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News Briefs 23-08-06

By Jameskeon

I think a sunspot cycle would be a little too hot on the phatarse.

  • German astronomers produce original Apollo 11 tapes.
  • Perpetual motion claim probed.
  • Team finds proof of dark matter. Someone is gunning for funds.
  • New York Times withheld a story about the Bush administration’s illegal domestic spying until after 2004 election.
  • Why some people have HIV but don’t get AIDS. So, not going for the ‘does not cause’ view.
  • Scientists issue unprecedented forecast for next sunspot cycle.
  • Water as fuel.
  • A history for Hyperion.
  • Grey squirrel virus wiping out reds.
  • Ice geysers discovered on Mars.
  • Q the historical Jesus.
  • Loose Change second edition.
  • Scientists argue about hobbit skeleton.
  • JFK lone-gunman theory doesn’t hold water.
  • Revealed: the world’s oldest computer.
  • Mint pain killer takes leaf out of ancient medical texts.
  • How to win friends and influence people.
  • Thank who very much?
  • This old house.
  • Dwarfing Earth’s largest dinosaur.
  • Do modern humans carry Neanderthal genes?
  • Can money make you happy?
  • Early life lines make waves.

Quote of the Day:


It is a terrible irony that in human pity rests the glorification of war, and hence war itself.

Jameske

Jameske
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5 Comments

  1. Jameske’s QOTD
    If Jameske is saying that Pity is the sole cause of the glorification of war and thus the sole cause of war itself then I have to wonder as to his reasoning. Pity is no doubt a reason for glorifying war but it’s not the only one and I question whether it’s even one of the major reasons. Pity is only a part of what Man is and I doubt that war is caused by just one part of Man’s nature; I think it more likely that war is caused by all of what Man is, that Man is war, in essence.

    Perhaps Jameske could expand on his thought a bit?

    Cheers

    So many idiots…so little time.

    1. Jesus is in Miami
      Some news report says a guy from Puerto Rico claims to be Jesus. I looked around to find more info, he sounds like a cult leader type of person.

      “The group is organized around José Luis De Jesus Miranda, a 59-year-old Puerto Rican man with impish charm and a taste for indulgence.”

      Devotees call him Jesus Christ and lavish him with gifts and money. More than 400 followers have set up businesses that funnel 20 to 80 percent of their profits into the ministry. Others donate cars, homes, and tens of thousands of dollars in cash and services.

      De Jesus’s followers believe they are God’s true chosen people and call their children the “super race.” They are also convinced other churches peddle deceit and spread poverty, war, and disease. But while this antipathy dates back years, only recently have they begun acting on it by disrupting religious events.

      Over the past five months, Creciendo en Gracia parishioners have held at least 40 protests in more than a dozen countries. And De Jesus says this is just the beginning. “My purpose,” he explains, “is to close down every church so the true church can begin. You could say I’m leading the greatest reformation that has ever happened.”

      It’s Sunday morning inside Creciendo en Gracia’s headquarters, a cavernous building with industrial carpet and fluorescent lighting. Some 500 business barons, college students, handymen, and housewives pump their fists in the air and chant, “Dad-dy, Dad-dy” as De Jesus ambles onto the stage.

      He waits for the ruckus to die down and then picks up a Bible and flops it open. “These words are very small for me,” he says. “I can’t read them at a distance.” Then he holds up a set of eyeglasses. “But with these I read it perfectly. My teachings are the eyeglasses that your eyes need.”

      Finally De Jesus gets down to business. “Are there any adulterers in the audience?” he asks, leaning casually on the podium. “Good morning, Mr. Adulterer!”

      “How about idolaters?” he adds with a grin. “All of you have practiced idolatry.

      “And sorcery, you love sorcery. That’s what you’re doing every time you play the Lotto.” Then he tiptoes to the edge of the stage and glances over each shoulder as if to make sure no one is eavesdropping. “Sorcery,” he says, “it feels good – especially when the jackpot is $38 million.”

      If De Jesus treats sin lightly, that’s because it doesn’t exist, according to his gospel. He also teaches that Hell is a farce, the Devil is dead, and people are divided into two distinct castes. There are those who have no conscience or ear for his message – they are predestined for damnation. And there are the believers with incorruptible spirits who are programmed to hear his words as truth.

      With their salvation assured, De Jesus’s followers can indulge sinful urges. “Here it doesn’t matter if you are a drug addict,” he explains, “or if you have been married ten times. How many failures you’ve had – even if you’ve killed someone – we accept people with their weaknesses.”

      It’s a seductive proposition, especially for those from Latin America, where 73 percent of the population is Catholic and most people spend their lives following strict religious mores.

      Before discovering Creciendo en Gracia in 1999, 50-year-old Irini Papahui managed a candy factory with 70 employees in her native Guatemala and raised a teenage daughter on her own. She sought solace from the Catholic Church, but its teachings only added to her burden. “They made me feel like I wasn’t worthy of God’s love,” she explains. “I was striving and striving and always falling short.”

      Eventually she found herself plagued by guilt and stomach problems including chronic vomiting and diarrhea. Then she discovered De Jesus. “He has given me life, true life, and a happiness that never goes away,” she says.

      De Jesus’s gospel flows from an experience he had in December 1976. After a hardscrabble youth in Puerto Rico, where he often stole to feed his heroin habit, he moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts, and ran a Bible-based treatment center for drug-addicted street toughs. But soon he lost faith in conventional churches. “I was getting tired of all the legalism and hypocrisy,” he explains. “I kept thinking, Christianity should be something better.”

      Then one frosty December night, he says he awoke to find himself flanked by two brawny men with stern expressions who told him: “The King of Kings is coming to anoint you.” Before he knew it, he was standing in a luminous marble corridor where trumpets blared and a spectral figure crept toward him. Then the apparition merged with him, and he began to hear a man’s voice in his head.

      “He said, ‘Open your Bible,'” De Jesus recalls. “So I opened to Romans 6. And he said, ‘Read that … that means you’re dead to sin; sin can’t reign in your life.'” The experience left De Jesus transformed. “Ever since that day, I can’t learn from anybody – and I mean no one,” he says. He now believes that was the night of Christ’s second coming.

      In the years that followed, the voice continued to offer new revelations. Then in 1986 it said, “Move to Miami. There you’ll have a bridge to all nations.” So at age 40, De Jesus, his then-wife Nydia, and their five children came to the Magic City, where he secured a fifteen-minute daily slot on WVCG-AM (1080) and began preaching his controversial message.

      Before long, other ministers were railing against him from their radio pulpits. And this worked to his advantage. After he had been on the air three months, De Jesus rented a Hialeah warehouse, filled it with 300 chairs, and invited listeners for a weekend seminar. To his surprise, he says, 500 people turned up. “Just like that,” De Jesus marvels. “Creciendo en Gracia was born.”

      In the years that followed, the church increasingly revolved around De Jesus. Then in 1998 he claimed to be the reincarnation of the Apostle Paul. The following year he proclaimed himself “El Otro” – a demigod who would lay the foundation for the Lord’s return. Finally in 2004 he named himself Jesus Christ and the ultimate authority on the gospel. Today no one but him – and his right-hand man, Carlos Cestero – are allowed to preach. And De Jesus always dictates the message. Instead of regular sermons, most followers around the world watch videos or simulcasts of these men projected on a screen behind the pulpit.

      De Jesus bears little resemblance to the biblical Lamb of God. He wears fine suits and diamond-encrusted rings, drives a 7 Series BMW, and, until recently, lived in a 5000-square-foot Miramar home with Corinthian columns and vaulted ceilings. He also travels with a battalion of guards who wear dark suits and conspicuous earpieces.

      De Jesus says the cost of his security detail, which runs upward of $300,000 per year, is covered by follower Lazaro Seijo. A successful entrepreneur, Seijo is also building De Jesus a house in Homestead. And this kind of generosity is not unusual. Devotees continually lavish De Jesus with money and extravagant gifts. And the doctrine encourages it.

      Creciendo en Gracia parishioners, like those of most churches, are taught to sacrifice a tenth of their income to the church. But they are also expected to give an additional sum directly to their pastors and bishops – or to God himself. And during many services, the faithful are told that those who give “beyond their means” – who put “the Lord before car payment and mortgage” – will prosper, and angels will protect them. Some surrender almost everything. “We invest our last dime, our entire life, so one person can understand, so the message can be spread,” says Pastor Ivan Lopez, who works in the Miami headquarters.

      One of those who has given his life over to Creciendo en Gracia is Alvaro Albarracin. Before joining the church, the baby-face 37-year-old Colombian native struggled to find his spiritual path. He sampled teachings from Mormon temples, Kingdom Halls, and evangelical Christian churches. “I came to the point where I didn’t want anything to do with religion at all,” he says. Then in early 1992 his mother Regina gave him a cassette of De Jesus’s preaching. He later attended a service. “Right away I fell in love with him,” Albarracin recalls. “His face, his voice, everything. I knew he was God.”

      —————————–Truth is stranger than fiction.

      1. bleeding the ignorant
        Hello Pam,

        “There are those who have no conscience or ear for his message – they are predestined for damnation. And there are the believers with incorruptible spirits who are programmed to hear his words as truth.

        De Jesus bears little resemblance to the biblical Lamb of God. He wears fine suits and diamond-encrusted rings, drives a 7 Series BMW, and, until recently, lived in a 5000-square-foot Miramar home with Corinthian columns and vaulted ceilings. He also travels with a battalion of guards who wear dark suits and conspicuous earpieces”

        Enough said, just another false prophet, bleeding the ignorant.

        1. reminds me of the fundies all over the world
          The ones who do the very same thing this guy is doing. I remember all those television evangelical preachers, plus so many other wild eyed religions the world over, caught “red handed” and certainly “bleeding” the ignorant not to mention inflaming the minds causing hysterical women and men ready to kill. Not much in the way of balance or compassion or wisdom. More of that rhetoric “I’m the one who knows and I’ve got the version of truth you want to hear.” Short sighted, they really don’t care, no matter who it hurts. —————————–Truth is stranger than fiction.

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