotamian "Epic of Creation" dates to the late second millennium B.C.E. In the poem, the god Marduk (or Assur in the Assyrian versions of the poem) is created to defend the divine beings from an attack plotted by the ocean goddess Tiamat. The hero Marduk offers to save the gods only if he is appointed their supreme unquestioned leader and is allowed to remain so even after the threat passes. The gods agree to Marduk's terms. Marduk challenges Tiamat to combat and destroys her. He then rips her corpse into two halves with which he fashions the earth and the skies. Marduk then creates the calendar, organizes the planets, stars and regulates the moon, sun, and weather. The gods pledge their allegiance to Marduk and he creates Babylon as the terrestrial counterpart to the realm of the gods. Marduk then destroys Tiamat's husband, Kingu using his blood to create humankind so that they can do the work of the gods. Zoroastrianism The Zoroastrian story of creation has Ahura Mazda creating 16 lands, one by one, such that each would be delightful to its people. As he finished each one, Angra Mainyu applied a counter-creation, introducing plague and sin of various kinds. The dualistic idea of two primordial spirits, called twins by Zoroaster, goes back to an Indo-European prototype. Although the idea of dualism came from the idea that "god" could not create evil so both evil and good pre-existed before time. Cherokee In the beginning, there was just water. All the animals lived above it and the sky was overcrowded. They were all curious about what was beneath the water and one day Dayuni'si, the water beetle, volunteered to explore it. He explored the surface but could not find any solid ground. He explored below the surface to the bottom and all he found was mud which he brought back to the surface. After collecting the mud, it began to grow in size and spread outwards until it became the Earth as we know it. After all this had happened, one of the animals attached this new land to the sky with four strings. The land was still too wet so they sent the great buzzard from Galun'lati to prepare it for them. The buzzard flew down and by the time that he reached the Cherokee land he was so tired that his wings began to hit the ground. Wherever they hit the ground a mou (there are thousands more.) Losasha- because evolution theory is the unifying theory of biology, and teaches kids to use the scientific process. Again, what does creationism teach them? Losasha I fully expect you to answer my question. What would kids learn from creationism? "Presenting Creationism along with other theories would teach them to explore their options, to examine the world around them objectively, and to utilize the scientific process" That's a rather poor attempt at trying to shoe in "utilize the scientific process" to list. No one said the kids should not be taught all those creation myths. They just don't belong in the science classroom. Why don't you explain yourself. How does creationism "utilize the scientific process"? Explain. The_Cricket: teaching morality in science next to the actual science would imply that the actual science itself is immoral. That's not true. We'd be forcing the kids to decide between scientific literacy and "morality." Isn't that a false dichotomy? That's like teaching morality next to math. The kids can either accept morality or how 3x4=12. Plus, American Christians have not shown in recent years a standard of morality any higher than non-Christians. They should not be allowed to dictate what type of ethics we teach our children. The teachings of Christ are good (in my opinion), but most American Christians today simply do not reflect Jesus's teachings. The_Cricket: I agree ethics should be taught, but that would belong in a philosophy classroom. I think philosophy should be mandated. Ethics should not, however, be taught next to math, science, art, English, etc. That would only confuse the kids.

What do you think of my great day today? Today (Saturday, September 26, 2009 AD - Gregorian calendar [aka: United States calendar]) was a great day, as opposed to yesterday, which was not so great. Well, when I woke up, I got ready for the day and then I went on the Internet and got on some forums. My little brother, Eric McDonald, and my father, Ryan McDonald went to a yard sale (or yard sales, I'm not sure), and my dad got me two blue golf balls (since I like golf), however, I gave one to my uncle when he arrived later. Then my uncle, Jonathan McDonald (Prime Minister of Jonathanland) came and picked me up at around 12:00 PM (GMT-6 / Central Standard Time [in the United States of America]) and he gave me a SCUBA diving T-shirt and he let me borrow two video games, LEGO Creator and Tomb Raider. By the time we actually departed, it was beginning to pour down raining. In the car I played some iPhone game where you shoot dolls out of a cannon and try to hit a target on my uncle's iPhone. Then we arrived at Ponderosa, I had like 15 plates/servings/seconds/helpings (it is a buffet), but that's okay, because I like never gain weight (I still only way like 150 pounds). My uncle told me that he made a new website, he made it on like (this may not be an exact date, but I think it is) Thursday, September 24, 2009. His new website is called JonathanMcDonald.me, and he is currently running it using Google Apps. Then we departed from Ponderosa and went to Costco. At Costco, my uncle got a full tank of gas, a towl, and a shower curtain expander. We then departed Costco to go to The Great Escape (a movie theater) and catch the 2:45 PM showing of Surrogates. However, when we arrived at the theater, we still had some time, so we decided to go to a local winery, Friar Tuck. My uncle got a 6 pack of Guinness 250th Anniversary Edition and I got some kind of Black Cherry beverage (soda). Then we went to GameStop and I got Left 4 Dead and Final Fantasy XI Online (that's 11 for those of you who don't speak Latin [aka: Roman, Vatican Citian, or just Vatican] or understand Roman numerals). My uncle payed for it up front since I didn't bring my wallet. We then returned to the theater at 2:35 PM and purchased tickets from a really cute girl who worked at the cinema (another term for movie theater, not to be confused with theatre). We then saw the movie, it was pretty good, Bruce Willis did a pretty good job. I then returned home, to find out that my StarCraft T-shirt arrived. It was by that time about 5:00 PM and I then got on the computer and typed this message up, which I finished typing up around 5:40 PM (right now it is 5:39 PM). Well, thank you for reading this message, please, feel free to post replies, I insist.

Christmas is Jesus' Birthday still as a Baby ? or His Incarnate God-Man 2013 years old Anniversary ? Jesus Christ as our Creator Son of God is Eternal. Jesus Christ as our Son of Man and Very Elder Brother is now 2013 years old. (He Incarnated here in August of 7BC; our calendar is off; and there is no year zero) Which Birthday Anniversary is real for you today? On your last Birthday as an adult, did all of your friends and relatives honor you by only seeing you and talking about you as just a new baby in diapers and restrained by a swaddling cloth ? Did you get a pacifier and many smilling faces saying "go go" only to you ? If so, how would YOU feel ? Thanks for all sincere answers. Merry Christmas ! and Peace and progress ! Brother Dave

is this computer worth it? I want to buy this computer here are the specs: Dell Inspiron 530S Mini Tower Processor: Intel Pentium Dual Core 2.2Ghz – running in 32 bit (64 bit Ready) Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Memory: 3GB - DDR2 Video Memory: 256MB Hard Drive: Western Digital SATA 750GB w/ 32 MB Cache Memory Card Reader: 19 in 1 (SD, SM, CF, xD, etc.) Video: Intel G31/G33/Q33/Q35 Graphics Controller Optical Drive: 16X DVD+/-RW Display: 15inch Dell Flat Panel Display, Black Keyboard & Mouse: Dell (included) LAN: 10/100 Ethernet LAN Ports: 6 USB (2 front, 4 back), video, headphone and microphone (front and back) CD Software - already installed (except Works) and you get original CDs: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Dell Drivers & Utilities Roxio Creator DE 10.2 Part of Windows Vista CD: Microsfot Photo Editor Windows Movie Maker and Player Windows Media Center Windows Meeting Place Windows Calendar Microsoft Works 9.0 (not installed) Additional Software Installed (no CD): Microsoft Office Professional with FrontPage (2003) Excel. Word, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook, and FrontPage desktop includes 15in lcd screen mouse and keyboard its used but looks almost new I can get it for about $300 is that good or would I be getting ripped off, I don't know much about computers so your advise would be great thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!! also if you could state your reasons that would be great

does Girl witches havethe power too send themselves as girl ghost and others unto my home;pre: they die.? most have never continplated these things.i've updated my profile too say just this and then some.yet most of you will travel the Vast Gallexies with me aboard my Creator size mothership.and not dwell apon any planetary surface.therefore yur wicca or magick should be geared with this in mind.and I smooch njhot soley Alien Chicks But you as you must live as An Ghostes.many menn can not be reborn lest i give the girl Gender new skin and bone Via my Skills and Time as the Factor.they Art welcome too polterguest my house at any date in history beyond 2008's calendar date system.even long deaqd Ju's or Jews and Asians whom were faceless and nameless buries in mass graves and covered up by our world wars.it takes A while yet She gets new skin first then the whole body back.no matter what Race or Breed she twas.think this one over.and Agree or No.

What does this poem mean to you? Do you believe that disbelief in yourself is indispensable? Disbelief In Yourself is Indispensable While you're alive it's shameful to worm your way into the Calendar of Saints. Disbelief in yourself is more saintly. It takes real talent not to dread being terrified by your own agonizing lack of talent. Disbelief in yourself is indispensable. Indispensable to us is the loneliness of being gripped in the vise, so that in the darkest night the sky will enter you and skin your temples with the stars, so that streetcars will crash into the room, wheels cutting across your face, so the dangling rope, terrible and alive, will float into the room and dance invitingly in the air. Indispensable is any mangy ghost in tattered, overplayed stage rags, and if even the ghosts are capricious, I swear, they are no more capricious than those who are alive. Indispensable amidst babbling boredom are the deadly fear of uttering the right words and the fear of shaving, because across your cheekbone graveyard grass already grows. It is indispensable to be sleeplessly delirious, to fail, to leap into emptiness. Probably, only in despair is it possible to speak all the truth to this age. It is indispensable, after throwing out dirty drafts, to explode yourself and crawl before ridicule, to reassemble your shattered hands from fingers that rolled under the dresser. Indispensable is the cowardice to be cruel and the observation of the small mercies, when a step toward falsely high goals makes the trampled stars squeal out. It's indispensable, with a misfit's hunger, to gnaw a verb right down to the bone. Only one who is by nature from the naked poor is neither naked nor poor before fastidious eternity. And if from out of the dirt, you have become a prince, but without principles, unprince yourself and consider how much less dirt there was before, when you were in the real, pure dirt. Our self-esteem is such baseness.... The Creator raises to the heights only those who, even with tiny movements, tremble with the fear of uncertainty. Better to cut open your veins with a can opener, to lie like a wino on a spit-spattered bench in the park, than to come to that very comfortable belief in your own special significance. Blessed is the madcap artist, who smashes his sculpture with relish- hungry and cold-but free from degrading belief in himself.

Creationism verses Evolution or a combination? a bit wordy, please read all.what's your opinion? The last part is of others say…such as the Greeks perception of the future. There are so many possibilities of evolution, or maybe not. The endless thoughts, it’s meant to elicit the readers perceptions about the intermingling of all tenses (past, present and future and the repetitiveness, or not. does necessity, rule evolution? Also, has scientists grounded theories as to what cannot be touched or seen such as in intergalactic space, the only logical fact, or is it as the scientific community of past, “facts” such as the world is flat. Are we so arrogant to think our theories as, the wobble around a alien star defiantly signifies a planet circling that star or do we have factors or even truths to learn about the interpretation of that, in the spiritual realm the Mayans believed in god, yet their calendar interpreted the “stars”. Who is to say we don’t have more to learn about the universe, the cosmic whole, if you will, from ancient civilizations such as the Mayans or more controversially relevant, Hebrews. It’s the mixture of science and spirituality. Darwin, at one time, struggled with his faith. Who can defiantly conclude there is no God? Why is it so impossible to believe in evolution and have a perception of a creator not limited by today’s science. if so then, many possibilities, where is the beginning middle and end? Or can it be endless? Is it symbolism or can it become “real”? We once thought dragons were fictitious then discovered and named the kimono dragon, though not exactly on point, think… in the Amazon we’re still discovering new plant and animal life. is the neathratal or something similar really extinct? So, what about the unreachable depths of the sea holding intelligent life. Arrogance, move beyond what’s called a “fact” if so, what’s beyond the universe or the illogical, yet divine fluidity of creation’s expiration? Spirituality spurred on science. Why can’t some of that of disproved ancient civilization thought “unscientific” become “scientific” fact in the future? Our mathematical conclusions are today’s fact, unquestionable. Is that our arrogance? Then to address creations side of limiting God I refer to old testaments Hebraic translation the origin language of the Bible. as The poetic simplicity of Genesis 1 leaves much to the imagination. Can these days of the creation be different than a literal 24 hour day? First consider Psalms 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8 that follow which indicate that time to the Lord is very different than time is to man. Some have taken the two passages above to mean that one day is exactly one thousand years, but it is not a mathematical formula since 1000 years is compared to both yesterday (24 hours) and a 3 hour watch in the night. It appears more likely that they mean that the Lord exists completely outside of our time domain and can look upon all of our life's history at one time simultaneously, as he wishes. Thus created the universe as He wished and on His own time basis. So then, is it.. ignorance or sweet nativity? In closing, don't we all have much to learn? well thought to was no much for yahoo answers and to say, if you did read it i do believe in creation. but in hebrew meaning it's a little different take on genisis which is the orginal language of the bible to be closed minded just furthers my point. sorry it was what, boring or wrong before you read all of it. don't asume what you haven't read it's disappointing that believers can be so closed minded I know I’m not a writer which is a valid point. As to my short coming , pretty good for a really dyslectic person so I am humbly sorry about my writing. But thank for trying

Is it possible that Jesus...? Is it possible that something happened back then, some kind of divine intervention, the creator of the universe or at least the highest form of consciousness intervening for once in human affairs, and it was totally misinterpreted or maybe even taken over by others..? Is it possible that Christ never even intended for any religion to exist in his name, that something altogether different but still very noteworthy happened back then (noteworthy enough for a society to reorganize its calendar around, and for people to have devoted their lives even at the beginning to this one person?) So much of Christianity has happened without Christ, and yet we are made to believe that it is his will How can we know what he would want/have wanted? All we have are word-of-mouth accounts of an event that happened and may have been grossly warped or exaggerated 2000 years ago? about the parables and teachings: were they put to paper by Jesus? no, the were put to paper afterwards, by his followers.. already warping the original message and I have read the New Testament, twice not to be arrogant, though I'm just saying, it would be impossible for them to have quoted Jesus exactly in most instances, would it not?

Will The World REALLY End on Dec. 21. 2012? see, I've been doing some research about Doomsday. I saw the Mayans Calendar and Some of Nostradamus Prophecies. Many people have told me that Nostradamus never made any prediction about 2012. But according to the Mayans and Egyptians there will be a change. No one knows WHAT will happen exactly.....but you never know. Also, they said that the Sun would be in the center of the Galaxy for the first time in 26,000 years......IS THERE SOMETHING THERE? as in a black hole or something? i am very worried about this and i recently found out. Also, is the Mega Tsunami from the canary islands gonna hit SOON?i read somewhere that it was gonna hit around 2032 or something. ALSO, this gives me some hope, Nostradamus predictions go all the way up to 3797? right? this is the REAL question(s) Will the World end? if so, how? why? would there be a way to stop it? a way that we might find life before the end? a way we can live in outer space or something until we can heal the world? start from scratch? Can we survive the possible apocolypse that has been counting down for over thousands of years? AND FINALLY... Is December 21st a day of Celebration for our new cycle, or a day of DOOM? Thank you for answering, i am very scared, but very prepared to meet our creator.

Why are Bible Prophecies evidence? Why do many christians use this as evidence. The mayans also had prophecies which came true. Does that not prove that their religion was true then? 1. The Maya predicted the return of "Kukulcan" a white bearded god from the East, who had assisted them in setting up their great civilization; Thought to be a survivor of the legendary Atlantis. The Spanish conquistadors arrived on queue. It would appear the Maya were not expecting a god that would nearly wipe them out since they welcomed the conquistadors with open arms. 2. The Maya predicted the existence of a black hole at the center of our Galaxy, a black hole they called "HUNAB KU"; their central sun and creator of all. In recent years, Modern Science confirmed the existence of a black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. 3. The Mayan Calendar predicted a total solar eclipse in 1999, it occurred on schedule. There are also more.

Dell Inspiron 1525... is this good? ok so we have ordered my dell inspiron 1525 and was just wondering if what we ordered was good, we have upgraded a few things. 15.4 " Widescreen WXGA (1280x800) TFT Display with TrueLife(TM) 1 Flamingo Pink Color with Microsatin Finish Integrated 2.0 mega pixel web cam 1 Web cam software 1 160GB SATA Hard Drive 1 Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual-Core Processor T3200 1 Inspiron-NB Handling & Insurance Charges 1 65W AC Adapter 1 Integrated Stereo Sound 1 Dell(TM) Wireless 355 Bluetooth Module 1 Belkin Slim Backpack Fits up to 15.4 " Screen (SoftGrey/Flamingo Pink) Intel(R) Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 1 Dell(TM) Wireless 1395 802.11g 54Mbps Wireless Mini Card 1 Wireless Network Card Driver Kit 1 Laptop Batteries Carry 1 Year Warranty Only From Invoice Date 1 Dell's Terms and Conditions apply 1 1 Yr Ltd Hardware Warranty, InHome Service after Remote Diagnosis Yr 1 Ltd Hardware Warranty, InHome Service after Remote Diagnosis # Year 1 Standard POW 1 1 Year Plus Phone Support: Mon-Fri 0800-2000, Sat 1000-1600. 1 Regional Support Within Asia Pacific Countries For Laptops 1 Base Assembly 1 8-in-1 media card reader 1 Google Toolbar 1 Shipping mod for ROW 1 Dell(TM) Support Center 1 Power Cord (ANZ) 1 Regulatory Label 1 Dell(TM) Keyboard with Touchpad (English) 1 Dell(TM) Media Direct 1 Dell(TM) MediaDirect DVD Kit 1 ANZ Return 1 Discount is only valid if the corresponding upgraded item is selected above. 1 Limited time promotional offer only. No further discounts apply 1 Microsoft(R) Works 9.0 (Does Not Include Microsoft(R) Office 2003/2007 Software) 1 OEM-Word Processor/Spreadsheet/Database/Calendar/Powerpoint viewer/Email Tools 1 McAfee(R) Security Center(TM) – 30 days trial 1 Integrated 10/100 Fast Ethernet 1 Internal 56K Modem 1 RJ-11 Modem cable (Aust) 1 Genuine Windows Vista(R) Home Premium 32 bit SP1 Edition (English) 1 Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Combination Drive with dual layer write capabilities 1 Roxio Creator 10 1 Lithium Ion Battery (6 Cell) 1 4GB ( 2 X 2048MB ) Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM 1 Genuine Windows Vista(R) Home Premium 32 bit SP1 Edition (English) 1 Vista(R) HTML Guide Included 1 The capacity varies with preloaded material and operating environment. 1 Dell(TM) PC-Restore Included 1 PC Restore will occupy some HDD capacity. 1 Vista QFE OS (Home Premium SP1) 1 Microsoft(R) Windows(R) Software Driver 1 Genuine Windows Vista(R) Home Premium 32 bit SP1 (English) DVD Media Included 1 System Driver DVD Kit 1 Is that good? the price is $985 im 13 and all i need it for is school work and internet, im not a gamer so thats fine

Who started the 2012 end of the world nonsense? People ask about this many times every day, and most of them seem to blindly believe it. It's hard to understand why anyone would want to believe it, but they do. I've read about many such end of the world predictions that self-proclaimed prophets have made for centuries. The inventors are usually named, but I've never been able to find who created this one. I've heard that Charles Berlitz created the Bermuda Triangle scam and made much money from books he wrote about it. This 2012 routine surely had a creator, so who is he? It's surely a recent invention, so someone should know who is responsible. PLEASE answer the question with the name of a person or persons! DO NOT mindlessly repeat stuff from websites that I've heard a thousand times before! I'm studying Science in college, and I took Logic as a supplement. It seems to me that the websites only want to create a sensation and perpetuate this routine, so they have mostly wrong statements. I hear that the History Channel has joined the con game. I hope that someone besides me knows something about the real Mayan calendar. I saw one man who does. He's a scientist, like me.

Do you believe in creationism? With the law of attraction, conversations with god, many people's instincts, the feeling of love i have when the mayan calendar says we are creating love right now, and everything being said about us being creators. Does this not seem like God is telling us the truth and he has been trying to since we can remember? Thanks for your comments

What about Dec. 21, 2013? What if doomsday isn't 2012, but instead it's 2013 because our calendar is off one year because the creators of the system counted Jesus as "1" when he was born. Plus, 13 is an unluckier number than 12.

Why does the calendar say "2008", but it often feels like 1972 on here? "It's conceivable that if Maude were around today, its controversial episodes would never make it to the air." MAUDE'S CHOICE "On those rare occasions when TV dares to deal with the volatile issue of abortion, it would be unthinkable to play the subject for laughs. But then, to paraphrase the All in the Family spin-off's theme song, there was Maude. In its second month on the air, Maude grabbed headlines as the first sitcom that dared to deal with the subject, setting a caustic, politically charged tone for the CBS series that would endure throughout its six-year run. On Nov. 14, 1972, 47-year-old Maude (Bea Arthur) announced she was pregnant. In the following week's episode, she made the decision to have an abortion, which was legal in New York (the locale of the series) but not nationally. Despite the timing-three months before the Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade-series creator Norman Lear denies his motivation was political. ''We weren't trying to make a statement,'' he insists today. ''(At first) we asked, what's a good, funny story and pregnancy was a great comedic idea.'' And one idea led to another. Though pregnancy-related themes were already a sure bet for sitcoms, it was considered downright racy when a horrified Maude proclaimed, ''The rabbit died, laughing no doubt,'' and a puzzled friend responded, ''Aren't you using the pill?'' Maude's liberated daughter, Carol (Adrienne Barbeau), a divorced single mother living at home, was the first to suggest that her mother had a choice: ''You don't have to have the baby.... Abortion was a dirty word; it's not anymore.'' Later, in the gentlest way possible, Maude's husband, Walter (Bill Macy), said, ''In the privacy of our own lives, you're doing the right thing.'' The show vaulted from 13th to 5th place in the Nielsen ratings in those two episodes, but success came with a price. ''We knew some people would be upset,'' Lear says, ''but we had no idea of the conflagration that did follow.'' CBS received hundreds of calls and 7,000 letters protesting the episodes, and that wasn't the end of it. The furor erupted again nine months later when ''Maude's Dilemma'' was rerun. Twenty-five CBS affiliates refused to air the shows, the network received 17,000 letters, and only one 30-second commercial was sold-the result of pressure on advertisers by antiabortion groups. Abortion is still difficult for commercial TV to handle. Four years ago, many advertisers shunned the NBC movie Roe vs. Wade. It's conceivable that if Maude were around today, its controversial episodes would never make it to the air." TIME CAPSULE Nov. 14, 1972 Diana Ross drew crowds to theaters in LADY SINGS THE BLUES, Johnny Nash had his biggest hit with ''I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW,'' and Richard Bach dominated the fiction best-seller list with JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL.

muslims: whts the NIGHT OF POWER ? Part of the significance of the Night of Power, has been previously mentioned. Let's to analyze this topic with commentary, (tafseer) on chapter 97 of Al-Qur'an, Al-Qadir (the Night of Power). Al-Qadr This chapter (surah) was revealed in Makkah, and its basic theme is honoring the revelation of this blessed book, the Holy Qur`an. The Night of Power or honor is a special gift only to the community (Ummah) of Islam. The night is one which even the angels in the heavens see as worthy of witnessing. The night is so rich with holiness, as the night when good deeds are returned, and is equal to a thousand months in the sight of Allah. Occasion Of Revelation In a report by Abi Hatim and Al-Wahidi, by way of Mujahid, the Messenger (saas) mentioned that there was a man among the Israelites who devoted his life to the cause of Allah for a thousand months. The companions were amazed and impressed, but were saddened because they knew there would be no way that they could reach this status of devotion. So Allah (SWT) revealed this surah to inform them that He had just blessed this Ummah with the Night of Honor, which is equal to a thousand months. "We have indeed revealed it, (Al-Qur`an) in the Night of Power." (Al-Qur`an 97:1) There are several points pertaining to the meaning of this verse: The meaning and the use of the pronoun "We" is a style in Al-Qur`an that when the Creator (SWT) is mentioned as a pronoun, He is referred to by "We" or "I," as is evidenced in this surah. Elsewhere He said, "Behold, thy Lord said to the angels: `I will create a vicegerent..." (Al-Qur`an, 2:30). There is no problem when Allah uses the pronoun "I" to refer to His Exalted Self, but when he uses "We" the explanation becomes warranted because it cannot be perceived to indicate plural. There is unanimity among the scholars that "We" indicates respect and exaltation for the Creator and Cherisher of all the worlds, whose greatness is incomprehensibly vast and beyond our imagination. Or, it is referring to Allah (SWT) and the angels who carry out his words to one all, in every level of His dominion. It cannot mean plural, or more than One Allah, for that would necessitate dropping in ranks, the absoluteness, and the powers of each competing deity. If each is capable of being absolute, each would have been independent from the other and the idea that each deity can be independent from the other, is evidence that none is absolute. This is inconceivable of Allah (SWT) therefore, "We" cannot mean anything but respect and exaltation of the One and Only. "...Have Indeed Revealed It In the Night of Power" (Al-Qur`an 97:1) There is again unanimity among the commentators that "it" refers to Al-Qur'an, meaning "We revealed" Al-Qur'an in the Night of Power. He (SWT) did not mention Al-Qur'an explicitly because to refer to Al-Qur'an by the pronoun implies a certain divine uniqueness of this book, as well as greatness and honor that may not be attained if the word Al-Qur'an was used instead. First, it ascribed the revelation of Al-Qur'an to Himself, and not to anyone else. Second, referring to Al-Qur'an by pronoun is an indication that the revelation of this book was not a secret that no one knew about. Its revelation was an event widely known to all during the time of Muhammad (saas) and after, guarding against anyone who may like to challenge it or claim any honor of teaching Muhammad (saas) Al-Qur'an. Third, the statement also meant to honor and memorialize the time period in which Al-Qur'an was revealed. By revealing Al-Qur'an in the Night of Power, Allah (SWT) inaugurated or started its revelation for the beginning of the prophethood ('Bi'ethah), and the Prophet's mission of Al-Islam began in the month of Ramadan on that Night. Al-Qur'an was not revealed in one night; it was revealed over the course of 23 years. Ibn Abbas (raa) said: The whole Qur'an was revealed to the lower heavens from the protective slate (Lawhul Mahfuz) on the Night of Power, then from there to the earth in the course of 23 years. The word power, Al-Qadr, has several implications and meaning, but we cover only those implications which are relevant to the issues here. Qadr implies having power over something, as in the case of the Creator over the creation. Allah's (SWT) excellence is Al-Qadr, capable, omnipotent, almighty, all powerful. It also implies excellence and high esteem, and as for this Night of Power, it is highly esteemed and regarded. For this night is equal to over 80 years in the sight of Allah (SWT). It also implies to maintain, appoint, assign or decree an order. Thus, in the Night of Power, Allah (SWT) proclaims to the angels His commands and orders in regards to the affairs of the universe. From this meaning is derived the concept of Al-Qada Wa Qadar, the fifth article of faith, that Allah has decreed or preordained or, in other words, has full knowledge of all that the human being will do with his free will. A man's decision to act freely in good conscience or bad conscience is all known to Allah (SWT), past, present and future. Qadr also implies measurement, that is all the events of the year will occur in accordance to the exact measurement of what is in the knowledge of Allah, Who states: "Verily, all things have We created in proportion and measure." (Al-Qur`an, 54:49) Why the name, the Night of Power? As mentioned above, it is the night of Taqdeer, meaning the one in which Allah (SWT) announces to the angels His already decreed commands, rules, events, etc., for the coming calendar year, from the present Night of Power to the next Night of Power. Allah (SWT) states: "We sent it down during a blessed night; We forever wish to warn (against evil). In that (night) is made distinct every affair of wisdom." (Al-Qur`an, 44:3-4) It should be known that most scholars believe Allah's commands and rules are not made on that night. It has already been decreed in the eternity what is known to Allah, but that knowledge is not known to anyone, including the angels, until He announces it to the angels on that night so that they will record it on the protective slate. This is also the night of honor and prestige which may be awarded to the servant who devotes himself to special deeds, or to the deeds themselves for the higher value they contain on that night. The Night Is Concealed Allah (SWT) in His mercy, has concealed the Night of Power from us for the following reasons: The problems pertaining to an exact night on which the honors are attained are not unique with this Night. It seems that Allah conceals many things. He conceals his pleasure from us in all our good deeds so that we will strive in all of them. He conceals His wrath from us in all of the sins we commit so that we will avoid them. He conceals His most beloved servants ('awliya) so that we will respect all the believers. He has concealed the time of His acceptance of our supplications so that we will strive in all our supplications. He concealed his greatest name, so that we mention all His names. He has concealed the time of death so that we will be conscious of Him and our deeds all the time. He has concealed the exact date of the Night of Power so that we would double our the efforts in the whole month of Ramadan, or at least the last ten days. He has concealed it also to test the serious and the non-serious. The seriously interested person will search for the night late and in the early hours until he or she attains it, regardless of the hardship. Where Is The Night? The majority of the scholars who agreed that the night occurs in the month of Ramadan, disagreed on the exact night. Some said it comes on the first day of Ramadan. Others said it is on the seventh; while others say its on the 19th night. All these opinions are not built on sound proof. There is evidence that the night comes on the last ten days of Ramadan, specifically on the odd numbered nights. In a report by Bukhari, the Messenger of Allah (saas) said: "Seek it on the odd nights of the last ten days of Ramadan." In a hadith by Ibn Umar (raa), some men among the companions saw the night in a dream occurring in the last seven nights. Responding to this, the Messenger of Allah (saas) told them, "I see your dreams coincide on the last seven, whoever wants to seek it should do so in the last seven." (Agreed upon) In Muslim's report, the Prophet (saas) said, "Seek the night in the last ten days, and if any of you is weak, or can't observe it, he should not miss the remaining seven days." In Hadith by Ubayy bin Ka'ab (raa), he said: "By Allah, I know which night it is. It is the night the Messenger commanded us to observe, the night of the 27th." (Ahmed/Tirmidhi) Analyzing all these citations indicates still no one knows for sure which night is the Night of Power, at least in a given year. It seems that the night shifts and rotates to different nights from one year to another. It may occur on the 27th in one year, while the next year it will be on the 25th, while on the following year it will be occurring on the 29th, etc. There is an indication to this in hadith by Bukhari, when the Messenger of Allah (saas) states: "Seek it on the twenty-ninth; it may be on the twenty-seventh, or on the twenty-fifth." Imam Ibn Hajr, in his book, "Fathul Bari", in the commentary of the Book of Bukhari, said: ``I accept the ruling that the night occurs on the odd nights of the last ten days of Ramadan, namely the twenty-first, twenty-third, twenty-fifth, twenty-seventh and or twenty-ninth.'' Seeking The Night It is recommended to seek the night and spend it diligently in devotion, including night Sunnah prayers (Tahajjud), recitation of Al-Qur'an and supplications. In a hadith related by Abu Hurairah (raa), the Messenger of Allah (saas) said: "He who spends the night in prayer on the Night of Power, as a sign of His faith, and seeking rewards from Allah, his previous sins will be forgiven." (Bukhari/Muslim) This citation indicates that regardless of whether a person knows the night or not, Allah will grant him forgiveness for previous shortcomings. " And what will explain to thee what the Night of Power is?; The Night of Power is better than a thousand months." (Al-Qur`an 97:2-3) Allah (SWT) is emphasizing by putting the second verse in question form. The answer being no one knows, or comprehends, the awesomeness and the depth of honor of the night. As if to say whatever merits Allah informs you about the night is just nothing compared to the things you have no idea about. Nonetheless, He mentions three honors in the credit of the night: 1."The Night is better than a thousand months. 2. "Therein, come down the angels..." and 3. "Peace!" The Night of Power is better than a thousand months. This indicates that acts of worship such as prayer, charity, and recitation done on this night are better in reward than the same act done on other nights. The rewards (thawaab) are being multiplied several-fold. Imam Malik reported that the Messenger of Allah (saas) was shown the long life span of people of previous nations, so the Prophet bemoaned the shortness of the life span of the Ummah, fearing that they might not be able to save many good deeds for the Hereafter. Therefore, Allah gave him the Night of Power to compensate for their lack of longevity. Hence, the devoted believer has as chance of adding 80 something years of worship to his life on the Night of Power. You see, for instance, if you worship Allah on this night every year for 65 years, by multiplying 65 by 80, you would have lived for 5,200 years, or achieved the reward of a person who lived that long. You can see why the devotions were highly encouraged by the Prophet. Indeed, you can achieve the honor of the Night of Power if you so wish by spending the odd nights of the last ten days in acts of worship. "Therein, come down the angels and the Spirit by Allah's permission, on every errand." (Al-Qur`an 97:4) This is far from the earlier cry of the angels who, when Allah told them, "...I will create a vicegerent on earth," they said, "Will you place therein one who will make mischief therein and shed blood?..." (Al-Qur`an, 2:30) You see, when the angels first looked at our spirit with its traits of mischief, vanity and desires, and the rages of anger, they, the embodiment of all that is good, did not like us at all. That explains their response in the above verse. So is the case with parents, when they first conceptualize the shape of the offspring, semen and congealed blood; they do not like it. They will even wash their hands, clothes and everything that this substance touches, a gruesome thing. They may even think about aborting the baby in the beginning. But after the baby is being fashioned in the most beautiful shape and they feel the movement of life, they change from dislike to caring love. That is seemingly what happened to the angels. When they saw in us this beautiful spirit of knowing the Creator, and worshipping Allah alone, they changed from dislike to complete love, and cannot wait for another Night of Power to come down so they can pray for us. Allah states: "...And they implore forgiveness for those who believe..." (Al-Qur`an, 40:7) He used the form (tanazzal) "They come", to indicate that the angels descend on the Night of Power, group after group; some coming down to earth while others ascend into the heaven. This heavenly, angelic organized traffic of good will continues until the break of dawn. As for the reasons why they come, there are several explanations including: (1) they descend to witness how we worship and obey Allah, and (2) to show their deep love for the believers. This is why they seek permission from Allah to come and meet us. This is a once-a-year opportunity they do not like to miss. (3) Allah promised the believers that in the hereafter, angels will approach on them with greetings: "...And the angels shall enter into them from every gate (with the salutation): Peace be unto you for that you persevered in patience..." (Al-Qur`an, 13:23-24) Now, if you preoccupy yourself with worship of Allah, the angels will descend on you with salutations. (4) Allah (SWT) singles out this night with honors on the earth so the angels can come down and increase their rewards, and as a means to encourage the human race to worship. (5) Realization that the angels are around is encouragement for the servants to devote more time to good deeds as a man will work harder when a foreman is present. "...And the Spirit..." (Al-Qur`an 97:4) There are several explanations for the meaning of the Spirit: (1) The Spirit is comprised of groups of special angels who are seen only on the Night of Power; (2) it is referring to Al-Qur`an, as Allah (SWT) stated: "And thus have We, by Our command sent inspiration (spirit) to thee..." (Al-Qur`an 42:52), (3) This is a reference to Angel Jibreel, as this is a special honor to Jibreel who has been mentioned twice Surah 42 first with another angel, and separately as the spirit of Allah (SWT) as the Qur`an says: "Verily this is a revelation from the Lord of the Worlds. With it came down the spirit of faith and truth." (Al-Qur`an, 26:192-193) Thus the correct explanation of the spirit, Ruuh, is Jibreel in this verse to indicate the angels on one side and Jibreel on the other, while they were descending. "...By Allah`s permission..." This indicates the angels extend a request to come to meet the believers; and to underscore the fact that angels are infallible; that they do not make a move without explicit permission from their Lord. Allah (SWT) states: "They speak not before He speaks, and they act (in all things) by His command." (Al-Qur`an, 21:27) "(The angels say) We descend not but by command of thy Lord..." (Al-Qur`an 19:64) "(Their) Lord." It indicates honor for the angels. It is as if Allah (SWT) is saying ``They are for Me and I am for them''. Similarly, Allah (SWT) said regarding us: "Verily your Lord is Allah Who created the heavens and the earth in six days..." (Al-Qur`an, 10:3) And regarding Prophet Muhammad (saas) Allah said: "Behold, your Lord said to the angels..." (Al-Qur'an, 2:30) It has been reported that when Prophet David was terminally ill, he asked Allah to be for his son Solomon, as He was for him. Allah (SWT) replied, saying: "Tell Solomon to be for Me as you are for Me. (Al-Qur`an 2:30) "...On every errand..." This indicates the angels and the Spirit descend for different purposes: some come down for prostration, some for bowing, and others for supplications for the believers and salutations. Or they come down carrying with them the proclamations of the coming year. "Peace!..." (Al-Qur`an 97:5) There are several explanations to this verse: (1) The whole Night of Power, from sunset to the break of dawn, will be spent by the angeles in salutation. (2) The purpose is to describe the night with peace because of the salutation from the angels. That is very important, because when seven angels visited Prophet Ibrahim (saas) and saluted him, he was very happy, and when Nimrod threw him in the fire, it turned ice-cold when the angels saluted him. (3) This is a wish of safety and peace from all evil and harmful things, or the angels will only bring on this night, good things! "...Until the rise of morn." (Al-Qur`an 97:5) All the honor, blessings and peace of the Night of Power will continue in every second of the night until Fajr. Allah (SWT) is the Best Knower.

The Viewpoints of Islam and Christianity Regarding Allah (God) ?Will this be the end? The distinguishing feature of Islam is its insistence on absolute monotheism and the forbidding of anything, at all, to be associated with God. This includes the refusal of the idea that Jesus (peace be upon him), the Messenger of God, was God. Allah says in the Qur'an: Surely they have disbelieved who say that Allah is the Messiah [Jesus], the son of Mary. But the Messiah said, "O Children of Israel, worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord. Truly, whoever sets up partners in worship with Allah, then Allah has forbidden Paradise for him, and Fire will be his abode. And for the wrongdoers there are no helpers. Surely, they have disbelieved who say, "Allah is the third of three," for there is no God but Allah Who is one. And if they do not cease what they say, verily, a painful torment will befall the disbelievers among them.... The Messiah, the son of Mary, was nothing other than a messenger; many were the messengers who passed before him. His mother was a woman of truth.... (5:72-75) Muslims believe that neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament had mentioned in any way that Jesus was the son of God. According to a contemporary American scholar, Barbara Brown: The doctrine of divinity states that Jesus is the Son of God, the Word of God made flesh. Even though Jesus himself never claimed to be divine, Paul gave him this attribute for one reason - to gain converts among the Gentiles. The Gentiles were pagans who were used to worshipping gods that had wonderful legends and myths behind them. Several of the pagan deities of the time such as Mithras, Adonis, Attis, and Osiris were all the offspring of a supreme ruling god, and each had died a violent death at a young age, coming back to life a short time later in order to save their people. Paul took this into account, giving the pagans something similar in Christianity. He attributed divinity to Jesus, saying he was the Son of God, the Supreme, and that he too had died for their sins. In doing so, Paul compromised the teaching of Jesus with pagan beliefs in order to make Christianity more acceptable to the Gentiles. The term "son of God" was not something new. However, it had been used in the Old Testament to refer to David (Saul 2:7) and his son Solomon (I Chronicles 22:100) and to refer to Adam (Luke 3:38) in the New Testament. In his famous Sermon on the Mount, detailed in Matthew 5, Jesus tells his listeners, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." In all cases, the term "son of God" was not meant to be applied literally but to signify love and affection from God to the righteous. "Son of God" means a special closeness to God, not to be of God. After all, people are sons of God, and Allah is the creator of all life.[7] Christians who lived during the time of Jesus (peace be upon him) believed that he was the divine messenger to them, bringing them the words of God and guiding them. However, after the ascension of Jesus to heaven, Saint Paul, who was deeply influenced by Roman paganism, wanted his preaching of Christianity to be more appealing to the Gentiles, so he compromised the teachings of Jesus (peace be upon him) by adopting certain pagan ideas and interpolating them into Christianity. Thus, the idea of the trinity spread even though it was not part of the original teachings of Jesus (peace be upon him). 2. Divine Justice ('adl) Anyone who believes in Islamic monotheism must believe in the Almighty's justice. Because Allah is just, He never wrongs His creatures, for injustice is an evil deed while He is far from doing evil. Because He is omniscient, He does not neglect anything, and because He is self-sufficient, He has no cause to wrong others. Since He owns everything, He does not need the actions of anyone. His wisdom also transcends the universe. Thus, unlike some human beings, He has no cause for injustice: "He is always standing firm on justice. There is no God but Him, the Mighty, the Wise." (3:18) "And your Lord does not deal unjustly with anyone." (18:49) "We[8] did not wrong them, but they wronged themselves." (16:118) Just as Allah encourages human beings to emulate some of His attributes, such as being patient and forgiving, He also tells us to follow the way of justice. "Say: 'My Lord has enjoined upon me justice.'" (7:29) Although common people may falter in this area, none of the prophets of God or their successors ever committed any act of injustice. Allah's justice embraces the entire universe. Whoever ponders over the existence of the universe and the order therein will not only observe the spread of Allah's justice over His entire creation but also each of its signs apparent in all aspects of nature -- from the physical world to the biological world, and from the microcosmos to the macrocosmos. The justice of God is particularly visible in the fate and destiny of human beings, and in their freedom of choice. Although Allah's justice encompasses everything, people should pray to Allah to treat them not with His justice but rather with His mercy, for if He treated people solely with His justice and punished them immediately for all of their sins, humanity would have perished a long time ago. Predestination or Free Will? The question of man's predestination or freedom of choice has preoccupied mankind throughout the ages and continues to be discussed by Islamic philosophers and scholars. Ultimately, two schools of thought regarding this question have emerged. One, called the Compulsionists, holds that human beings have no freedom of choice whatsoever in life. Every decision people make, every word people say has been predestined since the time of creation. If someone is faithful, it is not he who decides to embrace the faith; if someone is unfaithful, it is not he who rejects the faith. All has been written. The second school of thought, the Free Will school, declares that human beings are masters of their own acts. This notion is in concordance with the Qur'an, which states: "None will be wronged in anything, nor will you be requited anything except that which you used to do," (36:54) as well as: "The truth is from your Lord. So whomever wills, let him believe, and whoever wills, let him disbelieve." (18:29) From these two verses, it is clear that human beings have the freedom to act but must bear the moral responsibilities for their own actions. Furthermore, the acknowledgement of divine justice itself forces people to accept that their every action is not predestined. The beginning of guidance is always from Allah, but the beginning of man's destruction is in his own erroneous opinions. "Whatever good reaches you is from Allah, but whatever evil befalls you is from yourself." (4:79) 3. Prophethood (nubuwwa) The prophets were the people who received divine revelation. Allah has sent numerous prophets and messengers to humankind since the dawn of history. These prophets were of two types: "local" and "universal." While the local prophets were sent with specific messages to specific groups of people, the universal prophets were sent with messages and books for all of humankind. There were only five universal prophets, and their names were Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad (may the peace of Allah be upon all of them). A unique characteristic of all the prophets and messengers is that they were infallible - that is, they never committed any sin. The easiest way to see this is to consider that these people were the examples sent for humanity to follow, and so if they committed errors, people would be obliged to follow their errors, thereby making the prophets and messengers untrustable. Infallibility means protection, and, in Islamic terminology, means the spiritual grace of Allah enabling a person to abstain from sins by his own free will. This power of infallibility and sinlessness does not make a person incapable of committing sins; rather, he refrains from sins and mistakes by his own power and will. Infallibility is essential since the job of the prophets and messengers is not only to convey the divine scriptures of Allah but also to lead and guide humanity towards the right path. Therefore, they have to be role models and perfect examples for mankind. This has basis in both the Qur'an and conventional wisdom; the Qur'an mentions infallibility 13 times. Allah says to the Satan: "Certainly you shall have no authority over My servants except those who follow you and go astray." (15:42) The Satan then says to Allah: "By Your might, then I will surely mislead them all, except Your chosen servants among them [the messengers and imams]."(38:82) Not only did Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) not commit any sins, but he was also never harsh to human beings or animals. Allah says: "And by the mercy of Allah you dealt with them [people] gently, and had you been severe and harsh-hearted, they would have broken away from you." (3:158) In most societies, people with bad records would be ineligible to be presidential, governmental, or mayoral candidates since they would be expected to lead society and be good examples of righteousness and honesty. Unfortunately, as a campaign of distorting the image of the prophets of God, many distorted stories exist today, such as the stories in the present-day version of the Old Testament accusing Prophet David (peace be upon him) of adultery with Baathsheba, Prophet Noah (peace be upon him) getting drunk, Prophet Lot (peace be upon him) committing incest, and Prophet Moses (peace be upon him) committing adultery with the Ethiopian women. These are examples of the ethical wrongdoings and moral weaknesses that the enemies of Allah tried to ascribe to His pure messengers. The Holy Qur'an[9] speaks of the sins attributed to certain prophets such as Adam (peace be upon him). These verses should not be understood literally in the sense that Adam was committing a sin; allegorical verses are common in the Qur'an. Adam (peace be upon him) did not disobey the obligatory commands of Allah; the command that he did not honor was a recommended command, and, therefore, in the Islamic law, he cannot be considered to have committed a sin. Although Allah preordained who the prophets were going to be, the prophets nonetheless had to strive for this position. The foremost example of this testing that the prophets had to endure can be seen in the life of Prophet Abraham (peace be upon him), the father of the prophets. Abraham (peace be upon him) was born into an idolatrous society, but by the purity of his nature he recognized that the idols his people worshipped were capable of nothing, neither harm nor good. So one day, when no one was present, he smashed all of them but the largest, and when the people came to him and asked who had destroyed their gods, he told them to ask the remaining statue if they really believed that their stone idols had power. Although the people realized at that point that their idols were powerless, they didn't know how to respond, so out of shame and anger they cast Abraham (peace be upon him) into a huge fire. But Allah protected Abraham (peace be upon him) from the fire and confounded the plots of the polytheists.[10] After being tortured for and then saved by his faith in Allah, Abraham (peace be upon him) still had to undergo the hardest test of obedience to Allah - the direct order, from Allah, to sacrifice his son Ishmael.[11] This order came to him in a dream, and although sadness overwhelmed him, he was a strong believer in Allah and did not question it. Ishmael too accepted the command of Allah unquestioningly and allowed his father to lead him to a mountaintop to be sacrificed. His only request was that his father place him face down so that his father would not see his expression as he was being killed. Abraham (peace be upon him) raised his blade, still ready to comply with the command of Allah. But just then came the revelation that this had only been a test, that God would not order Abraham (peace be upon him) to sacrifice his son, and that Abraham (peace be upon him) could sacrifice a sheep in his stead. This event is commemorated every year on a holiday called the Feast of Sacrifice ('eid al-adhaa) on which animals are killed and the meat distributed to the poor. After passing these tests, Abraham (peace be upon him) became the leader of humankind as well as the father of the prophets of the three main monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Although Allah sent prophets to every group of people on the earth, the Qur'an only mentions the names of 25 of them. The first of them was Adam (peace be upon him), the father of humanity, and the last of them and the seal of the prophets was Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family). Why did Allah send different prophets and different religions? The way of Allah is one, and because the final messenger, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family), has come, there should be no dispute as to what is the right way to follow. However, throughout history, different messengers with slightly different messages were sent to different peoples because the religious needs of humanity were growing and developing just as the human race was itself growing and developing, and also because different civilizations needed different types of guidance. Nevertheless, the source and basic message behind them was the same - namely, Allah the Exalted and Glorious. Allah sent Moses (peace be upon him) with the Torah as a light and guidance for the Children of Israel (the Jews) along with many other prophets such as David, Solomon, and so on (peace be upon them). 1,500 years after Moses, Allah sent Jesus (peace be upon him), the son of Mary (peace be upon her), confirming the Torah and bringing the Gospel which has also been likened to guidance and light. Finally, 600 years after Jesus (peace be upon him), Allah sent Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) with the Qur'an to confirm all the messages before him and to complete the revelation of religion to mankind. Since all the Judeo-Christian-Islamic prophets were sent sequentially, the question arises as to why Judaism, Christianity, and Islam now exist as separate religions. The answer is that the followers of these religions, particularly Judaism and Christianity, corrupted the original teachings given to them and ended up making sects of their own rather than following the pure word of God. But as the Qur'an says: For each of you, We have made a Law and a clear way. If Allah had willed, He would have made you one nation but that He may test you in what He has given you. So strive as a race in good deeds. Your return is to Allah; then He will inform you about that which you used to differ. (5:48) The Life of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family)[12] In 6th-century CE Arabia, the majority of people were pagans. They lived in tribes, each with its own leader. Some were farmers, others traders, but many reared camels and raided other tribes for booty. It was into this society, in CE 570, that Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) was born in Makkah. His parents died and he was looked after first by his grandfather and then by his uncle. As he grew up, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) became known as Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) al-Amin, 'the trustworthy'. He worked for a wealthy older widow, Khadija, who, impressed with his honesty, asked him to marry her. He was twenty-five, and they remained married until her death twenty-five years later. Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) often used to go from the bustle of Makkah for periods of reflection in a cave outside the city. During one such time, when he was forty years old, he heard the voice of the angel Jibril giving him a command: Recite in the Name of your Lord who creates, Creates man from a clot. Recite! Your Lord is the Most Bountiful, Who taught the use of the pen, Taught humankind that which they knew not. (96:1-5) Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) repeated the words until he had learned them by heart. He rushed home and related his experience to his wife, who comforted and reassured him. Khadija and the Prophet's young cousin 'Ali (peace be upon him) were the first people to understand and accept that Allah had chosen 'the trustworthy one' to deliver his final guidance. Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) continued to receive revelations for over twenty years. As time passed, it became clear to ever-increasing numbers of people that Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) was indeed a Messenger of Allah. The least receptive were those powerful Makkans who trafficked in idols and slaves and benefited most from idol worship and the pilgrim trade. They treated Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) with derision. Despite this, he continued to deliver the revelations of Allah's mercy and justice, which were welcomed by the poor and oppressed. The Prophet (peace be upon him and his family), his family, and followers were driven from Makkah. For three years they sheltered in a valley outside the city in conditions of hardship and hunger. Narrowly escaping assassination in Makkah, the Prophet (peace be upon him and his family) traveled to Madina in CE 622. The migration from Makkah to Madina, known as the Hijrah, became the starting point of the Muslim calendar. Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) was very well received in Madina where he became head of what was to become the first Islamic state. In CE 630, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) and his followers entered Makkah. At the Ka'bah, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) cleared the hundreds of idols from inside and proclaimed that truth had come and falsehood had vanished. He was 63 when he died, and by the time of his death the majority of people in Arabia had accepted Islam as their way of life. The final verse of the Qur'an to be revealed to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family), a few days before his death, was this: "Today I [Allah] have perfected for you your religion, completed my favor upon you, and have chosen for you Islam as your religion." (5:3) 4. Succession to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) (imama) All of the prophets and messengers of God had successors, and just as Allah appointed His prophets and messengers for the guidance of mankind, He also appointed successors to the prophets and messengers as a matter of necessity. Abraham (peace be upon him) was succeeded by two of his sons, Isaac and Ishmael (peace be upon them), while Moses (peace be upon him) was succeeded by his brother Aaron (peace be upon him) and Jesus (peace be upon him) by two prophets whom the Qur'an mentions in the chapter called "Ya Sin". (36:13-14) Likewise, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) was succeeded by twelve distinguished successors, one after another. These successors were called imams and were appointed by Allah, not by humankind. The right to ordain imams belongs only to Almighty Allah, and the Qur'an speaks about this in many verses: "And remember when your Lord said to the angels, 'Verily I am going to place a successor (khalifa)." (2:30) Allah addressed Prophet David (peace be upon him) as such: "O David! Verily We have placed you as a successor on earth." (38:26) "And remember when the Lord of Abraham tried him with certain commands which he fulfilled; Allah said to him, 'Verily I am going to make you a leader (imam) of mankind.'" (2:124) Allah also attributes the right of appointing leaders to Himself: "We made from among them leaders, giving guidance under Our command." (32:24) During his lifetime, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) specifically mentioned the names of the leaders that would come after him, that there would be twelve of them, and that all of them would be descended from a particular Arab tribe called Quraysh.[13] The twelve successors to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) are as follows: Imam 'Ali ibn Abi Talib (600-661) Imam 'Ali (peace be upon him) was the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law and the one about whom he said: "I am the city of knowledge and 'Ali is its gate." He also said, "Whoever considers me his leader, 'Ali is also his leader." 110,000 people heard the Prophet (peace be upon him and his family) say this at a place called Ghadir Khum. Muslims and non-Muslims alike recognized Imam 'Ali (peace be upon him) for his wisdom, bravery, and justice. Many of his sayings and speeches have been preserved in a book called The Peak of Eloquence (Nahj al-Balagha). He was assassinated by members of a fringe movement while he was praying. Fatima az-Zahra (562-580) Although not one of the successors, Fatima al-Zahra (peace be upon her) is included in this list because of her high status and importance. Fatima al-Zahra (peace be upon her) was the daughter of the beloved Prophet of Islam (peace be upon him and his family) from his respected wife Khadija. She was born in Makkah on the twentieth day of Jumaada al-Thaani (the sixth month of the Islamic calendar). Although he had several children, Fatima was his favorite, for she was carrying the light of the message of the Prophet (peace be upon him and his family) to the generations to come through her offspring. A chapter of the Qur'an[14] was revealed about her: Verily We have granted you [Prophet Muhammad] al-kawthar[15] Therefore, turn in prayer to your Lord and sacrifice for Him. And he who makes you angry - he will be cut off from offspring. She and her father had a mutual attachment; 'Aisha, one of the wives of the Prophet (peace be upon him and his family), has said: "I never saw a person who so resembled her father in speech, movements, and gestures more than Fatima, and once she goes to visit her father, he stands, takes her hand, kisses it, and places her in his own seat."[16] Fatima was so emotionally and spiritually close to her father that he declared: "Fatima is part of me. Whoever angers her angers me, and she is the mother of her father."[17] Fatima proved to be the best daughter to her father, mother for her four children (Hasan, Husain, Zaynab, and Um Kalthoum), and the ideal wife for her husband Imam 'Ali (peace be upon him). She was the perfect example of a virtuous, righteous lady in Islam. She set many examples in her social and political life. As a result of the conflict over power after the demise of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him and his family), Fatima al-Zahra (peace be upon her) died at the age of 18 years. Imam Hasan ibn 'Ali (625-670) Imam Husain ibn 'Ali (626-680) : Imam Husain (peace be upon him) revolted against the tyrant of his time, Yazid the son of Mu'awiyah. He left his hometown of Madina to go to the city of Makkah and then with 72 of his followers and close family members to Iraq where he was brutally massacred on the day of Ashura[18] in the city of Karbala, 60 miles to the south of Baghdad. Imam Husain (peace be upon him) stood for truth, sacrificed himself for truth and justice, and fought corruption and aggression. The battle of Karbala represents the battle between truth and falsehood, good versus evil, and justice versus aggression, oppression, and tyranny. Therefore, he became the beacon of light for all free people in this universe, shook the foundations of the Muslim nation with his martyrdom, and steered the consciousness of the Muslim people at that time. Hundreds of revolutions and revolts followed his martyrdom until the corrupt empire of Bani Umayyah collapsed. Imam Husain (peace be upon him) still plays a very significant role in the life of the Muslims in their endeavor to fight injustice and deviation in all societies. Imam 'Ali ibn al-Husain (659-713) Imam Muhammad al-Baqir (676-733) Imam Ja'far as-Sadiq (702-765) : Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq (peace be upon him) was the son of Muhammad al-Baqir (peace be upon him) and was the sixth imam of the school of the ahl al-bayt. He was born on the seventeenth day of Rabi' al-Awwal (the third month of the Islamic calendar) in the city of Madina. He learned from his father the sciences of religion and the teachings of Islam and became the authority of jurisprudents, scholars, and preachers after the martyrdom of his father. He made the mosque of Madina a university from which to spread Islamic ideology and graduated hundreds of scholars versed in Islamic sciences and prophetic traditions. Scholars and preachers gave their testimonies acknowledging his great standing and abundant knowledge. One of them, Sibt al-Jawzi has said, "Never have I seen scholars less knowledgeable in the presence of a man like al-Sadiq." The men of knowledge and piety saw in Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq (peace be upon him) a leader, a scholar, and an unmatched educator. He was also a great social personality and an effective political force in the leading political circles. Imam al-Sadiq (peace be upon him) taught two of the leaders of the other Islamic schools of jurisprudence: Abu Hanifa (Nu'man ibn Thabit) and Malik ibn Anas. Imam al-Sadiq (peace be upon him) uttered thousands of hadith (Prophetic traditions) regarding every facet of life. He extensively discussed Islamic ethics, mannerisms, integrity, goodness of character, and acts of worship in addition to jurisprudence and debated with leaders of other schools of thought. Imam al-Sadiq (peace be upon him) was poisoned by the caliph of his time and was buried in the cemetery of al-Baqi' in Madina. Imam Musa al-Kazim (746-799) Imam 'Ali ar-Rida (765-818) Imam Muhammad al-Jawad (811-835) Imam 'Ali al-Hadi (827-868) Imam Hasan al-Askari (846-874) Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi (869-present) : Imam al-Mahdi is the last of the imams of the people on earth, and with him the line of succession to the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him and his family) ends. Because of the necessity of having a representative from Allah present on the earth, he still - by the will of Allah - lives in this world, but he does not live in public view. He will, however, reappear towards the end of human civilization at a time when the world has been filled with evil and injustice to restore order and make justice prevail. These imams were the authorities of Allah among mankind. Like the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him and his family), they were all special personalities in matters of knowledge, forbearance, morality, and justice. The Family of the Prophet (Ahl al-bayt) The ahl al-bayt are the immediately family of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family), namely: his daughter Fatima al-Zahra; his cousin, son-in-law, and first successor Imam 'Ali; and his grandchildren Hasan and Husain (peace be upon them). The purity of these five is spoken of in the Qur'an: "Allah only wishes to remove all uncleanliness from you, O People of the House (ahl al-bayt), and to make you as pure as possible." (33:33) Like the prophets and the prophets' successors, these five were infallible, free from all sin or error. Near the end of his life, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "It is probable that I will be called soon, and I will respond. So I leave behind me among you two weighty things: the Book of Allah [the Qur'an], and my Ahl al-Bayt. Verily, Allah, the Merciful, the Aware, has informed me that these two will never be separated from each other until they meet me at the fountain in Heaven called Kawthar."[19] The Prophet (peace be upon him and his family) has also said: "The parable of my ahl al-bayt is similar to that of Noah's ark. Whoever embarks on it will certainly be rescued, but whoever opposes the boarding of it will surely be drowned."[20] The necessity of taking hold of both things that the Prophet (peace be upon him and his family) left behind cannot be overemphasized; those who choose to follow the Qur'an but not the guidance of the ahl al-bayt will invariably go astray. As a rule, the prophets of Allah did not ask any reward for the pain and suffering they endured while attempting to guide mankind. In fact, this refusal to accept compensation can be seen as the mark of a prophet: "Obey those who ask no reward from you and who have themselves received guidance." (36:21) However, by the command of Allah, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) made one slight exception; although he refused to accept anything for himself, he was commanded to say: "I do not ask you for any reward except love for my relatives [the ahl al-bayt]." (42:23) Love for the Prophet's ahl al-bayt does not benefit the Prophet himself (peace be upon him and his family) so much as it does the one who approaches them with kindness and loyalty and in return derives knowledge, guidance, and blessings from Allah. Imam 'Ali (peace be upon him) has spoken about the ahl al-bayt: We, the ahl al-bayt, possess the doors of wisdom and light of governance. Beware that the paths of religion are one and its highways are straight. He who follows them achieves and secures the aim and objective. And he who stands away from them goes astray and incurs repentance.[21] The example of the descendants of Muhammad - peace and blessing of Allah be upon him and his descendants - is like that of stars in the sky. When one star sets another one rises.[22] We are lights of the heavens and the earth and the ships of salvation. We are the repository of knowledge, and towards us is the homecoming of all matters. Through our Mahdi (the final successor to the Prophet) all arguments shall be refuted, and he is the seal of the imams, the deliverer of the ummah (the Muslim nation), and the extremity of the light. Happy are those who hold onto our handle and are brought together upon our love.[23] 5. The Day of Judgement and the Resurrection (qiyama) Approximately 1,200 verses of the Qur'an speak of life after death and the Day of Resurrection, as do a vast number of sayings related from Prophet Muhammad and his successors (peace be upon all of them). This number reveals the importance and significance of life after death and emphasizes that the life of the human being does not end at death but in fact continues afterwards towards a new life - indeed, its true life. Allah placed human beings on the earth to test them, and so different people live for different lengths of time before they die and their souls are separated from their bodies. Their souls then live on, facing the grave and the questioning therein. After that, the souls return to their bodies which will be resurrected on the Day of Judgement, on which day they will receive whatever they deserve according to their beliefs and deeds in life. Some people will go to Heaven, also called the Garden, or the Paradise. Others will go to Hell, oftentimes called the Fire. And a select few will be brought into a state of nearness to God. Both Heaven and Hell have different levels; the worst of people will be in the lowest depths of Hell, while the best of them will be in the highest parts of Heaven. Death and Life after Death And they ask you concerning the spirit. Say: "The spirit, it is one of the things, the knowledge of which is only with my Lord, and of knowledge, you mankind have been given only a little. (17:85) Although humanity has been permitted to know only a little about life after death right now, the Holy Qur'an still reveals some of the secrets surrounding the soul. The Qur'an says: It is Allah who takes away the souls at the time of their death, and those that die not during their sleep. He keeps those souls for which He has ordained death and sends the rest for a term appointed. Verily, in this are signs for people who think deeply. (39:42) The soul will be buried along with the body in the grave. It could get permission from Allah to depart from the grave, but it must go back to it again. Each individual, if faithful, faces two paradises after death, or if he is unfaithful and a sinner, two hells.[24] One of them is for the souls before the Day of Judgement, and the second is the permanent abode. Once Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him) sent two messengers to the city of Antioch to call for monotheism and the worshipping of Allah. One of the men of that town embraced the faith and followed them, so the king of the land ordered that righteous man to be killed. When he died, he said: "Verily I have believed in your Lord. So listen to me. It was said to him when the disbelievers killed him, 'Enter paradise.' He said, Would that my people knew what my Lord Allah has forgiven me for and made me one of the honored ones.'" (36:25-27) The paradise that he had entered was of the kind, called barzakh, that the soul lives in before the Day of Judgement; on the Day of Judgement everyone will know the fate of everyone else, and there will be no need, as above, to tell others. The descriptions of both types of hellfire are very vivid and painful: "Evil torment encompassed Pharaoh's people - the fire: they are exposed to it morning and afternoon, and on the day when the Hour will be established." (40:46) Islam teaches that the parting of the soul is accompanied with severe pain. The moment of death has been described: Nay! When the soul reaches the collarbone, and it will be said, "Who can cure him and save him from death?" and he, the dying person, will conclude that it is the time of departing, and he is shrouded; the drive on that day will be to your Lord. (75:26-30) Remember that the two recording angels receive each human being after attaining the age of puberty, one sitting on the right and one on the left, to note his actions. Not a word does he utter but there is a watcher sitting by him to record it. And the stupor of death will come in truth; this is what you have been avoiding. And the trumpet will be blown; that will be the day whereof warning had been given, and every person will come forth with an angel to drive him and an angel to bear witness. It will be said to the sinners: "Indeed, you were heedless of this. Now We have removed your covering, and sharp is your sight this day." (50:17-22) But for the true believers, the departure of the soul will be peaceful: It will be said to the pious: "O you in complete rest and satisfaction, come back to your Lord well-please yourself and well-pleasing unto Him. Enter then among my honored servants, and enter my Paradise." (89:27-30) Repentance and Forgiveness Repentance is the giving up of sin and is the best way of expressing regret for having committed one. It involves both sincerely regretting having committed the particular sin and then resolving never to do it again. Repentance is the source of and means to success: "Turn to Allah, O Believers, that you may be successful." (24:31) No matter how grievous a person's sin may be, the forgiveness of Allah is greater, and no one should be ashamed to turn towards Allah in repentance because Allah can erase the sins of whomever He pleases. Say: "O My servants who have transgressed against themselves, despair not of the mercy of Allah; verily, Allah forgives all sins. Verily, He is the Forgiving, the Merciful. (39:53) Tell My servants that I am the Forgiving, the Merciful. (15:49) Will they not turn to Allah and ask His forgiveness? Allah is the Forgiving, the Merciful. (5:74) Your Lord is full of forgiveness for mankind in spite of their wrongdoing. (13:6) Despite His ability to destroy mankind if he so willed, the main characteristics of Allah are forgiveness and mercifulness, and for this reason Muslims begin nearly every action, speech, or endeavor with the words, "In the name of Allah, the most Merciful, the most Compassionate."[25] Repentance is of benefit both now and during the Hereafter. Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) has narrated that repenting brings an increase of wealth, protection from danger, and an easing of hardships and difficulties. Furthermore, it has been said that the fastest way to attain nearness to Allah is to humble the self before Allah and admit to wrongdoing. The benefits of repentance for the next life are obvious - entrance into Paradise and safety from the Hellfire. Repentance will be accepted up until the moment of death. Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) once said that if a person seeks repentance one year before dying, Allah will accept it. Even if a person seeks repentance one day before dying, Allah will accept it. Then he pointed to his throat and said that even if someone seeks repentance before his soul reaches here, Allah will accept it. Nonetheless, repentance should be done as soon as possible and should not be delayed; this point has been emphasized again and again in the Islamic tradition. Imam 'Ali says: "How numerous are the procrastinators who postpone [repenting and doing good deeds] until death overtakes them!"[26] Repentance should be done in secrecy and privacy. People can establish a direct link to Allah while seeking repentance without the necessity of a third person interfering and in fact should not let others know about their sins. Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) once told Imam 'Ali (peace be upon him): "O 'Ali, blessed is he whom Allah looks upon while he is weeping for the sin that none is aware of except Allah."[27] In addition to not revealing his own sins, every person must conceal the faults of his brother or sister in religion to preserve that person's honor and society. That person's faults may be dealt with personally and privately but must not be spread among society. A person who sincerely repents is loved by Allah and is as if he or she had never committed any sins at all. Imam al-Baqir (peace be upon him) has said: "He who repents of his sins is as one who has not any burden of sin."[28] But repentance must be sincere; Allah knows who sincerely regrets misdeeds and who is just saying words. A person came to Imam 'Ali (peace be upon him) and said, "Astaghfirullah, I seek Allah's forgiveness," and the Imam (peace be upon him) replied: Do you know what asking Allah's forgiveness is? It is a word that stands on six supports. The first is to repent over the past. The second is to make a firm determination never to revert to it. The third is to discharge all the rights of people so that you may meet Allah quite clean with nothing to account for. The fourth is to fulfill every obligation which you ignored in the past so that you may now be just with it. The fifth is to aim at the flesh grown as a result of unlawful earning so that you may melt it by grief of repentance till the skin touches the bone and a new flesh grows between them. And the sixth is to make the body taste the pain of obedience as you previously made it taste the sweetness of disobedience. On such an occasion, you may say, "I seek Allah's forgiveness."

What is Islam? read all details before you come quick to judge? The Core of Islam:Among the blessings and favors that God has bestowed upon humanity is that He endowed them with an innate ability to recognize and acknowledge His existence. He placed this awareness deep in their hearts as a natural disposition that has not changed since human beings were first created. Furthermore, He reinforced this natural disposition with the signs that he placed in Creation that testify to His existence. However, since it is not possible for human beings to have a detailed knowledge of God except through revelation from Himself, God sent His Messengers to teach the people about their Creator Who they must worship. These Messengers also brought with them the details of how to worship God, because such details cannot be known except by way of revelation. These two fundamentals were the most important things that the Messengers of all the divine revelations brought with them from God. On this basis, all the divine revelations have had the same lofty objectives, which are: 1. To affirm the Oneness of God - the praised and glorified Creator – in His essence and His attributes. 2. To affirm that God alone should be worshipped and that no other being should be worshipped along with Him or instead of Him. 3. To safeguard human welfare and oppose corruption and evil. Thus, everything that safeguards faith, life, reason, wealth and lineage are part of this human welfare that religion protects. On the other hand, anything that endangers these five universal needs is a form of corruption that religion opposes and prohibits. 4. To invite the people to the highest level of virtue, moral values, and noble customs. The ultimate goal of every Divine Message has always been the same: to guide the people to God, to make them aware of Him, and to have them worship Him alone. Each Divine Message came to strengthen this meaning, and the following words were repeated on the tongues of all the Messengers: “Worship God, you have no god other than Him.” This message was conveyed to humanity by prophets and messengers which God sent to every nation. All of these messengers came with this same message, the message of Islam. All the Divine Messages came to bring the life of the people into willing submission to God. For this reason, they all share the name of “Islam”, or “submission” derived from the same word as “Salam”, or “peace”, in Arabic. Islam, in this sense, was the religion of all the prophets, but why does one see different variations of the religion of God if they all emanated from the same source? The answer is twofold. The first reason is that as a result of the passage of time, and due to the fact that previous religions were not under the Divine protection of God, they underwent much change and variation. As a result, we see that the fundamental truths which were brought by all messengers now differ from one religion to another, the most apparent being the strict tenet of the belief and worship of God and God alone. The second reason for this variation is that God, in His infinite Wisdom and eternal Will, decreed that all the divine missions prior to the final message of Islam brought by Muhammad, may God praise him, be limited to a specific time frame. As a result, their laws and methodologies dealt with the specific conditions of the people whom they had been sent to address. Humanity has passed through numerous periods of guidance, misguidance, integrity, and deviation, from the most primitive age to the heights of civilization. Divine guidance accompanied humanity through all of this, always providing the appropriate solutions and remedies. This was the essence of the disparity that existed between the different religions. This disagreement never went beyond the particulars of the Divine Law. Each manifestation of the Law addressed the particular problems of the people it was meant for. However, the areas of agreement were significant and many, such as fundamentals of faith; the basic principles and objectives of the Divine Law, such as protecting faith, life, reason, wealth, and lineage and establishing justice in the land; and certain fundamental prohibitions, some of the most important of these being idolatry, fornication, murder, theft, and giving false witness. Moreover, they also agreed upon moral virtues like honesty, justice, charity, kindness, chastity, righteousness, and mercy. These principles as well as others are permanent and lasting; they are the essence of all the Divine Messages and bind them all together. The Origins of Islam: But where does the message of Muhammad, may God praise him, fit in with the previous messages revealed by God? A brief history of the prophets might clear this point. The first human, Adam, followed Islam, in that he directed worship to God alone and none else and abided by His commandments. But through the passage of time and the dispersal of humanity throughout the earth, people strayed from this message and began directing worship to others instead of or along with God. Some took to worshipping the pious who passed away amongst them, while others took to worshipping spirits and forces of nature. It was then that God started to send messengers to humanity steering them back to the worship of God Alone, which accorded to their true nature, and warning them of the grave consequences of directing any type of worship to others besides Him. The first of these messengers was Noah, who was sent to preach this message of Islam to his people, after they had started to direct worship to their pious forefathers along with God. Noah called his people to leave the worship of their idols, and ordered them to return to the worship of God Alone. Some of them followed the teachings of Noah, while the majority disbelieved in him. Those who followed Noah were followers of Islam, or Muslims, while those that did not, remained in their disbelief and were seized with a punishment for doing so. After Noah, God sent messengers to every nation who had strayed from the Truth, to steer them back to it. This Truth was the same throughout time: to reject all objects of worship and to direct all worship without exception to God and none else, the Creator and Lord of all, and to abide by His commandments. But as we mentioned before, because each nation differed in regards to their way of life, language, and culture, specific messengers were sent to specific nations for a specific time period. God sent messengers to all nations, and to the Kingdom of Babylon He sent Abraham – one of the earliest and greatest prophets – who called his people to reject the worship of the idols to which they were devoted. He called them to Islam, but they rejected him and even tried to kill him. God put Abraham through many tests, and he proved true to all of them. For his many sacrifices, God proclaimed that he would raise from amongst his progeny a great nation and choose prophets from amongst them. Whenever people from his progeny started to stray away from the Truth, which was to worship none but God alone and to obey His commandments, God sent them another messenger steering them back to it. Consequently, we see that many prophets were sent amongst the progeny of Abraham, such as his two sons Isaac and Ishmael, along with Jacob (Israel), Joseph, David, Solomon, Moses, and of course, Jesus, to mention a few, may the Peace and Blessings of God be upon them all. Each prophet was sent to the Children of Israel (the Jews) when they went astray from the true religion of God, and it became obligatory upon them to follow the messenger which was sent to them and obey their commandments. All of the messengers came with the same message, to reject worship of all other beings except God Alone and to obey His commandments. Some disbelieved in the prophets, while others believed. Those that believed were followers of Islam, or Muslims. From amongst the messengers was Muhammad, may God praise him, from the progeny of Ishmael, the son of Abraham, may God praise him, who was sent as a messenger in succession to Jesus. Muhammad, may God praise him, preached the same message of Islam as the previous prophets and messengers – to direct all worship to God Alone and none else and to obey His commandments – in which the followers of the previous prophets went astray. So as we see, the Prophet Muhammad, may God praise him, was not the founder of a new religion, as many people mistakenly think, but he was sent as the Final Prophet of Islam. By revealing His final message to Muhammad, which is an eternal and universal message for all of mankind, God finally fulfilled the covenant that He made with Abraham. Just as it was incumbent upon the those who were alive to follow the message of the last of the succession of prophets which was sent to them, it becomes incumbent upon all of humanity to follow the message of Muhammad. God promised that this message would remain unchanged and fit for all times and places. Suffice is it to say that the way of Islam is the same as the way of the prophet Abraham, because both the Bible and the Quran portray Abraham as a towering example of someone who submitted himself completely to God and directed worship to Him alone and none else, and without any intermediaries. Once this is realized, it should be clear that Islam has the most continuous and universal message of any religion, because all prophets and messengers were “Muslims”, i.e. those who submitted to God’s will, and they preached “Islam”, i.e. submission to the will of Almighty God by worshipping Him Alone and obeying His commandments. So we see that those who call themselves Muslims today do not follow a new religion; rather they follow the religion and message of all prophets and messengers which were sent to humanity by God’s command, also known as Islam. The word “Islam” is an Arabic word which literally means “submission to God”, and Muslims are those who willfully submit to and actively obey God, living in accordance with His message. The Essential Beliefs of Islam: There are many aspects of belief in which one who adheres to Islam must have firm conviction. From those aspects, the most important are six, known as the “Six Articles of Belief”. 1) Belief in God Islam upholds strict monotheism and belief in God forms the heart of their faith. Islam teaches belief in one God who neither gives birth nor was born Himself, and has no share in His caretaking of the world. He alone gives life, causes death, brings good, causes affliction, and provides sustenance for His creation. God in Islam is the sole Creator, Lord, Sustainer, Ruler, Judge, and Savior of the universe. He has no equal in His qualities and abilities, such as knowledge and power. All worship, veneration and homage is to be directed to God and none else. Any breach of these concepts negates the basis of Islam. 2) Belief in the Angels Adherents to Islam must believe in the Unseen world as mentioned in the Quran. From this world are the angels’ emissaries of God, each assigned with a specific task. They have no free-will or ability to disobey; it is their very nature to be God's faithful servants. Angels are not to be taken as demigods or objects of praise or veneration; they are mere servants of God obeying His every command. 3) Belief in the Prophets and Messengers Islam is a universal and inclusive religion. Muslims believe in the prophets, not just the Prophet Muhammad, may God praise him, but the Hebrew prophets, including Abraham and Moses, as well as the prophets of the New Testament, Jesus, and John the Baptist. Islam teaches God did not send prophets to Jews and Christians alone, rather He sent prophets to all nations in the world with one central message: worship God alone. Muslim must believe in all prophets sent by God mentioned in the Quran, without making any distinction between them. Muhammad was sent with the final message, and there is no prophet to come after him. His message is final and eternal, and through him God completed His Message to humanity. 4) Belief in the Sacred Texts Muslims believe in certain books that God has sent down to humanity through His prophets. These books include the Books of Abraham, the Torah of Moses, the Psalms of David, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. These books all had the same source (God), the same message, and all were revealed in truth. This does not mean that they have been preserved in truth. Muslims (and many other Jewish and Christian scholars and historians) find that the books in existence today are not the original scriptures, which in fact have been lost, changed, and/or translated over and over again, losing the original message. As Christians view the New Testament to fulfill and complete the Old Testament, Muslims believe that the Prophet Muhammad received revelations from God through the angel Gabriel to correct human error that had entered into the scriptures and doctrine of Judaism, Christianity and all other religions. This revelation is the Quran, revealed in the Arabic language, and found today in its pristine form. It seeks to guide mankind in all walks of life; spiritual, temporal, individual and collective. It contains directions for the conduct of life, relates stories and parables, describes the attributes of God, and speaks of the best rules to govern social life. It has directions for everybody, every place, and for all time. Millions of people today have memorized the Quran, and all copies of the Quran found today and in the past are identical. God has promised that He will guard the Quran from change until the end of times, so that Guidance be clear to humanity and the message of all the prophets be available for those who seek it. 5) Belief in Life after Death Muslims believe that a day will come when all of creation will perish and resurrected in order to be judged for their deeds: The Day of Judgment. On this day, all will gather in the presence of God and each individual will be questioned about their life in the world and how they lived it. Those who held correct beliefs about God and life, and followed their belief with righteous deeds will enter Paradise, even though they may pay for some of their sins in Hell if God out of His Infinite Justice chooses not to forgive them. As for those who fell into polytheism in its many faces, they will enter Hellfire, never to leave therefrom. 6) Belief in the Divine Decree Islam asserts that God has full power and knowledge of all things, and that nothing happens except by His Will and with His full knowledge. What is known as divine decree, fate, or "destiny" is known in Arabic as al-Qadr. The destiny of every creature is already known to God. This belief however does not contradict with the idea of man's free will to choose his course of action. God does not force us to do anything; we can choose whether to obey or disobey Him. Our choice is known to God before we even do it. We do not know what our destiny is; but God knows the fate of all things. Therefore, we should have firm faith that whatever befalls us, it is according to God's will and with His full knowledge. There may be things that happen in this world that we do not understand, but we should trust that God has wisdom in all things. Islamic Worship: There are five simple but essential observances that all practicing Muslims accept and follow. These “Pillars of Islam” represent the core that unites all Muslims. 1) The ‘Declaration of Faith’ A Muslim is one who testifies that “none deserves worship but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God.” This declaration is known as the “shahada” (witness, testimony). God is the Arabic name for God, just as Yahweh is the Hebrew name for God. By making this simple proclamation one becomes a Muslim. The proclamation affirms Islam’s absolute belief in the oneness of God, His exclusive right to be worshipped, as well as the doctrine that associating anything else with God is the one unforgivable sin as we read in the Koran: “God does not forgive anyone for associating something with Him, while He does forgive whomever He wishes to for anything else. Anyone who gives God partners has invented an awful sin.” (Quran 4:48) The second part of the testimony of faith states that Muhammad, may God praise him, is a prophet of God like Abraham, Moses and Jesus before him. Muhammad brought the last and final revelation. In accepting Muhammad as the “seal of the prophets,” Muslims believe that his prophecy confirms and fulfills all of the revealed messages, beginning with Adam’s. In addition, Muhammad serves as the role model through his exemplary life. A believer’s effort to follow Muhammad’s example reflects the emphasis of Islam on practice and action. 2) The Prayer (Salah) Muslims worship five times a day: at daybreak, noon, mid afternoon, sunset, and evening. It helps keep believers mindful of God in the stress of work and family. It resets the spiritual focus, reaffirms total dependence on God, and puts worldly concerns within the perspective of the last judgment and the afterlife. The prayers consist of standing, bowing, kneeling, putting the forehead on the ground, and sitting. The Prayer is a means in which a relationship between God and His creation is maintained. It includes recitations from the Quran, praises of God, prayers for forgiveness and other various supplications. The prayer is an expression of submission, humility, and adoration of God. Prayers can be offered in any clean place, alone or together, in a mosque or at home, at work or on the road, indoors or out. It is preferable to pray with others as one body united in the worship of God, demonstrating discipline, brotherhood, equality, and solidarity. As they prepare to pray, Muslims face Mecca, the holy city centered around the Kaaba - the house of God built by Abraham and his son Ishmael. 3) The Compulsory Charity (Zakah) In Islam, the true owner of everything is God, not man. People are given wealth as a trust from God. Zakah is worship and thanksgiving to God by supporting the poor, and through it one’s wealth is purified.. It requires an annual contribution of 2.5 percent of an individual’s wealth and assets. Therefore, Zakah is not mere “charity”, it is an obligation on those who have received their wealth from God to meet the needs of less fortunate members of the community. Zakah is used to support the poor, orphans, and widows, help those in debt, and, in olden times, to free slaves. 4) The Fast of Ramadan (Sawm) Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar which is spent in fasting. Healthy Muslims abstain from dawn to sunset from food, drink, and sexual activity. Fasting develops spirituality, dependence upon God, and brings identification with the less fortunate. A special evening prayer is also held mosques in which recitations of the Quran are heard. Families rise before sunrise to take their first meal of the day to sustain them till sunset. The month of Ramadan ends with one of the two major Islamic celebrations, the Feast of the Breaking of the Fast, called Eid al-Fitr, which is marked by joyfulness, family visits, and exchanging of gifts. 5) The fifth Pillar is the Pilgrimage or Hajj to Mecca At least once in a lifetime, every adult Muslim who is physically and financially able is required to sacrifice time, wealth, status, and ordinary comforts of life to make the Hajj pilgrimage, putting himself totally at God’s service. Every year over two million believers from a diversity of cultures and languages travel from all over the world to the sacred city of Mecca[1] to respond to God’s call. Who are Muslims? The Arabic word “Muslim” literally means “someone who is in a state of Islam (submission to the will and law of God)”. The message of Islam is meant for the entire world, and anyone who accepts this message becomes a Muslim. There a over a billion Muslims worldwide. Muslims represent the majority population in fifty-six countries. Many people are surprised to know that the majority of Muslims are not Arab. Even though most Arabs are Muslims, there are Arabs who are Christians, Jews and atheists. Only 20 percent of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims come from Arab countries. There are significant Muslim populations in India, China, Central Asian Republics, Russia, Europe, and America. If one just takes a look at the various peoples who live in the Muslim World - from Nigeria to Bosnia and from Morocco to Indonesia - it is easy enough to see that Muslims come from all different races, ethnic groups, cultures and nationalities. Islam has always been a universal message for all people. Islam is the second largest religion in the world and will soon be the second largest religion in America. Yet, few people know what Islam is. Footnotes: [1] Mecca city is located in Saudi Arabia.

What do you think about Saturday or Sunday being the Sabbath? The Sabbath is Saturday? Which Day? "And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." Genesis 2:2-3 Which day is the Sabbath? "The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God." Exodus 20:10. "And when the sabbath was past, ...very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre." Mark 16:1,2. Modern and Historic Statements on the Sabbath American Congregationalist Anglican Baptist Brethren Catholic Church of Christ Church of England Congregational Christian Church Disciples of Christ Episcopalian Lutheran Lutheran Free Church Methodist Moody Bible Institute Presbyterian Protestant Episcopal Southern Baptist Dictionaries and Encyclopedias Infidel Miscellaneous American Congregationalist: "The current notion that Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted the first day for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament." Dr. Layman Abbot, in the Christian Union, June 26, 1890. Anglican: "And where are we told in the Scriptures that we are to keep the first day at all? We are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first day... The reason why we keep the first day of the week holy instead of the seventh is for the same reason that we observe many other things, not because the Bible, but because the Church, has enjoined it." Isaac Williams, Plain Sermons on the Catechism, pages 334, 336. Baptist: “There was and is a command to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath day was not Sunday. It will however be readily said, and with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week, with all its duties, privileges and sanctions. Earnestly desiring information on this subject, which I have studied for many years, I ask, where can the record of such a transaction be found: Not in the New Testament – absolutely not. There is no scriptural evidence of the change of the Sabbath institution from the seventh to the first day of the week.” Dr. E. T. Hiscox, author of the ‘Baptist Manual’. "To me it seems unaccountable that Jesus, during three years' discussion with His disciples, often conversing with them upon the Sabbath question, discussing it in some of its various aspects, freeing it from its false [Jewish traditional] glosses, never alluded to any transference of the day; also, that during the forty days of His resurrection life, no such thing was intimated. Nor, so far as we know, did the Spirit, which was given to bring to their remembrance all things whatsoever that He had said unto them, deal with this question. Nor yet did the inspired apostles, in preaching the gospel, founding churches, counseling and instructing those founded, discuss or approach the subject. Of course I quite well know that Sunday did come into use in early Christian history as a religious day as we learn from the Christian Fathers and other sources. But what a pity that it comes branded with the mark of Paganism, and christened with the name of the sun-god, then adopted and sanctified by the Papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism." Dr. E. T. Hiscox, report of his sermon at the Baptist Minister's Convention, in 'New York Examiner,' November 16, 1893 (The leader / spokesman for the Roman Catholic Church agrees with this statement.See Below) "The Scriptures nowhere call the first day of the week the Sabbath. . .There is no Scriptural authority for so doing, nor of course, any Scriptural obligation." The Watchman. "We believe that the law of God is the eternal and unchangeable rule of His moral government."-"Baptist Church Manual," Art. 12. "There was never any formal or authoritative change from the Jewish seventh-day Sabbath to the Christian first-day observance." -WILLIAM OWEN CARVER, "The Lord's Day in Our Day," page 49. "There is nothing in Scripture that requires us to keep Sunday rather than Saturday as a holy day." Harold Lindsell (editor), Christianity Today, Nov. 5, 1976 Brethren: "With the views of the law and the Sabbath we once held ... and which are still held by perhaps the great majority of the most earnest Christians, we confess that we could not answer Adventists. What is more, neither before or since have I heard or read what would conclusively answer an Adventist in his Scriptural contention that the Seventh day is the Sabbath (Ex. 20:10). It is not 'one day in seven' as some put it, but 'the seventh day according to the commandment.' " Words of Truth and Grace, p. 281. ^ Top Catholic: “It is well to remind the Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and all other Christians, that the Bible does not support them anywhere in their observance of Sunday. Sunday is an institution of the Roman Catholic Church, and those who observe the day observe a commandment of the Catholic Church.” Priest Brady, in an address, reported in the Elizabeth, NJ ‘News’ on March 18, 1903. See This Rock "Protestants ... accept Sunday rather than Saturday as the day for public worship after the Catholic Church made the change... But the Protestant mind does not seem to realize that ... in observing Sunday, they are accepting the authority of the spokesman for the Church, the pope." Our Sunday Visitor, February 5th, 1950. See This Rock “Of course these two old quotations are exactly correct. The Catholic Church designated Sunday as the day for corporate worship and gets full credit – or blame – for the change.” This Rock, The Magazine of Catholic Apologetics and Evangelization, p.8, June 1997 Question: Which is the Sabbath day? Answer: Saturday is the Sabbath day. Question: Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday? Answer: We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday.” -Rev. Peter Geiermann C.SS.R., The Convert’s Catechism of Catholic Doctrine, p. 50 Q. Must not a sensible Protestant doubt seriously, when he finds that even the Bible is not followed as a rule by his co-religionists? A. Surely, when he sees them baptize infants, abrogate the Jewish Sabbath, and observe Sunday for which [pg. 7] there is no Scriptural authority; when he finds them neglect to wash one another's feet, which is expressly commanded, and eat blood and things strangled, which are expressly prohibited in Scripture. He must doubt, if he think at all. ... Q. Should not the Protestant doubt when he finds that he himself holds tradition as a guide? A. Yes, if he would but reflect that he has nothing but Catholic Tradition for keeping the Sunday holy; ... Controversial Catechism by Stephen Keenan, New Edition, revised by Rev. George Cormack, published in London by Burns & Oates, Limited - New York, Cincinnati, Chicago: Benzinger Brothers, 1896, pages 6, 7. "The Church, on the other hand, after changing the day of rest from the Jewish Sabbath, or seventh day of the week, to the first, made the Third Commandment refer to Sunday as the day to be kept holy as the Lord's Day. The Council of Trent (Sess. VI, can. xix) condemns those who deny that the Ten Commandments are binding on Christians." The Catholic Encyclopedia, Commandments of God, Volume IV, © 1908 by Robert Appleton Company, Online Edition © 1999 by Kevin Knight, Nihil Obstat - Remy Lafort, Censor Imprimatur - +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York, page 153. ''The [Roman Catholic] Church changed the observance of the Sabbath to Sunday by right of the divine, infallible authority given to her by her founder, Jesus Christ. The Protestant claiming the Bible to be the only guide of faith, has no warrant for observing Sunday. In this matter the Seventh-day Adventist is the only consistent Protestant.'' The Catholic Universe Bulletin, August 14, 1942, p. 4. "All of us believe many things in regard to religion that we do not find in the Bible. For example, nowhere in the Bible do we find that Christ or the Apostles ordered that the Sabbath be changed from Saturday to Sunday. We have the commandment of God given to Moses to keep holy the Sabbath Day, that is the 7th day of the week, Saturday. Today most Christians keep Sunday because it has been revealed to us by the Church outside the Bible." The Catholic Virginian, "To Tell You The Truth,” Vol. 22, No. 49 (Oct. 3, 1947). "... you may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we never sanctify." The Faith of Our Fathers, by James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, 88th edition, page 89. Originally published in 1876, republished and Copyright 1980 by TAN Books and Publishers, Inc., pages 72-73. 'Deny the authority of the Church and you have no adequate or reasonable explanation or justification for the substitution of Sunday for Saturday in the Third - Protestant Fourth - Commandment of God... The Church is above the Bible, and this transference of Sabbath observance is proof of that fact.'' Catholic Record, September 1, 1923. "But since Saturday, not Sunday, is specified in the Bible, isn't it curious that non-Catholics who profess to take their religion directly from the Bible and not the Church, observe Sunday instead of Saturday? Yes, of course, it is inconsistent; but this change was made about fifteen centuries before Protestantism was born, and by that time the custom was universally observed. They have continued the custom, even though it rests upon the authority of the Catholic Church and not upon an explicit text in the Bible. That observance remains as a reminder of the Mother Church from which the non-Catholic sects broke away - like a boy running away from home but still carrying in his pocket a picture of his mother or a lock of her hair." The Faith of Millions "Perhaps the boldest thing, the most revolutionary change the Church ever did, happened in the first century. The holy day, the Sabbath, was changed from Saturday to Sunday. "The Day of the Lord" (dies Dominica) was chosen, not from any directions noted in the Scriptures, but from the Church's sense of its own power. The day of resurrection, the day of Pentecost, fifty days later, came on the first day of the week. So this would be the new Sabbath. People who think that the Scriptures should be the sole authority, should logically become 7th Day Adventists, and keep Saturday holy." Sentinel, Pastor's page, Saint Catherine Catholic Church, Algonac, Michigan, May 21, 1995 “If Protestants would follow the Bible, they would worship God on the Sabbath Day. In keeping the Sunday they are following a law of the Catholic Church.” Albert Smith, Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, replying for the Cardinal, in a letter dated February 10, 1920. “The observance of Sunday by the Protestants is homage they pay, in spite of themselves, to the authority of the [Catholic] Church.” Monsignor Louis Segur, ‘Plain Talk about the Protestantism of Today’, p. 213. What Important Question Does the Papacy Ask Protestants? Protestants have repeatedly asked the papacy, "How could you dare to change God's law?" But the question posed to Protestants by the Catholic church is even more penetrating. Here it is officially: ""You will tell me that Saturday was the Jewish Sabbath, but that the Christian Sabbath has been changed to Sunday. Changed! but by whom? Who has authority to change an express commandment of Almighty God? When God has spoken and said, Thou shalt keep holy the seventh day, who shall dare to say, Nay, thou mayest work and do all manner of worldly business on the seventh day; but thou shalt keep holy the first day in its stead? This is a most important question, which I know not how you can answer. You are a Protestant, and you profess to go by the Bible and the Bible only; and yet in so important a matter as the observance of one day in seven as a holy day, you go against the plain letter of the Bible, and put another day in the place of that day which the Bible has commanded. The command to keep holy the seventh day is one of the ten commandments; you believe that the other nine are still binding; who gave you authority to tamper with the fourth? If you are consistent with your own principles, if you really follow the Bible and the Bible only, you ought to be able to produce some portion of the New Testament in which this fourth commandment is expressly altered."" *Library of Christian Doctrine: Why Don't You Keep Holy the Sabbath-Day? (London: Burns and Oates, Ltd.), pp. 3, 4. ''I have repeatedly offered $1,000 to anyone who can prove to me from the Bible alone that I am bound to keep Sunday holy. There is no such law in the Bible. It is a law of the holy Catholic Church alone. The Bible says 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.' The Catholic Church says, No. By my divine power I abolish the Sabbath day and command you to keep holy the first day of the week. And lo! The entire civilized world bows down in reverent obedience to the command of the Holy Catholic Church." Priest Thomas Enright, C.S.S.R., February 18, 1884, Printed in the American Sentinel, a New York Roman Catholic journal in June 1893, p. 173. "There is but one church on the face of the earth which has the power, or claims power, to make laws binding on the conscience, binding before God, binding under penalty of hell-fire. For instance, the institution of Sunday. What right has any other church to keep this day? You answer by virtue of the third commandment (the papacy did away with the 2nd regarding the worship of graven images, and called the 4th the 3rd), which says 'Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.' But Sunday is not the Sabbath. Any schoolboy knows that Sunday is the first day of the week. I have repeatedly offered one thousand dollars to anyone who will prove by the Bible alone that Sunday is the day we are bound to keep, and no one has called for the money. It was the holy Catholic Church that changed the day of rest from Saturday, the seventh day, to Sunday, the first day of the week." - T. Enright, C.S.S.R., in a lecture delivered in 1893. ''Of course the Catholic Church claims that the change was her act. And the act is a mark of her ecclesiastical power and authority in religious matters.'' C. F. Thomas, Chancellor of Cardinal Gibbons, in answer to a letter regarding the change of the Sabbath, November 11, 1895. “Tradition, not Scripture, is the rock on which the church of Jesus Christ is built.” Adrien Nampon, Catholic Doctrine as Defined by the Council of Trent, p. 157 "The Pope is of so great authority and power that he can modify, explain, or interpret even divine law". The pope can modify divine law, since his power is not of man, but of God, and he acts a vicegerent of God upon earth" Lucius Ferraris, Prompta Bibliotheca, art. Papa, II, Vol. VI, p. 29. "The leader of the Catholic church is defined by the faith as the Vicar of Jesus Christ (and is accepted as such by believers). The Pope is considered the man on earth who "takes the place" of the Second Person of the omnipotent God of the Trinity." John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 3, 1994 "...pastoral intuition suggested to the Church the christianization of the notion of Sunday as "the day of the sun", which was the Roman name for the day and which is retained in some modern languages.(29) This was in order to draw the faithful away from the seduction of cults which worshipped the sun, and to direct the celebration of the day to Christ, humanity's true "sun"." John Paul II, Dies Domini, 27. The day of Christ-Light, 1998 (Prominent protestant leaders agree with this statement - See above for a statement by Dr. E. T. Hiscox, author of the ‘Baptist Manual’) "The Sun was a foremost god with heathen-dom…The sun has worshippers at this hour in Persia and other lands…. There is, in truth, something royal, kingly about the sun, making it a fit emblem of Jesus, the Sun of Justice. Hence the church in these countries would seem to have said, to 'Keep that old pagan name [Sunday]. It shall remain consecrated, sanctified.' And thus the pagan Sunday, dedicated to Balder, became the Christian Sunday, sacred to Jesus." William Gildea, Doctor of Divinity, The Catholic World, March, 1894, p. 809 "The retention of the old pagan name of Dies Solis, for Sunday is, in a great measure, owing to the union of pagan and Christian sentiment with which the first day of the week was recommended by Constantine to his subjects - pagan and Christian alike - as the 'venerable' day of the sun."" Arthur P. Stanley, History of the Eastern Church, p. 184 "When St. Paul repudiated the works of the law, he was not thinking of the Ten Commandments, which are as unchangeable as God Himself is, which God could not change and still remain the infinitely holy God."-Our Sunday Visitor, Oct. 7, I951. "Question: How prove you that the Church hath power to command feasts and holydays? Answer: By the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which Protestants allow of; and therefore they fondly contradict themselves, by keeping Sunday strictly, and breaking most other feasts commanded by the same Church." Henry Tuberville, An Abridgment of the Christian Doctrine (1833 approbation), p.58 (Same statement in Manual of Christian Doctrine, ed. by Daniel Ferris [1916 ed.], p.67) "Some theologians have held that God likewise directly determined the Sunday as the day of worship in the NEW LAW, that he himself has explicitly substituted sunday for the Sabbath. But this theory is entirely abandoned. It is now commonly held that God simply gave His church the power to set aside whatever day or days she would deem suitable as holy days. The church chose sunday, the first day of the week, and in the course of time added other days as holy days." - Vincent J. Kelly, Forbidden Sunday and Feast-Day Occupations, Washington, DC, Catholic University of America Press, Studies in Sacred Theology, No. 70.,1943, p. 2. "If we consulted the Bible only, we should still have to keep holy the Sabbath Day, that is, Saturday, with the Jews, instead of Sunday; ..." -- A Course in Religion for Catholic High Schools and Academies, by Rev. John Laux M.A., Benzinger Brothers, 1936 edition, Part 1. "Sunday is a Catholic institution, and... can be defended only on Catholic principles.... From beginning to end of Scripture there is not a single passage that warrants the transfer of weekly public worship from the last day of the week to the first." Catholic Press, Aug. 25, 1900 "The Sabbath was Saturday, not Sunday. The Church altered the observance of the Sabbath to the observance of Sunday. Protestants must be rather puzzled by the keeping of Sunday when God distinctly said, 'Keep holy the Sabbath Day.' The word Sunday does not come anywhere in the Bible, so, without knowing it they are obeying the authority of the Catholic Church." Canon Cafferata, The Catechism Explained, p. 89. ''Reason and sense demand the acceptance of one or the other of these alternatives: either Protestantism and the keeping holy of Saturday, or Catholicity and the keeping holy of Sunday. Compromise is impossible.'' John Cardinal Gibbons, The Catholic Mirror, December 23, 1893. ^ Top Church of Christ: "But we do not find any direct command from God, or instruction from the risen Christ, or admonition from the early apostles, that the first day is to be substituted for the seventh day Sabbath." "Let us be clear on this point. Though to the Christian 'that day, the first day of the week' is the most memorable of all days ... there is no command or warrant in the New Testament for observing it as a holy day." "The Roman Church selected the first day of the week in honour of the resurrection of Christ. ..." Bible Standard, May, 1916, Auckland, New Zealand. "... If the fourth command is binding upon us Gentiles by all means keep it. But let those who demand a strict observance of the Sabbath remember that the seventh day is the ONLY sabbath day commanded, and God never repealed that command. If you would keep the Sabbath, keep it; but Sunday is not the Sabbath. The argument of the 'Seventh-day Adventists' is on one point unassailable. It is the Seventh day not the first day that the command refers to." G. Alridge, Editor, The Bible Standard, April, 1916. "There is no direct Scriptural authority for designating the first day the Lord's day."-DR. D. H. LUCAS, Christian Oracle, Jan. 23, 1890. "The first day of the week is commonly called the Sabbath. This is a mistake. The Sabbath of the Bible was the day just preceding the first day of the week. The first day of the week is never called the Sabbath anywhere in the entire Scriptures. It is also an error to talk about the change of the Sabbath. There never was any change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. There is not in any place in the Bible any intimation of such a change."-"First-Day Observance," pages 17, 19. "It has reversed the fourth commandment by doing away with the Sabbath of God's Word, and instituting Sunday as a holiday." DR. N. SUMMERBELL, "History of the Christian Church," Third Edition, page 4I5. "To command...men...to observe...the Lord's day...is contrary to the gospel." - "Memoirs of Alexander Campbell," Vol. 1, page 528. "It is clearly proved that the pastors of the churches have struck out one of God's ten words, which, not only in the Old Testament, but in all revelation, are the most emphatically regarded as the synopsis of all religion and morality."-ALEXANDER CAMPBELL, "Debate With Purcell," page 214. "I do not believe that the Lord's day came in the room of the Jewish Sabbath, or that the Sabbath was changed from the seventh to the first day, for this plain reason, where there is no testimony, there can be no faith. Now there is no testimony in all the oracles of heaven that the Sabbath was changed, or that the Lord's day came in the room of it."-ALEXANDER CAMPBELL, Washington Reporter, Oct. 8, 1821. ^ Top Church of England: "Many people think that Sunday is the Sabbath. But neither in the New Testament nor in the early church is there anything to suggest that we have any right to transfer the observance of the seventh day of the week to the first. The Sabbath was and is Saturday and not Sunday, and if it were binding on us then we should observe it on that day, and on no other." Rev. Lionel Beere, All-Saints Church, Ponsonby, N.Z. in Church and People, Sept. 1, 1947. "Nowhere in the Bible is it laid down that worship should be done on Sunday. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. ...! That is Saturday." P. Carrington, Archbishop of Quebec, Oct. 27, 1949; cited in Prophetic Signs, p 12. "The observance of the first instead of the seventh day rests on the testimony of the church, and the church alone." Hobart Church News, July 2, 1894; cited in Prophetic Signs, p 14. "Where are we told in Scripture that we are to keep the first day at all? We are commanded to keep the Seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first day. The reason why we keep the first day holy instead of the seventh is for the same reason that we observe many things, not because the Bible, but because the Church, has enjoined them." Rev. Isaac Williams, Ser. on Catechism, p. 334. "The seventh day, the commandment says, is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. No kind of arithmetic, no kind of almanac, can make seven equal one, nor the seventh mean the first, nor Saturday mean Sunday. ... The fact is that we are all Sabbath breakers, every one of us." Rev. Geo. Hodges. "Not any ecclesiastical writer of the first three centuries attributed the origin of Sunday observance either to Christ or to His apostles."-SIR WILLIAM DOMVILLE, "Examination of the Six Texts," pages 6, 7. (Supplement). "There is no word, no hint, in the New Testament about ab­staining from work on Sunday. . . . Into the rest of Sunday no divine law enters…, The observance of Ash Wednesday or Lent stands exactly on the same footing as the observance of Sunday." -CANON EYTON, 'The Ten Commandments," pages 52, 63, 65. "Is there any command in the New Testament to change the day of weekly rest from Saturday to Sunday? None."-"Manual of Christian Doctrine," page 127. "The Lord's day did not succeed in the place of the Sabbath....The Lord's day was merely an ecclesiastical institution. It was not introduced by virtue of the fourth commandment, because for almost three hundred years together they kept that day which was in that commandment...The primitive Christians did all manner of works upon the Lord's day, even in times of persecution, when they are the strictest observers of all the divine commandments; but in this they knew there was none."-BISHOP JEREMY TAYLOR, "Ductor Dubitantium," Part I, Book II, Chap. 2, Rule 6. Sec. 51, 59. "Sunday being the day on which the Gentiles solemnly adore that planet and called it Sunday, partly from its influence on that day especially, and partly in respect to its divine body (as they conceived it), the Christians thought fit to keep the same day and the same name of it, that they might not appear causelessly peevish, and by that means hinder the conversion of the Gentiles, and bring a greater prejudice than might be otherwise taken against the gospel."-T. M. MORER, "Dialogues on the Lord's Day," pages 22, 23. "The Puritan idea was historically unhappy. It made Sun­day into the Sabbath day. Even educated people call Sunday the Sabbath. Even clergymen do." "But, unless my reckoning is all wrong, the Sabbath day lasts twenty-four hours from six o'clock on Friday evening. It gives over, therefore, before we come to Sunday. If you suggest to a Sabbatarian that he ought to observe the Sabbath on the proper day, you arouse no enthusiasm. He at once replies that the day, not the principle, has been changed. But changed by whom? There is no injunction in the whole of the New Testament to Christians to change the Sabbath into Sunday.' - D. MORSE­BOYCOTT, Daily Herald, London, Feb. 26, 1931. "The Christian church made no formal, but a gradual and almost unconscious transference of the one day to the other."- F.W. FARRAR, D.D., "The Voice From Sinai," page 167. "Take which you will, either of the Fathers or the moderns, and we shall find no Lord's day instituted by any apostolical man­date; no Sabbath set on foot by them upon the first day of the week."-PETER HEYLYN, "History of the Sabbath," page 410. "Merely to denounce the tendency to secularise Sunday is as futile as it is easy. What we want is to find some principle, to which as Christians we can appeal, and on which we can base both our conduct and our advice. We turn to the New Testament, and we look in vain for any authoritative rule. There is no recorded word of Christ, there is no word of any of the apostles, which tells how we should keep Sunday, or indeed that we should keep it at all. It is disappointing, for it would make our task much easier if we could point to a definite rule, which left us no option but simple obedience or disobedience. . . . There is no rule for Sunday observance, either in Scripture or history."-DR. STEPHEN, Bishop of Newcastle, N.S.W., in an address reported in the Newcastle Morn­ing Herald, May 14, 1924. ^ Top Congregational: "The Christian Sabbath' [Sunday] is not in the Scripture, and was not by the primitive [early Christian] church called the Sabbath." Timothy Dwight, Theology, sermon 107, 1818 ed., Vol. IV, p49 Note: Timothy Dwight (1752-1817) was president of Yale University from 1795-1817. "It is quite clear that, however rigidly or devoutly we may spend Sunday, we are not keeping the Sabbath ... The Sabbath was founded on a specific divine command. We can plead no such command for the obligation to observe Sunday ... There is not a single sentence in the New Testament to suggest that we incur any penalty by violating the supposed sanctity of Sunday." Dr. Dale, The Ten Commandments, pp. 106, 107. "It must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the first day." Buck's Theological Dictionary page 403. "There is no command in the Bible requiring us to observe the first day of the week as the Christian Sabbath."-ORIN FOWLER, A.M., "Mode and Subjects of Baptism." "The current notion that Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted the first day for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament."-DR. LYMAN ABBOTT, Christian Union, Jan. 18, 1882. Christian Church: "I do not believe that the Lord's day came in the room of the Jewish Sabbath, or that the Sabbath was changed from the seventh to the first day, for this plain reason, where there is no testimony, there can be no faith. Now there is no testimony in all the oracles of heaven that the Sabbath is changed, or that the Lord’s Day came in the room of it." Alexander Campbell, in The Reporter, October 8, 1921 "It has reversed the fourth commandment by doing away with the Sabbath of God's Word, and instituting Sunday as a holiday." - Dr. N. Summerbell, History of the Christian Church, Third Edition, p. 415 "There is no direct scriptural authority for designating the first day the Lord's day." - Dr. D. H. Lucas, Christian Oracle, Jan. 23, 1890. "The first day of the week is commonly called the Sabbath. This is a mistake. The Sabbath of the Bible was the day just preceeding the first day of the week. The first day of the week is never called the Sabbath anywhere in the entire Scriptures. It is also an error to talk about the change of the Sabbath. There never was any change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. There is not in any place in the Bible any intimation of such a change." First-Day Observance, pp. 17, 19. Disciples of Christ: "There is no direct Scriptural authority for designating the first day ‘the Lord’s Day.’" Dr D.H. Lucas, Christian Oracle, January, 1890 "If it [the Ten Commandments] yet exist, let us observe it... And if it does not exist, let us abandon a mock observance of another day for it. 'But,' say some, 'it was changed from the seventh to the first day.' Where? when? and by whom? - No, it never was changed, nor could it be, unless creation was to be gone through again: for the reason assigned [in Genesis 2:1-3] must be changed before the observance or respect to the reason, can be changed. It is all old wives' fables to talk of the 'change of the sabbath' from the seventh to the first day. If it be changed, it was that august personage changed it who changes times and laws ex officio, - I think his name is "Doctor Antichrist.'" Alexander Campbell, The Christian Baptist, February 2, 1824, vol 1, no. 7 ^ Top Episcopalian: "We have made the change from the seventh day to the first day, from Saturday to Sunday, on the authority of the one holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church of Christ." Bishop Symour, Why We keep Sunday. "The Bible commandment says on the seventh-day thou shalt rest. That is Saturday. Nowhere in the Bible is it laid down that worship should be done on Sunday." Phillip Carrington, quoted in Toronto Daily Star, Oct 26, 1949 [Carrington (1892-), Anglican archbishop of Quebec, spoke the above in a message on this subject delivered to a packed assembly of clergymen. It was widely reported at the time in the news media]. Lutheran: "The observance of the Lord's Day (Sunday) is founded not on any command of God, but on the authority of the Church." Augsburg Confession of Faith. "They [the Catholics] allege the Sabbath changed into Sunday, the Lord's day, contrary to the Decalogue, as it appears, neither is there any example more boasted of than the changing of the Sabbath day. Great, say they, is the power and authority of the church, since it dispensed with one of the Ten Commandments." -Augsburg Confession of Faith, Art. 28, par. 9. "They [Roman Catholics] allege the change of the Sabbath into the Lord's day, as it seemeth, to the Decalogue [the ten commandments]; and they have no example more in their mouths than they change of the Sabbath. They will needs have the Church's power to be very great, because it hath dispensed with the precept of the Decalogue." The Augsburg Confession, 1530 A.D. (Lutheran), part 2, art 7, in Philip Schaff, the Creeds of Christiandom, 4th Edition, vol 3, p64 [this important statement was made by the Lutherans and written by Melanchthon, only thirteen years after Luther nailed his theses to the door and began the Reformation]. "For up to this day mankind has absolutely trifled with the original and most special revelation of the Holy God, the ten words written upon the tables of the Law from Sinai."-"Crown Theological Library," page I78. "The Christians in the ancient church very soon distinguished the first day of the week, Sunday; however, not as a Sabbath, but as an assembly day of the church, to study the Word of God together, and to celebrate the ordinances one with another: without a shadow of doubt, this took place as early as the first part of the second century."-Bishop GRIMELUND, "History of the Sabbath," page 60. "The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance."- AUGUSTUS NEANDER, "History of the Christian Religion and Church," Vol. 1, page 186. "I wonder exceedingly how it came to be imputed to me that I should reject the law of Ten Commandments...Whosoever abrogates the law must of necessity abrogate sin also."-MARTIN LUTHER, Spiritual Antichrist," pages 71, 72. "We have seen how gradually the impression of the Jewish Sabbath faded from the mind of the Christian church, and how completely the newer thought underlying the observance of the first day took possession of the church. We have seen that the Christian of the first three centuries never confused one with the other, but for a time celebrated both." The Sunday Problem, a study book by the Lutheran Church (1923) p.36 "But they err in teaching that Sunday has taken the place of the Old Testament Sabbath and therefore must be kept as the seventh day had to be kept by the children of Israel .... These churches err in their teaching, for scripture has in no way ordained the first day of the week in place of the Sabbath. There is simply no law in the New Testament to that effect" John Theodore Mueller, Sabbath or Sunday, pp.15, 16 ^ Top Lutheran Free Church: “For when there could not be produced one solitary place in the Holy Scriptures which testified that either the Lord Himself or the apostles had ordered such a transfer of the Sabbath to Sunday, then it was not easy to answer the question: Who has transferred the Sabbath, and who has the right to do it?” George Sverdrup, ‘A New Day.’ Methodist: "This 'handwriting of ordinances' our Lord did blot out, take away, and nail to His cross. (Colossians 2: 14.) But the moral law contained in the Ten Commandments, and enforced by the prophets, He did not take away.... The moral law stands on an entirely different foundation from the ceremonial or ritual law. ...Every part of this law must remain in force upon all mankind and in all ages."-JOHN WESLEY, "Sermons on Several Occasions," 2-Vol. Edition, Vol. I, pages 221, 222. "No Christian whatsoever is free from the obedience of the commandments which are called moral."-"Methodist Church Discipline," (I904), page 23. "The Sabbath was made for MAN; not for the Hebrews, but for all men."-E.O. HAVEN, "Pillars of Truth," page 88. "The reason we observe the first day instead of the seventh is based on no positive command. One will search the Scriptures in vain for authority for changing from the seventh day to the first. The early Christians began to worship on the first day of the week because Jesus rose from the dead on that day. By and by, this day of worship was made also a day of rest, a legal holiday. This took place in the year 321. "The reason we observe the first day instead of the seventh is based on no positive command. One will search the Scriptures in vain for authority for changing from the seventh day to the first... Our Christian Sabbath, therefore, is not a matter of positive command. It is a gift of the church... "-CLOVIS G. CHAPPELL, "Ten Rules for Living," page 61. "Sabbath in the Hebrew language signifies rest, and is the seventh day of the week... and it must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the first day." Charles Buck, A Theological Dictionary, "Sabbath" "In the days of very long ago the people of the world began to give names to everything, and they turned the sounds of the lips into words, so that the lips could speak a thought. In those days the people worshipped the sun because many words were made to tell of many thoughts about many things. The people became Christians and were ruled by an emperor whose name was Constantine. This emperor made Sunday the Christian Sabbath, because of the blessing of light and heat which came from the sun. So our Sunday is a sun-day, isn't it?"-Sunday School Advocate, Dec. 31, 1921. "The moral law contained in the Ten Commandments, and enforced by the prophets, He [Christ] did not take away. It was not the design of His coming to revoke any part of this. This is a law which never can be broken... Every part of this law must remain in force upon all mankind and in all ages; as not depending either on time or place, or any other circumstances liable to change, but on the nature of God and the nature of man, and their un­changeable relation to each other."-JOHN WESLEY, "Sermons on Several Occasions," Vol. I, Sermon XXV. “It is true that there is no positive command for infant baptism. Nor is there any for the keeping of the first day of the week. Many believe that Christ changed the Sabbath. But, from His own words, we see that He came for no such purpose. Those who believe that Jesus changed the Sabbath base it only on a supposition.” Amos Binney, ‘Theological Compendium’, p. 180-181 "The Sabbath instituted in the beginning, and confirmed again and again by Moses and the prophets, has never been abrogated. A part of the moral law, not a jot or a tittle of its sanctity has been taken away." New York Herald 1874, on the Methodist Episcopal Bishops Pastoral 1874 Moody Bible Institute: "The Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since. This fourth commandment begins with the word 'remember,' showing that the Sabbath already existed when God wrote the law on the tables of stone at Sinai. How can men claim that this one commandment has been done away with when they will admit that the other nine are still binding?"- D.L. MOODY, "Weighed and Wanting," page 47. "I honestly believe that this commandment [the fourth, or Sabbath commandment] is just as binding today as it ever was. I have talked with men who have said that it has been abrogated, but they have never been able to point to any place in the Bible where God repealed it. When Christ was on earth, He did nothing to set it aside; He freed it from the traces under which the scribes and Pharisees had put it, and gave it its true place. 'The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.' It is just as practicable and as necessary for men today as it ever was-in fact, more than ever, because we live in such an intense age.' - Id., page 46. "This Fourth is not a commandment for one place, or one time, but for all places and times." D.L. Moody, at San Francisco, Jan. 1st, 1881. ^ Top Presbyterian: "The Christian Sabbath (Sunday) is not in the Scriptures, and was not by the primitive church called the Sabbath." Dwight's Theology, Vol. 14, p. 401. "A further argument for the perpetuity of the Sabbath we have in Matthew 24:20, Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter neither on the Sabbath day. But the final destruction of Jerusalem was after the Christian dispensation was fully set up (AD 70). Yet it is plainly implied in these words of the Lord that even then Christians were bound to strict observation of the Sabbath." Works of Jonathon Edwards, (Presby.) Vol. 4, p. 621. "We must not imagine that the coming of Christ has freed us from the authority of the law; for it is the eternal rule of a devout and holy life, and must therefore be as unchangeable as the justice of God, which it embraced, is constant and uniform." JOHN CALVIN, "Commentary on a Harmony of the Gospels," Vol. 1, page 277. "God instituted the Sabbath at the creation of man, setting apart the seventh day for the purpose, and imposed its observance as a universal and perpetual moral obligation upon the race." ­American Presbyterian Board of Publication, Tract No. 175. "The observance of the seventh-day Sabbath did not cease till it was abolished after the [Roman] empire became Christian," ­American Presbyterian Board of Publication, Tract No. 118. "The moral law doth for ever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof; and that not only in regard to the matter contained in it, but also in respect of the authority of God the Creator who gave it. Neither doth Christ in the gospel in any way dissolve, but much strengthen this obligation." "Westminster Confession of Faith," Chap. 19, Art. 5. "The Sabbath is a part of the Decalogue-the Ten Commandments. This alone for ever settles the question as to the perpetuity of the institution ... Until, therefore, it can be shown that the whole moral law has been repealed, the Sabbath will stand...The teaching of Christ confirms the perpetuity of the Sabbath."- T.C. BLAKE, D.D., "Theology Condensed," pages 474, 475. "Sunday being the first day of which the Gentiles solemnly adored that planet and called it Sunday, partly from its influence on that day especially, and partly in respect to its divine body (as they conceived it) the Christians thought fit to keep the same day and the same name of it, that they might not appear carelessly peevish, and by that means hinder the conversion of the Gentiles, and bring a greater prejudice that might be otherwise taken against the gospel" T.M. Morer, Dialogues on the Lord's Day "There is no word, no hint in the New Testament about abstaining from work on Sunday. The observance of Ash Wednesday, or Lent, stands exactly on the same footing as the observance of Sunday. Into the rest of Sunday no Divine Law enters." Canon Eyton, in The Ten Commandments. "Some have tried to build the observance of Sunday upon Apostolic command, whereas the Apostles gave no command on the matter at all.... The truth is, so soon as we appeal to the litera scripta [literal writing] of the Bible, the Sabbatarians have the best of the argument." The Christian at Work, April 19, 1883, and Jan. 1884 Protestant Episcopal: “The day is now changed from the seventh to the first day... but as we meet with no Scriptural direction for the change, we may conclude it was done by the authority of the church.” ‘Explanation of Catechism’ ^ Top Southern Baptist: “The sacred name of the Seventh day is Sabbath. This fact is too clear to require argument [Exodus 20:10 quoted]… on this point the plain teaching of the Word has been admitted in all ages… Not once did the disciples apply the Sabbath law to the first day of the week, -- that folly was left for a later age, nor did they pretend that the first day supplanted the seventh.” Joseph Hudson Taylor, ‘The Sabbatic Question’, p. 14-17, 41. "The first four commandments set forth man's obligations directly toward God.... But when we keep the first four commandments, we are likely to keep the other six. . . . The fourth commandment sets forth God's claim on man's time and thought.... The six days of labour and the rest on the Sabbath are to be maintained as a witness to God's toil and rest in the creation. . . . No one of the ten words is of merely racial significance.... The Sabbath was established originally (long before Moses) in no special connection with the Hebrews, but as an institution for all mankind, in commemoration of God's rest after the six days of creation. It was designed for all the descendants of Adam."-Adult Quarterly, Southern Baptist Convention series, Aug. 15, 1937. Dictionaries and Encyclopedias: "Sunday was a name given by the heathens to the first day of the week, because it was the day on which they worshipped the sun, ...the seventh day was blessed and hallowed by God Himself, and ...He requires His creatures to keep it holy to Him. This commandment is of universal and perpetual obligation...The Creator 'blessed the seventh day'-declared it to be a day above all days, a day- on which His favour should assuredly rest. ...So long, then, as man exists, and the world around him endures,' does the law of the early Sabbath remain. It cannot be set aside so long as its foundations last.... It is not the Jewish Sabbath, properly so-called, which is ordained in the fourth commandment. In the whole of that injunction there is no Jewish element, any more than there is in the third commandment, or the sixth." ­Eadie's Biblical Cyclopedia, 1872 Edition, page 561. "Thus we learn from Socrates (H.E., vi.c.8) that in his time public worship was held in the churches of Constantinople on both days.... The view that the Christian's Lord's day or Sunday is but the Christian Sabbath deliberately transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week does not indeed find categorical expression till a much later period.... The earliest recognition of the observance of Sunday as a legal duty is a constitution of Constantine in A.D. 321, enacting that all courts of justice, inhabitants of towns, and workshops were to be at rest on Sunday (venerabili die Solis), with an exception in favour of those engaged in agricultural labour...The Council of Laodicea (363) ... forbids Christians from judaizing and resting on the Sabbath day, preferring the Lord's day, and so far as possible resting as Christians."-Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1899 Edition, Vol. XXIII, page 654. "Unquestionably the first law, either ecclesiastical or civil, by which the sabbatical observance of Sunday is known to have been ordained is the sabbatical edict of Constantine, A.D. 32I." ­Chambers' Encyclopedia, Article "Sunday." "It must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the first day."-M'CLINTOCK AND STRONG, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, Vol. IX, page 196. "Sunday (Dies Solis, of the Roman calendar, 'day of the sun,' because dedicated to the sun), the first day of the week, was adopted by the early Christians as a day of worship. The 'sun' of Latin adoration they interpreted as the 'Sun of Righteousness.' . . . No regulations for its observance are laid down in the New Testament, nor, indeed, is its observance even enjoined."-SCHAFF HERZOG, Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 1891 Edition, Vol. IV, Art. "Sunday." "Sabbath in the Hebrew language signifies rest, and is the seventh day of the week... and it must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the first day." CHARLES BUCK, "A Theological Dictionary," "As the Sabbath is of divine institution, so it is to be kept holy unto the Lord. Numerous have been the days appointed by men for religious services; but these are not binding, because of human institution. Not so the Sabbath. Hence the fourth commandment is ushered in with a peculiar emphasis-'Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.'…The abolition of it would be unreasonable."-'CHARLES BUCK, "A Theological Dictionary," 1830 Edition, page 537. "But although it [Sunday] was in the primitive times indifferently called the Lord's day, or Sunday, yet it was never denominated the Sabbath; a name constantly appropriate to Saturday, or the seventh day, both by sacred and ecclesiastical writers."-Id., page 572. "The notion of a formal substitution by apostolic authority of the Lord's day [meaning Sunday] for the Jewish Sabbath [or the first for the seventh day]...and the transference to it, perhaps in a spiritualized form, of the sabbatical obligation established by the promulgation of the fourth commandment, has no basis whatever, either in Holy Scripture or in Christian antiquity." - SIR WILLIAM SMITH AND SAMUEL CHEETHAM, "A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities," Vol. 11, page 182, Article "Sabbath." "This long series of temporal enactments (in considering which we have, for the sake of exhibiting them as a whole, anticipated chronological order) must have told very powerfully upon the conception of the Lord's day in the church itself, not only tending to formalize its celebration, but to invest it in great degree with the character of a sabbath. Still, however, there was no connexion of its observance with the obligation of the fourth commandment, and therefore no application to it either of the laws of the Jewish sabbath, or of our Lord's teaching on the subject, as modifying and spiritualizing these laws." -Id., page 1047 Infidel: 'Probably very few Christians are aware of the fact that what they call the 'Christian Sabbath' (Sunday) is of pagan origin. "The first observance of Sunday- that history records is in the fourth century', when Constantine issued an edict (not requiring its religious observance, but simply abstinence from work) reading, 'let all the judges and people of the town rest and all the various trades be suspended on the venerable day of the sun.' At the time of the issue of this edict, Constantine was a sun-worshipper; therefore it could have had no relation whatever to Christianity." - ­HENRY M. TABER. "Faith or Fact" (preface by Robert G. Ingersoll), page 112. "I challenge any priest or minister of the Christian religion to show me the slightest authority for the religious observance of Sunday. And, if such cannot be shown by them, why is it that they are constantly preaching about Sunday as a holy day? ...The claim that Sunday takes the place of Saturday, and that because the Jews were supposed to be commanded to keep the seventh day of the week holy, therefore the first day of the week should be so kept by Christians, is so utterly absurd as to be hardly worth considering....That Paul habitually observed and preached on the seventh day of the week, is shown in Acts 18:4-'And be reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath' (Saturday)."-Id., pages ,114, 116. ^ Top Miscellaneous: "You will tell me that Saturday was the Jewish Sabbath, but that the Christian Sabbath has been changed to Sunday. Changed! But by whom? Who has authority to change an express commandment of Almighty God? When God has spoken and said, 'Thou shalt keep holy the seventh day,' who shall dare to say, 'Nay, thou mayest work and do all manner of business on the seventh day; but thou shalt keep holy the first day in its stead'? This is a most important question, which I know not how you can answer." "You are a Protestant, and you profess to go by the Bible and the Bible only; and yet in so important a matter as the observance of one day in seven as a holy day, you go against the plain letter of the Bible, and put another day in the place of that day which the Bible has commanded. The command to keep holy the seventh day is one of the Ten Commandments; you believe that the other nine are still binding; who gave you authority to tamper with the fourth? If you are consistent with your own principles, if you really follow the Bible and the Bible only, you ought to be able to produce some portion of the New Testament in which this fourth commandment is expressly altered."-"The Library of Christian Doctrine," pages 3, 4. "The first precept in the Bible is that of sanctifying the seventh day: 'God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it.' Genesis 2:3. This precept was confirmed by God in the Ten Commandments: 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep It holy. ...The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.' Exodus 20: 8, 10. On the other hand, Christ declares that He is not come to destroy the law, but to fulfil it. (Matthew 5: 17.) He Himself observed the Sabbath: 'And, as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day.' Luke 4: r6. His disciples likewise observed it after His death: 'They . . . rested the Sabbath day, according to the commandment.' Luke 23: 56. Yet with all this weight of Scripture authority for keeping the Sabbath or seventh day holy, Protestants of all denominations make this a profane day and transfer the obligation of it to the first day of the week, or the Sunday. Now what authority have they for doing this? None at all but the unwritten word, or tradition of the Catholic Church, which declares that the apostle made the change in honour of Christ's resurrection, and the descent of the Holy Ghost on that day of the week."-JOHN MILNER, "The End of Religious Controversy," page 71. "Sabbath means, of course, Saturday, the seventh day of the week, but the early Christians changed the observance to Sunday, to honour the day on which Christ arose from the dead."-FULTON OURSLER. Cosmopolitan, Sept. 1951, pages 34, 35. "I do not pretend to be even an amateur scholar of the Scriptures. I read the Decalogue merely as an average man searching for guidance, and in the immortal 'Ten Words' I find a blueprint for the good life."-Id., page 33. "Most certainly the Commandments are needed today, perhaps more than ever before. Their divine message confronts us with a profound moral challenge in an epidemic of evil; a unifying message acceptable alike to Jew, Moslem, and Christian. Who, reading the Ten in the light of history and of current events, can doubt their identity with the eternal law of nature?"-Id., page 124. "The Sabbath is commanded to be kept on the seventh day. It could not be kept on any other day. To observe the first day of the week or the fourth is not to observe the Sabbath. . . . It was the last day of the week, after six days of work, that was to be kept holy. The observance of no other day would fulfil the law."-H. J. FLOWERS, B.A., B.D., "The Permanent Value of the Ten Commandments," page 13. "The evaluation of Sunday, the traditionally accepted day of the resurrection of Christ, has varied greatly throughout the centuries of the Christian Era. From time to time it has been confused with the seventh day of the week, the Sabbath. English ­speaking peoples have been the most consistent in perpetuating the erroneous assumption that the obligation of the fourth commandment has passed over to Sunday. In popular speech, Sunday is frequently, but erroneously, spoken of as the Sabbath."-F. M. SETZLER, Head Curator, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institute, from a letter dated Sept. 1, 1949. "He that observes the Sabbath aright holds the history of that which it celebrates to be authentic, and therefore believes in the creation of the first man; in the creation of a fair abode for man in the space of six days; in the primeval and absolute creation of the heavens and the earth, and, as a necessary antecedent to all this, in the Creator, who at the close of His latest creative effort, rested on the seventh day. The Sabbath thus becomes a sign by which the believers in a historical revelation are distinguished from those who have allowed these great facts to fade from their remembrance.' - JAMES G. MURPHY, "Commentary on the Book of Exodus," comments on Exodus 20: 8-11. ** The Bible also identifies the entity who thinks it can change God's law. ^ Top Enter a description of what you are looking for. "When St. Paul repudiated the works of the law, he was not thinking of the Ten Commandments, which are as unchangeable as God Himself is, which God could not change and still remain the infinitely holy God." Our Sunday Visitor, Oct. 7, 1951.

What do you do when there is no Priest available? When Orthodox people have no opportunity to attend Orthodox divine services, especially in non-Orthodox countries, then the Church allows and encourages individuals and groups of Orthodox to read the service books privately, for the preservation of their faith. Such readings have long been customary in monastic establishments, hospitals, schools, on shipboard and, in recent times, by Orthodox in the USSR and in the diaspora. Reading prayer books or service books may, at least to some extent, replace church services. Besides preserving our Orthodox faith, reading services is beneficial because: 1. It teaches us, even in non-Orthodox lands, to remember and honor Orthodox feasts and saints' days. 2. It acquaints us with the order of church services and with the profound content of our service books. 3. It safeguards us from the danger of sectarian and heterodox influence 4. It helps parents and teachers raise their children and young adults in the spirit of Orthodoxy. 5. It unites dispersed Orthodox people in our faith and love for the Orthodox Church. Orthodox Divine Services The daily ecclesiastical office consists of a cycle of services that covers the entire 24-hour period. Since the church day begins with the evening, the order of daily services is: 1) Vespers, 2) Small Compline, 3) Midnight Office, 4) Matins, 5) First Hour, 6) Third and Sixth Hours, 7) the Liturgy and 8) Ninth Hour. Orthodox laymen may read or chant some portion of all of these, except the Divine Liturgy, which is replaced by the Typica. In addition, it is permissible to read canons and akathists, either separately or as part of another service. A canon is a collection of hymns in nine odes that honors the Savior, the Mother of God, a saint, a holy day. or a spiritual theme. An akathist is a song of praise in twelve parts that glorifies the Savior, the Mother of God, a saint.... An akathist may be read or sung, or read with the refrains sung. How Laymen Read Service Books The reading of service books should be conducted according to the following rules: 1. All [reader's] services are to begin with the exclamation: "Through the prayers of our holy fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. Amen. 2. All the priest's prayers and exclamations are omitted. 3. In place of the Great and Augmented Ectenias and the Ectenia of Supplication, "Lord, have mercy" is said twelve times; in place of the Small Ectenia, three times. 4. The Gospel is not intoned, but read in an ordinary voice. Note: Every Orthodox Christian is obliged to read the Gospel privately, according to the ecclesiastical lectionary found in church calendars. 5. All other hymns, psalms and prayers are read or sung as when a priest serves. 6. The Typica (in place of the liturgy) may be read as indicated in Appendix 1. The Order of Services on Feast Days Since laymen are often involved with work and may not have time to read services in the ordinary week days, we shall give directions only for the festal services. On weekdays, the daily morning and evening prayers could be combined with Small Compline and Midnight Office, as desired. On feast days, it is important to devote more time to God and to observe the feast with the appropriate reading and hymns. On the eve of the feast one may read Vespers, Matins and the First Hour, in the place of the All-Night Vigil. In the morning, one may read the Midnight Office, the Third and Sixth Hours, if desired, and the Typica. The evening of the feast, one should read the Small Compline with the proper canon or akathist of the feast. The order and content of the services depend on the free time available and on the service books at hand. Here are more detailed instructions for three kinds of feasts: 1) Sundays, 2) the Twelve Great Feasts and other holidays of the Lord and of the Mother of God, 3) saints' days, our name-saints or ones we especially venerate.1) Sundays On Saturday evenings we read Vespers, including the stichera and troparia according to the tone indicated in the calendar. In the morning (or on the eve), we read Matins and the First Hour. At Matins we may read the Resurrection canon for the appropriate tone, or, if not available, the Canon to Our Sweetest Lord Jesus (in the prayers of preparation for Holy Communion) may be substituted. 'Me stichera for the aposticha, the troparia and the theotokia are according to the tone of the Sunday. If Vespers and Matins are unavailable, then on Saturday night one may read Small Compline with the Canon and Akathist to our Sweetest Lord Jesus. On Sunday morning we should read: the Midnight Office for Sunday, with the morning prayers and the Typica (the order for Typica is given in Appendix I). Finally, on Sunday evening. we may read Small Compline with a canon to the Mother of God (either to one of her wonder-working icons or any other available).2) Feasts of the Lord and of the Theotokos On these feasts, including all of the Twelve Great Feasts, it is customary to read the proper service from the Festal Menaion. Vespers and Matins according to the Vigil are read, while the stichera, troparia, etc., come from the Festal Menaion. The canon of Matins is to the Lord or to the Theotokos, depending on the feast. If the Festal Menaion is unavailable, then one may read Vespers (or perhaps Small Compline) with the canon or corresponding akathist, and one may take the stichera from the General Menaion, using the "General Service for the Feasts of the Lord" or "of the Mother of God." In the morning: the Third and Sixth Hours and the Typica, with the troparia and kontakia of the feast sung in the proper places. In the evening: Small Compline with the Canon of Repentance to Our Lord Jesus Christ, or the Supplicatory Canon to the Most Holy Theotokos (Paraclesis).3) Saints' days If there is a service to the saint in the Festal Menaion, then Vespers, Matins and the First Hour are read as usual, with the stichera, troparia, etc., from the Menaion. If there is no service to the saint, then we read from the General Menaion, taking the stichera, etc., from the general service to the class of saint being commemorated: i.e., to a hierarch, to a monastic, to a martyr, etc. At the polyeleos or perhaps at the end of the service, we chant the megalynarion to the saint (see Appendix II). In the appropriate places we insert the name of the saint being commemorated. If neither the Horologion nor the Menaion is available, then we may read Small Compline with the canon or akathist to the saint, if available. (A church dedicated to that saint might allow us to copy the proper canon or akathist, so that we might read it on a nameday or other feast days.) In the morning, we read the Midnight Office, the Hours and the Typica, with the troparia and kontakia to the saint at the Hours, and the kontakia of the temple, and of the saint or the day of the week, at the Typica. In the evening, we read the canon to the saint; but if there is none, then the canon for Saturday to all the saints. The Order of the Typica Beginning: Psalm 102, "Bless the Lord, O my soul..." Glory to the Father... Psalm 145, "Praise the Lord, O my soul..." Both now and ever... "O Only-begotten Son and Word of God... The Beatitudes. Glory... Both now... The Symbol of Faith (the Creed, I believe...'), and the prayer: "Remit, pardon, forgive, O God, our offences, both voluntary and involuntary, in deed and word, in knowledge and in ignorance, by night and by day, in mind and thought; forgive us all things, since -Thou art good and the Lover of mankind. The Lord's Prayer. The kontakion of the feast or of the day of the week. Glory... Both now... And ending with the prayer: "O protection of Christians that cannot be put to shame, O mediation unto the Creator unfailing, disdain not the suppliant voices of sinners; but be thou quick, O good one, to help us who in faith cry unto thee: Hasten to intercession and speed thou to make supplication, thou who dost ever protect, O Theotokos, them that honor thee." During Great Lent, in place of this prayer, we end thus: Lord, have mercy. 40 times. Glory... Both now... More honorable than the Cherubim... And the prayer, "O Lord and Master of my life...," with 16 prostrations. Megalynaria to Various Saints. To an Apostle: We magnify thee (pl., you), O Apostle(s) of Christ, N. (or NN.), and we honor thy (your) pains and labors, with which thou hast (you have) labored in proclaiming the Gospel of Christ. To a Hierarch: We magnify thee (you), O holy Hierarch(s), Father(s) N. (or NN.), and we honor thy (your) holy memory, for thou dost (you do) pray for us to Christ our God. To a Monastic Saint: We glorify thee (you), O holy Father(s) N. (NN.), and we honor thy (your) holy memory, instructor(s) of monks and converser(s) with angels. To a Martyr: We magnify thee (you), O holy (Great-)Martyr(s) N. (NN.), and we honor thy (your) precious sufferings, which thou didst (you did) endure for Christ. The megalynaria, of the Twelve Great Feasts and other holy days are found in the Festal Menaion.

Which laptop is a better buy? Arm yourself with the mobile know-how to navigate anywhere--the Satellite A205S5831 notebook computer. A 1.73GHz Intel Pentium dual-core processor T2370 and 1024MB PC5300 DDR2 SDRAM allow you to take the office or the entertainment on the road without missing a beat. The generous 160GB SATA hard drive supports your media and data collections, and the DVD SuperMulti +/-R double-layer drive accommodates 11 disc formats so you can easily add to your library or transfer files. Atheros 802.11b/g wireless LAN puts a cordless connection at your fingertips, and the 15.4" diagonal WXGA widescreen TruBrite TFT LCD display projects everything from word processing to the Web in the utmost clarity. When you're on the move, the Elite nylon carrying case makes packing and protecting your notebook easier than ever. The lightweight yet durable bag is outfitted with an interior padded laptop sleeve and space for files and magazines; a front flap pocket for pens, CDs, and other essentials; and a smaller zip pocket for your keys or cell phone. From Toshiba. QVC neither condones nor encourages the use of this, or any similar technology, to acquire unauthorized recordings of copyrighted works; inclusive of, but not limited to, the download of prerecorded media via the Internet. Wireless capability and use of public wireless locations or hot spots may require a network connection, additional accessories, and a service connection fee. Access to and use of the Internet may require payment of a separate fee to an Internet Service Provider, DSL line, or more. The download speeds experienced with the modem may be slower due to varying line conditions. Not all DVD-R/-RW and DVD+R/+RW discs are compatible with all DVD-R/-RW and DVD+R/+RW players. Contact the manufacturer for further information. 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Featuring AMD Athlon X2 Mobile Technology that lets you experience revolutionary performance, unbelievable system responsiveness and energy-efficiency second to none. Don't slow down for virus scan, multiple programs, or multimedia downloads - these dual desktop processors are up to 40% faster and awaiting your every command. Gateway M-1412 Laptop Computer Features: Processor: AMD Athlon X2 Mobile Technology TK-57 (1.9GHz) Memory: 1024MB DDR2 Dual-Channel, expandable to 4GB Hard Drive: 80GB HD Optical Drive: 8x Multi-Format Dual Layer DVD+/-RW with DVD-RAM featuring LabelFlash Technology. Write max: 8x DVD+/-R, 6x DVD-RW, 8x DVD+RW, 2x DVD-R DL, 2.4x DVD+R DL, 5x DVD-RAM, 24x CD-R and 16x CD-RW disks. Read max: 8x DVD-R/RW/ROM, 4x DVD+/-R DL, 5x DVD-RAM, 24x CD-R/RW/ROM disks. Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium with SP1 LCD Monitor: 15.4" Widescreen Ultrabright WXGA TFT (1280x800) Media Card Reader: 5-in-1 digital media manager - Secure Digital (SD), Memory Stick (MS), Memory Stick Pro, Multimedia Card (MMC) and XD-Picture Card Other Differentiator: Synaptics touchpad with vertical scroll and metal touch-sensitive multimedia buttons Additional Features and Specifications: •System Bus: 256KBx2 •Cache Memory: L2 HyperTransport technology at up to 1600MHz •Graphics: ATI Radeon X1270 •Video Memory: Up to 256MB of HyperMemory •Mouse: Synaptics touchpad with vertical scroll •Speakers: Stereo speakers, Microphone In, Headphone/Audio Out •Modem: 56K ITU V.92 fax/modem •Network Interface: 10/100 Mbps built-in Ethernet •Ports: (1) Expresscard Type 54 Expansion Slot, (3) USB 2.0, (1) VGA connector, (1) RJ11-modem, (1) RJ45-Ethernet, (1) AC adapter connector, (1) Kensington Lock Slot, (1) Microphone, (1) Headphone/SPDIF Audio Out, (1) HDMI connector v1.2 •Wireless Network Adapter: 802.11g •Measures approx. 10.39"L x 14.09"W x 1.4"H •Weighs 6.29 lbs. •Model #M-1412 •ETL listed •Made in China •Comes with a manufacturer's 1-year limited warranty Accessories Include: •Lithium-ion battery •3 PC essential software DVDs (not pre-installed) •3 Tiger Woods 2007 CDs •User manual Pre-Installed Software: •MS Works 9.0 •MS Money Essentials •MS Office Home and Student 2007 (60-day complimentary trial period) •Adobe Reader 8 •CyberLink Power2Go for DVD Burning •Microsoft Windows Media Player 11 •Napster 3.0 (30-day trial) •Microsoft Internet Explorer •Google toolbar and Google desktop search •AOL (90-day complimentary trial) •Gateway Connect •NetZero Internet Access •Windows Live Messenger for Video Conferencing •LoJack for Laptops BIOS Hardware Persistence Agent (subscription required to activate) •Kensington Lock Slot (cable lock sold separately) •Spare Backup •GatewayShield Comprehensive Security: Norton Internet Security 2008 (60-day complimentary live updates) •Gateway BigFix - helps identify and solve problems •Gateway Games Powered by: WildTangent (pre-installed with 10 demo games and 60 minutes of game play) User-Installed Software: •DVD 1: World Book Encyclopedia 2008 •DVD 2: Entertainment - Aquazone Desktop Garden, Hoyle Board Games 2007, Hoyle Puzzle Games 2007, Morpheus Photo Animation Suite, Muppet Babies - Thinking and Sorting, My Scrapbook 2, Serif Creativity Suite (Serif Draw Plus 8, Serif Page Plus X2, Serif Panorama Plus 3, Serif Photo Plus 11, Serif Web Plus 10), Sudoku Crunch and Wizard Chess. •DVD 3: Productivity and Reference - ACT! 2007, Budget Express 3.0, Cook n with Betty Crocker, EMC Retrospect Express HD, Family Tree Heritage 7, Form Tool Deluxe 6, Quicken Willmaker Plus 2008, Stuffit Deluxe 11, Sunbird Calendar, Thunderbird Email, Turbo FloorPlan Landscape and Deck, Turbo FloorPlan Home Designer and Typing Instructor Deluxe. •CD 1, 2 and 3 - Tiger Woods 2007

Which laptop should i buy? i offer two choices.? OPTION 1 Onyx Blue Metallic Finish. •Includes notebook, AC adapter, 4000mAh lithium-ion battery, case •1.73GHz Intel Pentium dual-core processor T2370 •Mobile Intel GL960 Express chipset •15.4" diagonal WXGA widescreen TruBrite TFT LCD display with 1280x800 resolution, native 720p signal support •1024MB PC5300 DDR2 SDRAM •160GB SATA hard drive •DVD SuperMulti +/-R double-layer drive, supports 11 formats •Atheros 802.11b/g wireless LAN •Mobile Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 with 8MB to 256MB dynamically allocated shared graphics memory •Built-in stereo speakers •Modem •10/100 ethernet •TouchPad •5-in-1 bridge media adapter: SD, MS, MS Pro, MMC, xD Picture Card •Four USB 2.0 ports •RGB, S-video, headphone outputs •Microphone input •RJ-45, RJ-11, IEEE 1394 ports •ExpressCard slot •Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 •MS Works 9 •Adobe Acrobat Reader •Ulead DVD MovieFactory 5 •Toshiba ConfigFree, Disc Creator •Measures approximately 14-1/4"W x 10-5/8"H x 1-1/2"D •UL listed adapter; 1-year Limited Manufacturer's Warranty •Made in China OR------------------------ OPTION 2 Processor: AMD Athlon X2 Mobile Technology TK-57 (1.9GHz) Memory: 1024MB DDR2 Dual-Channel, expandable to 4GB Hard Drive: 80GB HD Optical Drive: 8x Multi-Format Dual Layer DVD+/-RW with DVD-RAM featuring LabelFlash Technology. Write max: 8x DVD+/-R, 6x DVD-RW, 8x DVD+RW, 2x DVD-R DL, 2.4x DVD+R DL, 5x DVD-RAM, 24x CD-R and 16x CD-RW disks. Read max: 8x DVD-R/RW/ROM, 4x DVD+/-R DL, 5x DVD-RAM, 24x CD-R/RW/ROM disks. Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium with SP1 LCD Monitor: 15.4" Widescreen Ultrabright WXGA TFT (1280x800) Media Card Reader: 5-in-1 digital media manager - Secure Digital (SD), Memory Stick (MS), Memory Stick Pro, Multimedia Card (MMC) and XD-Picture Card Other Differentiator: Synaptics touchpad with vertical scroll and metal touch-sensitive multimedia buttons Additional Features and Specifications: •System Bus: 256KBx2 •Cache Memory: L2 HyperTransport technology at up to 1600MHz •Graphics: ATI Radeon X1270 •Video Memory: Up to 256MB of HyperMemory •Mouse: Synaptics touchpad with vertical scroll •Speakers: Stereo speakers, Microphone In, Headphone/Audio Out •Modem: 56K ITU V.92 fax/modem •Network Interface: 10/100 Mbps built-in Ethernet •Ports: (1) Expresscard Type 54 Expansion Slot, (3) USB 2.0, (1) VGA connector, (1) RJ11-modem, (1) RJ45-Ethernet, (1) AC adapter connector, (1) Kensington Lock Slot, (1) Microphone, (1) Headphone/SPDIF Audio Out, (1) HDMI connector v1.2 •Wireless Network Adapter: 802.11g •Measures approx. 10.39"L x 14.09"W x 1.4"H •Weighs 6.29 lbs. •Model #M-1412 •ETL listed •Made in China •Comes with a manufacturer's 1-year limited warranty Accessories Include: •Lithium-ion battery •3 PC essential software DVDs (not pre-installed) •3 Tiger Woods 2007 CDs •User manual Pre-Installed Software: •MS Works 9.0 •MS Money Essentials •MS Office Home and Student 2007 (60-day complimentary trial period) •Adobe Reader 8 •CyberLink Power2Go for DVD Burning •Microsoft Windows Media Player 11 •Napster 3.0 (30-day trial) •Microsoft Internet Explorer •Google toolbar and Google desktop search •AOL (90-day complimentary trial) •Gateway Connect •NetZero Internet Access •Windows Live Messenger for Video Conferencing •LoJack for Laptops BIOS Hardware Persistence Agent (subscription required to activate) •Kensington Lock Slot (cable lock sold separately) •Spare Backup •GatewayShield Comprehensive Security: Norton Internet Security 2008 (60-day complimentary live updates) •Gateway BigFix - helps identify and solve problems •Gateway Games Powered by: WildTangent (pre-installed with 10 demo games and 60 minutes of game play) User-Installed Software: •DVD 1: World Book Encyclopedia 2008 •DVD 2: Entertainment - Aquazone Desktop Garden, Hoyle Board Games 2007, Hoyle Puzzle Games 2007, Morpheus Photo Animation Suite, Muppet Babies - Thinking and Sorting, My Scrapbook 2, Serif Creativity Suite (Serif Draw Plus 8, Serif Page Plus X2, Serif Panorama Plus 3, Serif Photo Plus 11, Serif Web Plus 10), Sudoku Crunch and Wizard Chess. •DVD 3: Productivity and Reference - ACT! 2007, Budget Express 3.0, Cook n with Betty Crocker, EMC Retrospect Express HD, Family Tree Heritage 7, Form Tool Deluxe 6, Quicken Willmaker Plus 2008, Stuffit Deluxe 11, Sunbird Calendar, Thunderbird Email, Turbo FloorPlan Landscape and Deck, Turbo FloorPlan Home Designer and Typing Instructor Deluxe. •CD 1, 2 and 3 - Tiger Woods 2007

Is it possible that Jesus...? Is it possible that something happened back then, some kind of divine intervention, the creator of the universe or at least the highest form of consciousness intervening for once in human affairs, and it was totally misinterpreted or maybe even taken over by others..? Is it possible that Christ never even intended for any religion to exist in his name, that something altogether different but still very noteworthy happened back then (noteworthy enough for a society to reorganize its calendar around, and for people to have devoted their lives even at the beginning to this one person?) So much of Christianity has happened without Christ, and yet we are made to believe that it is his will How can we know what he would want/have wanted? All we have are word-of-mouth accounts of an event that happened and may have been grossly warped or exaggerated 2000 years ago? or that it has its origins in myth, and there was valuable truth/stuff to learn from that myth but it became an institution of social control? eyewitness quotes would imply that you know the eyewitness in person. you *trust* that the people who handed down their experiences through milleniums, probably edited and rewritten several times, are accurate when I cannot transcribe word for word what my prof said in class TODAY Dear Chicago Bob, you obviously completely missed the point of my mentioning my professor. My professor has no input on this situation - I was simply and obviously stating that you take literally the statements by Jesus quoted in the Bible, that had considerable time between their being said and written down. I was saying that I could not possibly quote with accuracy anything that my professor said this morning if I tried to write it down right now/tonight. he could've said "purple monkey umbrella fissure ozone layer" and I would not necessarily remember all the words right. you didn't read my post unless of course that was satire. it's getting harder and harder to tell these days

Mayan Indians views? what do you think? The Mayan civilization of Central America was and is the most advanced in relation to time-science knowledge. Their main calendar is the most accurate on the planet. It has never erred. The Mayan fifth world finished in 1987. The sixth world starts in 2012. So we are currently "between worlds" 1. Humanity and Planet Earth are currently going through a huge change or shift in consciousness and reality perception. 2. The Mayan civilization of Central America was and is the most advanced in relation to time-science knowledge. Their main calendar is the most accurate on the planet. It has never erred. They actually have 22 calendars in total, covering the many timing cycles in the Universe and Solar System. Some of these calendars are yet to be revealed. 3. The Mayan fifth world finished in 1987. The sixth world starts in 2012. So we are currently "between worlds". This time is called the "Apocalypse" or revealing. This means the real truth will be revealed. It is also the time for us to work through "our stuff" individually and collectively. 4. The Mayan sixth world is actually blank. This means it is up to us, as co-creators, to start creating the new world and civilization we want now. 5. The Mayans also say that by 2012 we will have gone beyond technology as we know it. we will have gone beyond time and money. we will have entered the fifth dimension after passing through the fourth dimension Planet Earth and the Solar System will come into galactic synchronization with the rest of the Universe. Our DNA will be "upgraded" (or reprogrammed) from the centre of our galaxy. (Hunab Ku) Everybody on this planet is mutating. Some are more conscious of it than others. But everyone is doing it. 6. In 2012 the plane of our Solar System will line up exactly with the plane of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. This cycle has taken 26,000 years to complete. Virgil Armstrong also says that two other galaxies will line up with ours at the same time. A cosmic event! 7. Time is speeding up (or collapsing). For thousands of years the Schumann Resonance or pulse (heartbeat) of Earth has been 7.83 cycles per second, The military have used this as a very reliable reference. However, since 1980 this resonance has been slowly rising. It is now over 12 cycles per second! This means there is the equivalent of less than 16 hours per day instead of the old 24 hours. 8. During the Apocalypse or the time "between worlds" many people will be going through many personal changes. The changes will be many and varied. It is all part of what we came here to learn or experience. Examples of change could be- relationships coming to an end, change of residence or location, change of job or work, shift in attitude or thinking etc."

What do you think will happen in 2012? Other than it being the end of the Mayan calender and of course the Olympics in england etc... I'll paste somethings that are meant to happen: 1. Humanity and Planet Earth are currently going through a huge change or shift in consciousness and reality perception. 2. The Mayan civilization of Central America was and is the most advanced in relation to time-science knowledge. Their main calendar is the most accurate on the planet. It has never erred. They actually have 22 calendars in total, covering the many timing cycles in the Universe and Solar System. Some of these calendars are yet to be revealed. 3. The Mayan fifth world finished in 1987. The sixth world starts in 2012. So we are currently "between worlds". This time is called the "Apocalypse" or revealing. This means the real truth will be revealed. It is also the time for us to work through "our stuff" individually and collectively. 4. The Mayan sixth world is actually blank. This means it is up to us, as co-creators.

does anyone know how i can create a free school website? For my journalism class i need to create a school website but i can't find one that fits what is needed for it....!!!! Is there any way i can create a free school website???? I've tried Nexo except it has all this profile necessities and my teacher really doesn't want that and we're haveing to much trouble with that one... And also Synthasite, it's to difficult to place links on there... My friend said to try lunarpages.com and i have but it's taking too long for them to reply to the request.. So during the time they answer to the request i suggested to my teacher we make a sub-website in the mean time so does anyone know one????? Here's the pages, that the website needs to have to get you an idea of what im looking for. -Homepage -Homework Helping Sites -School News -Creators Of This Site -Lunch & Breakfasts Menus -Grade Updates -Upcoming Event -Assignments & Upcoming Tests -Sports -Calendar: Assemblies, Events, Sport Games, Minimum Days, Tutoring, Academy,etc. For my journalism class i need to create a school website but i can't find one that fits what is needed for it....!!!! Is there any way i can create a free school website with a main domain?????? I've tried Nexo except it has all this profile necessities and my teacher really doesn't want that and we're haveing to much trouble with that one... And also Synthasite, it's to difficult to place links on there... My friend said to try lunarpages.com and i have but it's taking too long for them to reply to the request.. So during the time they answer to the request i suggested to my teacher we make a sub-website in the mean time so does anyone know one????? Here's the pages, that the website needs to have to get you an idea of what im looking for. -Homepage -Homework Helping Sites -School News -Creators Of This Site -Lunch & Breakfasts Menus -Grade Updates -Upcoming Event -Assignments & Upcoming Tests -Sports -Calendar: Assemblies, Events, Sport Games, Minimum Days, Tutoring, Academy,etc.

What do you think this poem means? Walls of Prison Towering houses congest the valley Like a sea of wooden fences, Each painted blandly. A quilt of sidewalk and polished cars Colliding Entwining. Smooth patches of green greet the scattered, lonely trees Bark, grass, flowers, and rock all put artificially. Grass trimmed to whisk our feet Despised, should it grow free. Flowers are planted unnaturally, Places they aren’t supposed to be. Calendar’s filled with squiggled lines. Life becomes a page, a document - A schedule of appointments and deadlines. Fences enclave a soul’s melody. Cement slabs cease my heartbeat Synthetic stone – a mockery: Squares pasted, Aligned precisely. Struggling ochre weeds seep through grimy cracks weaved between the dusty concrete. we are Deprived by the alarm’s call imprisoned by plaster walls Murdered by cosmetic ceilings. deafened by tires shrieking Against dusty concrete. we are Creators of impurity Founders of hostility Destroyers of vitality Masters of rigidity we are Flourishers of boredom Slayers of freedom and slaves of System .

Who started Civilization? In response to PaulD's question, "Brits, creators of the modern world?". He was right, the Brits have done more than anyone to usher in the modern age. Look at the list of inventions on his list, including the Web and the Computer....and English language! However, it was the Ancient Mesopotamians (Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Arameans) who STARTED Civilization. The Modern Assyrian and Chaldean christians, and the Mandeans are their living descendants. They invented;Writing, the Wheel, Mathematics,Beer, Advanced Farming, irrigation, Astronomy, Astrology, Civil Service, War Chariots, Postal Service, Schools, Libraries,Zoo's,Coinage, First Legal Codes, Medical Laws, Heavy Cavalry,Siege Engines, Professional Armies, First Empires, the Calendar, Chronology(splitting time into hours, days, weeks, months etc), The Battery....all this well before the Greeks, Romans, Chinese etc. Also Mesopotamia heavily influenced the bible, Creation myth, The Flood, Ten Commandments, Aramaic etc Also the Assyrian Church is much older than any western church. PS; Mesopotamians have NOTHING to do with modern Arabs who have taken over the area. Civilization is normally defined by inventions, creations, advanced ideas, advancing technology etc, as opposed to culture, which everybody has, culture is more customs and way of life. SLUG - Yup the Assyrians, Chaldeans and Mandeans of Iraq have been let down by Bush and Blair....however the Arabs dont treat them very well either, as non muslims, non arabs and aramaic speakers they get a very rough time from the arabs and kurds, who didnt exist back in mesopotamias heyday. Tank - Well, he was partly right about cement, he probably meant PORTLAND CEMENT, which is the type used worldwide today, in the ancient world, the mesopotamians, egyptians, greeks and romans already used more primitive types of cement.

Jesus Christ is coming back really soon in 2011? mayans are 100% wrong? Wow??? Mayan calendars are the lies of Satan telling us that Jesus Christ will come in 2012 which is altogether wrong and stupid. The Bible ALONE SAYS 2011. http://www.theendoftheworld2011.com/May_... http://timehasanend.org/ www.familyradio.com And from the Bible Alone: Time Has An End is a study of the Bible that is concerned with the entire history of the world. God has pre-determined in exquisite detail, the entire program for this world including its salvation. Whenever anything happens, it has been precisely pre-planned by God. God is the Creator of time, and therefore, He is the Ruler of time (Colossians 1:16-17). Rather, it is governed by the unfolding of God's pre-planned salvation program. eternity future (Romans 11:36; Ephesians 1:10). Between these two eternities are the approximately 13,000 years of the existence of this universe which, of course, includes our planet Earth.

Do you believe in creationism? With the law of attraction, conversations with god, many people's instincts, the feeling of love i have when the mayan calendar says we are creating love right now, and everything being said about us being creators. Does this not seem like God is telling us the truth and he has been trying to since we can remember? Thanks for your comments

Is Jesus Christ coming back in 2011? Mayan calendars are the lies of Satan telling us that Jesus Christ will come in 2012 which is altogether wrong and stupid. The Bible ALONE SAYS 2011???? What do you think? I don't care what I think. What do you think? http://www.theendoftheworld2011.com/May_... http://timehasanend.org/ www.familyradio.com And from the Bible Alone: Time Has An End is a study of the Bible that is concerned with the entire history of the world. God has pre-determined in exquisite detail, the entire program for this world including its salvation. Whenever anything happens, it has been precisely pre-planned by God. God is the Creator of time, and therefore, He is the Ruler of time (Colossians 1:16-17). Rather, it is governed by the unfolding of God's pre-planned salvation program. eternity future (Romans 11:36; Ephesians 1:10). Between these two eternities are the approximately 13,000 years of the existence of this universe which, of course, includes our planet Earth. That is a better question. Hmm...Are you ready? How can anybody know if they are ready if they don't get ready NOW?

Why does the calendar say "2008", but it often feels like 1972 on here? "It's conceivable that if Maude were around today, its controversial episodes would never make it to the air." MAUDE'S CHOICE "On those rare occasions when TV dares to deal with the volatile issue of abortion, it would be unthinkable to play the subject for laughs. But then, to paraphrase the All in the Family spin-off's theme song, there was Maude. In its second month on the air, Maude grabbed headlines as the first sitcom that dared to deal with the subject, setting a caustic, politically charged tone for the CBS series that would endure throughout its six-year run. On Nov. 14, 1972, 47-year-old Maude (Bea Arthur) announced she was pregnant. In the following week's episode, she made the decision to have an abortion, which was legal in New York (the locale of the series) but not nationally. Despite the timing-three months before the Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade-series creator Norman Lear denies his motivation was political. ''We weren't trying to make a statement,'' he insists today. ''(At first) we asked, what's a good, funny story and pregnancy was a great comedic idea.'' And one idea led to another. Though pregnancy-related themes were already a sure bet for sitcoms, it was considered downright racy when a horrified Maude proclaimed, ''The rabbit died, laughing no doubt,'' and a puzzled friend responded, ''Aren't you using the pill?'' Maude's liberated daughter, Carol (Adrienne Barbeau), a divorced single mother living at home, was the first to suggest that her mother had a choice: ''You don't have to have the baby.... Abortion was a dirty word; it's not anymore.'' Later, in the gentlest way possible, Maude's husband, Walter (Bill Macy), said, ''In the privacy of our own lives, you're doing the right thing.'' The show vaulted from 13th to 5th place in the Nielsen ratings in those two episodes, but success came with a price. ''We knew some people would be upset,'' Lear says, ''but we had no idea of the conflagration that did follow.'' CBS received hundreds of calls and 7,000 letters protesting the episodes, and that wasn't the end of it. The furor erupted again nine months later when ''Maude's Dilemma'' was rerun. Twenty-five CBS affiliates refused to air the shows, the network received 17,000 letters, and only one 30-second commercial was sold-the result of pressure on advertisers by antiabortion groups. Abortion is still difficult for commercial TV to handle. Four years ago, many advertisers shunned the NBC movie Roe vs. Wade. It's conceivable that if Maude were around today, its controversial episodes would never make it to the air." TIME CAPSULE Nov. 14, 1972 Diana Ross drew crowds to theaters in LADY SINGS THE BLUES, Johnny Nash had his biggest hit with ''I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW,'' and Richard Bach dominated the fiction best-seller list with JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL. You are wrong, Winter. Terrorism by anti-abortion groups got going in the 1980's: http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_viol.htm But television (and film, popular culture) are mirrors to society, they can't "create" society. All they can do is reflect what is already there.

Do you believe in creationism? With the law of attraction, conversations with god, many people's instincts, the feeling of love i have when the mayan calendar says we are creating love right now, and everything being said about us being creators. Does this not seem like God is telling us the truth and he has been trying to since we can remember? Thanks for your comments

What do you think will happen in 2012? The Mayans predicted big changes by then. I've doing some research and it turns out that most Ancient calendars coincide on the same date approximately. AS I see it I think a portal may open and those who are ready to evolve will cross over while those who are not will just stay here like the last time it happened taking most of the Mayans through it. There are some versions saying that our extraterrestrial creators will come to rescue those who are sufficiently evolved from the cataclysms the Earth is going to be facing. What do you think?