Monday, May 16th, in the year of our Lord, 2016.
By Mark Robinette
Sadiq Khan, the new mayor of London, England, and the first Muslim to hold the post, endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. Ironically he spent most of his time talking about GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump. Khan called Trump’s view of Islam “ignorant,” saying that he wanted to bring the billionaire to London to “educate” him on the subject. Trump responded by saying, “I assume he denies that there’s Islamic terrorism. If you look at this Islamic radical terrorism all over the world right now, it’s a disaster.”
Real fire may be ready to spew from New Zealand’s Mount Ruapehu, made famous for being Mount Doom in The Lord of the Rings movies. Officials are warning tourists to stay away, saying that it could erupt at any moment. According to The Sun, temperatures at Mount Ruapehu, an active volcano, have doubled in the last few weeks, and there has been a huge increase in both carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide output at the volcano’s Crater Lake.
Iranian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who was sentenced to death for apostasy in 2010 but released in 2012, has been arrested again. The pastor, his wife Tina, and another church worker were unexpectedly taken into custody on Friday for no known reason. Locals said that this is not the first time he has been rearrested. In fact, they said that in Iran government officials often arrest the same people repeatedly to foster insecurity among their church members. Pray for the release of Youcef Nadarkhani and other Christian workers in Iran.
St. Mary’s Church, a Coptic Christian church in the village of Esmaelia al-Bahreia, Egypt, was burned down completely after an attack carried out by Islamic extremists on Thursday. Some fear that this may be the beginning of what happened in Egypt three years ago when numbers of Christians were killed and 65 churches were destroyed. Tens of thousands of Christian converts from Islam, who had made their way to Europe to escape persecution, have found themselves jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Open Doors, a global Christian persecution watchdog organization, said that their research shows that up to 40,000 people are being abused and bullied in Germany alone. Nearly all say that they are constantly verbally abused, and nearly just as many have been physically attacked.
1 Peter 4:13-14 says, “Rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.”
Municipal Judge Ruth Neely, a small-town Wyoming judge, may be removed from office because she said that her faith in Christ would not allow her to perform what some call “marriage” between two people of the same gender. Local officials of the Democratic Party turned her in after reading her comments in the newspaper. Solemnizing marriages in her city, Pinedale, has not been part of her current job, and no one had asked her to perform a wedding, but now the state Commission on Judicial Conduct and Ethics has moved to end her 21-year career. Her case is now before the state’s Supreme Court.
Also in the same small town in Wyoming, a massive manhunt is underway for 22-year-old Dereck “DJ” Harrison, presumed armed and dangerous. His father, Flint Harrison, was arrested on Saturday, but DJ escaped after they allegedly kidnapped a woman and her four teenage daughters whom they lured into a basement and tied up.
On Friday, 116-year-old Susannah Mushatt Jones, the world’s oldest person, died in New York. Jones, whose life spanned three different centuries and who was the last person alive who had been born in the 1800s, said that the secret to her longevity was in the loving relationships she had.
Jones is gone, but “Now abides faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13).
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