A new translation of the Bible into Farsi has been completed
by Wycliffe Bible Translators, and there are plans to take 300,000 copies into Iran. The church in Iran is underground,
but is thought to be 400,000 strong, and to be growing at 20% per year – one of
the fastest church growth rates of any country in the world. An Iranian woman in London told how she had
put her faith in Jesus at the age of 13, after her father was executed for his
faith, and how she used to evangelise by writing out Scripture verses by hand
and leaving them in strategic places -- she once wrote out the entire Gospel of
John. Unsurprisingly, she sees the planned delivery of Bibles to Iran as an
answer to prayer.
It has emerged that the Equality Commission failed to take
legal advice from any senior barrister before launching their legal case
against the Christian bakers in Northern Ireland. A Freedom of Information
request for relevant emails reveals that they only took such advice after the
issue was raised at Prime Minister’s Question Time.
A high-level ethics council in Germany, consisting of
academics, doctors, scientists and lawyers, has recommended to the German government
that incest should be decriminalised. The council apparently followed the same
logic that has been applied to gay marriages in arguing that consent and
commitment between adults are the most important things, and that it should
not be the court’s responsibility to uphold social taboos. It concluded that “The
fundamental right of adult siblings to sexual self-determination is to be
weighed more heavily than the abstract idea of protection of the family.” However, a spokeswoman for Angela Merkel said, “Eliminating the threat
of punishment against incestuous acts within families would run counter to the
protection of undisturbed development for children.”
International Justice Mission, a charity that works to rescue
people from slavery, entered an alleged brothel in Mumbai last week in a
co-ordinated raid with the police. There were no girls to be found, but after
45 minutes of tapping on walls, they found one low wall that sounded hollow.
The police agreed to break in to that wall, and they found a large hidden room
with six girls, who appeared to be in their early teens, inside it. The girls
have been released and the brothel owner arrested. (An interview with the
director of IJM Mumbai, who took part in the rescue, can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpgY7Di0pso).
Another Christian film which has just been released in the USA is “The Song,” which is based on the Song of Solomon. It stars Alan Powell, lead singer of the band Anthem Lights, as a singer who meets and marries his true love. After they marry he writes “The Song” for her; it becomes his breakout hit, but he finds himself torn between family life and the music industry. Trailers and details can be found at www.thesongmovie.com.
Another Christian film which has just been released in the USA is “The Song,” which is based on the Song of Solomon. It stars Alan Powell, lead singer of the band Anthem Lights, as a singer who meets and marries his true love. After they marry he writes “The Song” for her; it becomes his breakout hit, but he finds himself torn between family life and the music industry. Trailers and details can be found at www.thesongmovie.com.
In technology news, I’m going to start a short series on
things to do and things not to do in Facebook. First of all, did you know that you
have two mail inboxes on Facebook? Click (left) on the double speech bubble in
the top toolbar and you’ll see “Inbox” and also “Other;” the latter is used for
spam messages and also messages that Facebook thinks might be spam. I found a message from a friend sent four years
ago in my “Other” inbox. To move a message to your usual Inbox, simply reply to
it.
And finally, a bride-to-be from Chengdu in southern China decided,
with her fiancé’s acquiescence, to break the world record for the longest ever
train for a wedding dress. The end result is a train of lace that is three
miles long, weighs 50kg, will require 40 bridesmaids to carry it, and which
cost about a year’s average wage for a Chinese worker. Her fiancé said, “It’s
her day, so what she says goes.”
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