Wednesday, June 1st, in the year of our Lord, 2016.
By Mark Robinette
Radio and television airways continued to buzz Tuesday with a national discussion following the weekend shooting of a silver-backed gorilla at Cincinnati, Ohio Zoo to save the life of a boy who jumped in the pen. Millions watched cell phone video of the 17-year-old gorilla, named Harambe, who appeared to hold hands and caudle the boy at times but also gave him a concussion as he pulled him around the pen.
The boy’s mother, Michelle Gregg, said she was at the zoo with her four children when her 4-year-old asked if he could get in the water with the gorillas. After being told “no,” the boy jumped down 12-15 feet into the water landing near a 400-male gorilla. Zoo officials shot and killed the animal.
Angry protestors and Facebook trolls have made death threats on Mrs. Gregg and others suggested she and the boy’s father be shot. Reporters even felt obligated to ask GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump about the incident. The boy’s mother said she appreciated people’s prayers, adding, “What started off as a wonderful day turned into a scary one. God protected my child until the authorities were able to get to him.”
Responding to criticism about $6 million Trump raised for wounded veteran care when he skipped one of the presidential debates, Trump blasted media outlets and provided the names and amounts of all the money raised saying, “not one dime was kept for administrative costs.”
Conservative talk-radio host and outspoken never-Trump advocate Glenn Beck was suspended from the airways of SiriusXM Tuesday for seemingly agreeing Trump may need to be assassinated if elected. The words in question came as Beck interviewed fiction writer Brad Thor.
Christianity.com is reporting a revival amidst persecution in Saudi Arabia. Despite the fact that any display of religion, other than Islam, is illegal, the number of Christians in country has risen to 1.4 million. The World View spoke to Dwight Bashir, co-director for policy and researcher for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. He said Christians should know they can fan these flames of revival by creating printed material and by using social media.
“People don’t know that Christians are in Saudi Arabia. It is important to put a human face on individual cases. When Saudi’s travel they get exposed to the world and other religions, and materials from the other side. Saudi also rank among the top five percent of traffic of people on the internet, which is another way they find Christianity.”
France boasts both the highest populations of Jewish and Muslims among European nations. However, with the recent influx of millions of Muslims, blatant anti-Semitism in Paris has driven thousands out of the capitol. 8,000 in 2015 alone, officials said, to the point where now as many as half the Jewish population has left.
According to CNN, nearly 200 people were kidnapped from two busses by Taliban fighters in the northeastern province of Kunduz in Afghanistan early Tuesday morning. The militants killed six passengers during the kidnapping and seven more when the busses stopped at a remote village. All but 20 were then released.
Boy Scout training helped prepare 17-year-old Nicolas Latiolais for what he encountered Tuesday when he came upon a gun-shot wounded man on the streets of Houston.
Lationlais said he thought that man had been hit by a car and was puzzled to see people standing by watching the screaming man who had been shot through the leg. The shooter, a 25-year-old four-tour Afghanistan veteran killed a man in his fifties and wounded six others in the spree even firing at a police helicopter before being killed. While the shooter was still shooting, Lationalais applied a tunicate and kept his mother out of harm’s way.
As Jesus said when he told the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke chapter 10, teaching what it means to love your neighbor. “Go and do likewise.”
And that’s the World View in Five Minutes.