General's Pastoral Letter - Gratitude (2)

PASTORAL LETTER TWENTY-ONE

GRATITUDE (2)

Dear Fellow Salvationists,

Once more it is my great honour and privilege to be in touch with you through a Pastoral Letter.

Commissioner Helen Clifton joins me in sending greetings to you just where you are, thanking God for your fidelity to the gospel and for your service in his great Army of Salvation.

I am writing this Letter from my office in our home because recently I have undergone further surgery, this time for a heart bypass procedure. This took place unexpectedly six weeks ago and I thank God that I am making good progress and am able to keep up with all official matters through the kindness of the Chief of the Staff who meets me in our home regularly to discuss key matters of business and policy and also through the great help of my personal staff at International Headquarters.

Commissioner Helen Clifton is taking wonderful care of me but is also facing her own health challenges at this time. So your prayers are very, very precious to us both and to our family.

The theme of this Letter, as with Pastoral Letter 20, is gratitude. It is a theme that can never be exhausted. It is a natural theme for us at this time for we feel indebted to so many for loving support. Many of you have sent messages of prayer and encouragement. These have blessed and helped us so much.

I want to record heartfelt thanks to Almighty God for his unfailing love to us all. You will know of those times when you have experienced the loving closeness of our Heavenly Father. Sometimes he is so near to us that we can almost reach out and touch him. May you each be drawn closer and closer to God in this wonderful way.

We praise and thank God because he is able to save us from our sin and from the overarching rule of self and selfish ambition. Acts 4:12 tells us that there is no other name by which we can be saved. God the Father has given us Jesus, God the Son, to be our only Saviour. Our hearts fill up again with gratitude.

We have still further cause to be glad and grateful to God. He alone can make us holy. He alone can purify us and sanctify us through and through. In the words of the old chorus, not only is he 'able to save', but he is 'able to keep' - to keep us pure and victorious day by day from falling to temptation. Our part is to consecrate ourselves to God without reserve. He then does his part in cleansing us through and through, again and again.

In closing this Letter, I salute you and thank God for you. I commend each of you - just where you live and serve - to the infinite care of the Father, to the safe and loving hands of Jesus, and to the cleansing and enabling power of the Holy Spirit.

Yours in Sacred Service,

Shaw Clifton

General

Joys of Islam Women

I've been getting quite a few emails and other messages along similar lines of the content of this post which are starting to concern me.

I also received an email last week which contained a video of an Islamic woman getting 'stoned' but was cold blooded murder and everyone present was enjoying it, filming it and being entertained by it! What the people were actually doing, I can't believe humans could do - it was absolutely discraceful!!! The next two nights, every time I closed my eyes to go to sleep the vision of their inhuman acts was all I saw, and a week later, I am still completely scared by what I saw!

Anyway, here is the latest, have a read and feel free to leave your comments;

"20 years from now, I will be in Heaven --bye !!"

This was written by a woman born in Egypt as a Muslim.

This is not hearsay, and it will scare the life out of you.
Make sure you read the paragraph (in red) towards the end.

Joys of Muslim Women

by Nonie Darwish

In the Muslim faith a Muslim man can marry a child as young as 1 year old and have sexual intimacy with this child, and consummating the marriage. The dowry is given to the family in exchange for the woman (who becomes his slave) and for the purchase of the private parts of the woman, to use her as a toy.

Even though a woman is abused she can not obtain a divorce. To prove rape, the woman must have (4) male witnesses. Often after a woman has been raped, she is returned to her family and the family must return the dowry. The family has the right to execute her (an honor killing) to restore the honor of the family. Husbands can beat their wives 'at will' and he does not have to say why he has beaten her.

The husband is permitted to have (4 wives) and a temporary wife for an hour (prostitute) at his discretion.

The Shariah Muslim law controls the private as well as the public life of the woman.

In the West World ( America ) Muslim men are starting to demand Shariah Law so the wife can not obtain a divorce and he can have full and complete control of her. It is amazing and alarming how many of our sisters and daughters attending American Universities are now marrying Muslim men and submitting themselves and their children unsuspectingly to the Shariah law.

By passing this on, enlightened Australian and American women may avoid becoming a slave under Shariah Law. Ripping the West in Two. Author and lecturer Nonie Darwish says the goal of radical Islamists is to impose Shariah law on the world, ripping Western law and liberty in two.

She recently authored the book, Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law.

Darwish was born in Cairo and spent her childhood in Egypt and Gaza before immigrating to America in 1978, when she was eight years old. Her father died while leading covert attacks on Israel. He was a high-ranking Egyptian military officer stationed with his family in Gaza.

When he died, he was considered a "shahid," a martyr for jihad. His posthumous status earned Nonie and her family an elevated position in Muslim society.

But Darwish developed a skeptical eye at an early age. She questioned her ownMuslim culture and upbringing. She converted to Christianity after hearing a Christian preacher on television.

In her latest book, Darwish warns about creeping sharia law - what it is, what it means, and how it is manifested in Islamic countries.

For the West, she says radical Islamists are working to impose sharia on the world. If that happens, Western civilization will be destroyed. Westerners generally assume all religions encourage a respect for the dignity of each individual. Islamic law (Sharia) teaches that non-Muslims should be subjugated or killed in this world.

Peace and prosperity for one's children is not as important as assuring that Islamic law rules everywhere in the Middle East and eventually in the world.

While Westerners tend to think that all religions encourage some form of the golden rule, Sharia teaches two systems of ethics - one for Muslims and another for non-Muslims. Building on tribal practices of the seventh century, Sharia encourages the side of humanity that wants to take from and subjugate others.

While Westerners tend to think in terms of religious people developing a personal understanding of and relationship with God, Sharia advocates executing people who ask difficult questions that could be interpreted as criticism.

It's hard to imagine, that in this day and age, Islamic scholars agree that those who criticize Islam or choose to stop being Muslim should be executed. Sadly, while talk of an Islamic reformation is common and even assumed by many in the West, such murmurings in the Middle East are silenced through intimidation.

While Westerners are accustomed to an increase in religious tolerance over time, Darwish explains how petro dollars are being used to grow an extremely intolerant form of political Islam in her native Egypt and elsewhere.

(In twenty years there will be enough Muslim voters in australia and the U.S. to elect the President by themselves! Rest assured they will do so ... You can look at how they have taken over several towns in the USA .. Dearborn Mich. is one ... and there are others ...)

I think everyone in the U.S. should be required to read this, but with the ACLU, there is no way this will be widely publicized, unless each of us sends it on!

It is too bad that so many are disillusioned with life and Christianity to accept Muslims as peaceful ... some may be but they have an army that is willing to shed blood in the name of Islam ... the peaceful support the warriors with their finances and own kind of patriotism to their religion. While America is getting rid of Christianity from all public sites and erasing God from the lives of children the Muslims are planning a great jihad on America.

This is your chance to make a difference ...! Pass it on to your email list or at least those you think will listen.

If the world ever needed Jesus - it is now! Christ is what we really need, the forgiveness and a life of holiness is what is essential for us here and now - it's up to you!

I'll leave you today with the words of Jesus;

"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."

John 10:10