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HOW MANY AMERICANS, with the help of God in sincere humble prayer, truly live all of the Ten Commandments according to God (Ex 20:2-17; Deut 5:6-21; CCC 1858-2557), not according to the world or according to their own subjective interpretation? (Note: When pasting this document into Free Republic, it seems that most of the special formatting is lost, such as bold, italics, underlined words and embedded links. To read the document with the formatting and embedded links go to the link of the document.) THE TRUTH COMES FROM GOD, NOT FROM THE CHURCH. The Church is the servant of the...

In the middle of the 19th century, an archaeologist discovered fragments of multiple clay tablets in what is modern-day Iraq. Translated, the cuneiform writing on these and other tablets subsequently found revealed the “Enuma Elish,” the Babylonian account of the creation of the world. The Enuma Elish starts with formless chaos and water. The waters divide into a god and a goddess, who have children who are also gods. War breaks out between mother and father, and between mother and children. Ultimately, the offspring of the first two gods create human beings to be their servants. Other ancient cultures have...

Archaeologists in northern Iraq, working on the Mashki and Adad gate sites in Mosul that were destroyed by Islamic State in 2016, recently uncovered 2,700-year-old Assyrian reliefs. Featuring war scenes and trees, these rock carvings add to the bounty of detailed stone panels excavated from the 1840s onwards, many of which are currently held in the British Museum. They stem from the ancient city of Nineveh which, for a time, was likely the most dazzling in the world. There is evidence of occupation at the site already by 3,000 BC, an era known as the late Uruk period. But it...

Archaeologists in northern Iraq have unearthed 2,700-year-old rock carvings featuring war scenes and trees from the Assyrian empire, an archaeologist has said. The carvings on marble slabs were discovered in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, where experts have been working to restore the site of the ancient Mashki Gate, which was bulldozed by Islamic State militants in 2016. IS overran large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014 and carried out a campaign of systematic destruction of museums and invaluable archaeological sites in their fervour to erase history. Fadhil Mohammed, the head of the restoration works, said the team were surprised...

After faring thus badly the enemy departed, while the Greeks continued their march unmolested through the remainder of the day and arrived at the Tigris river. Here was a large deserted city; its name was Larisa, and it was inhabited in ancient times by the Medes. Its wall was twenty-five feet in breadth and a hundred in height, and the whole circuit of the wall was two parasangs. It was built of clay bricks, and rested upon a stone foundation twenty feet high... Near by this city was a pyramid of stone, a plethrum in breadth and two plethra in...

Several years ago, Edwin Settle wrote a syndicated news article titled “Jonah’s big fish story teaches important lesson.” Mr. Settle was a former college professor (COE College) and minister with a doctorate from Yale Divinity School.In his article, he attacked the book of Jonah by stating: “The book of Jonah cannot be accepted as history” (Settle, B-4).Professor Settle listed several alleged inaccuracies contained in the book. It is incredible that one could be alive for three days in a fish’s belly.It is unlikely that a city would so unanimously respond to the preaching of someone of a different language...

ISIS fighters discovered an ancient Assyrian palace under the ruins of Mosul, but unfortunately, they looted and sold off the tantalising treasures they discovered.Professor Peter Miglus, the archaeologist who has led work at the site, said that gold kept by Sennacherib may have been discovered by ISIS. He said: “We can presume many very valuable objects must now be on the black market." The archaeologists found gold objects littered within the tunnels that were discarded by ISIS. Gold from ancient Egypt, such as a gold scarab ring and a small sceptre with the ankh, the pharaonic symbol that represents...

Hartmut Kühne, University Professor at the Institut für Vorderasiatische Archäologie, presents "The Collapse of the Assyrian Empire and the Evidence of Dur-Katlimmu". The collapse of the Assyrian Empire was the prelude to the end of the Mesopotamian domination of the Ancient Near East in 539 BC to be followed by the Persian hegemony. The metropolitan core region of Assyria laid waste, as is known from extensive excavations in the Assyrian capitals; neither the Babylonian nor the Median successors cared for a reconstruction program. But how did the Assyrian home provinces survive the collapse? This poorly known chapter of history is...

“I KEPT the four girls in an abandoned house. Each night I would have sex with a different one,” a grubby looking man said, unperturbed.“Sometimes they seemed scared, but they never said no. They were all virgins when I got them and more beautiful than you can imagine.”It was the world’s single largest military operation in nearly 15 years.The battle for the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the largest offensive in the war against Islamic State - and no doubt, the bloodiest - took a mighty three years for allied forces to remove Islamic State’s tight grip.But with freedom, comes...

What is happening on the Temple Mount has prophetic significance. The reborn Jewish nation will celebrate its 70th year since becoming a nation again (1948) which even on its own, sets off alarms for those who have ears to hear. Combined with the ability, just this week, of Jews to go up to, and pray upon, the Temple Mount, and a "generation that shall not pass away", we are set for some interesting and exciting times. All the end times nations are gradually gathering around Israel. It only takes a spark to set off the beginning of the ultimate world...

Destruction on the Nineveh plains; ACN photo NEW YORK—“Hope is coming back to the Nineveh plains!” That is the verdict of the Middle East expert of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), the international Catholic charity.Just back from a fact-finding mission to the region in northern Iraq recently liberated from the grip of ISIS, Father Andrzej Halemba said that “despite the many urgent questions that need clarification, people are willing to return to their villages.” The biggest challenges include the illegal property appropriations of abandoned homes, an investigation into the alleged use of chemical weapons in the destruction of...

Erbil, Iraq, Jan 24, 2017 / 12:03 am (Aid to the Church in Need).- “I don't understand how people can harm each other so much,” sighs security guard Louis Petrus. Petrus recently returned to his hometown for the first time: the Christian city of Qaraqosh, near Mosul, which he had to flee in August 2014, when Islamic State captured the largest Christian city on the Nineveh plain. He told international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need: “Look at my house: it is damaged, most of my furniture has been stolen and my household effects are broken. Other inhabitants...

The ancient city of Mosul, in Iraq, is currently experiencing an agonizing struggle between regular forces of the Iraqi Government, allied with the Kurdish Peshmurga , local Iraqi militias and supported by US and international coalition forces, seeking to wrest the city from the forces of the recently formed ISIS army. The joint operation is called in Arabic, Qadimun Ya Naynawa, translated “Oh Ninewa,Here We come!”. Can you see in the Arabic translation the name of an ancient Biblical city? Ninewa is the Arabic way of saying, “Ninevah”, the city which Jonah had once preached repentance unto, in spite of...

The chilly December wind whipped rain across the strewn wreckage of a city that, nearly 3,000 years ago, ruled almost the entire Middle East. Rivulets of water ran through the dirt, washing away chunks of ancient stone. The city of Nimrud in northern Iraq is in pieces, victim of the Islamic State group's fervor to erase history. The remains of its palaces and temples, once lined in brilliant reliefs of gods and kings, have been blown up. The statues of winged bulls that once guarded the site are hacked to bits. Its towering ziggurat, or step pyramid, has been bulldozed.

In another act of horror from ISIS, six boys have been taken and tortured to death with welding rods on welding equipment for the “crime” of playing soccer:  Islamic State has executed six boys with a welding rod and flogged three young men for playing football, it has been reported. The six boys from the Nineveh area in Iraq were said to have been handcuffed before a welding machine and rod was used to kill them in a public execution by the terror group in central Mosul. “ISIS said that the youths belonged to a resistance faction,” a source...

ISIS barbarians have destroyed a 2,000-year-old gate close to their Iraqi stronghold of Mosul. The breathtaking structure is known as the Gate of God, and used to guard the ancient Assyrian city Nineveh. The destruction of the ancient structure, also called the Mashki Gate, has been confirmed by the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, and the Antiquities Department in Baghdad has not denied the demolition. The terrorists demolished the ancient gate using military equipment, according to activists in Mosul. ISIS thugs have destroyed many of Iraqi historic sites and monuments, including the Assyrian city of Nimrud, the Winged...

Iraqi engineers involved in building the Mosul dam 30 years ago have warned that the risk of its imminent collapse and the consequent death toll could be even worse than reported. They pointed out that pressure on the dam’s compromised structure was building up rapidly as winter snows melted and more water flowed into the reservoir, bringing it up to its maximum capacity, while the sluice gates normally used to relieve that pressure were jammed shut. The Iraqi engineers also said the failure to replace machinery or assemble a full workforce more than a year after Islamic State temporarily held...

[Syria] Palmyra [Syria] Mar Elian Monastery [Syria] Apamea [Syria] Dura-europos [Syria] Mari [Iraq] Hatra [Iraq] Nineveh [Iraq] Mosul Museum And Libraries [Iraq] Nimrud [Iraq] Khorsabad [Iraq] Mar Behnam Monastery [Iraq] Mosque Of The Prophet Yunus [Iraq] Imam Dur Mausoleum

A clay tablet that has baffled scientists for 150 years has been identified as a witness's account of the asteroid suspected of being behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Researchers who cracked the cuneiform symbols on the Planisphere tablet believe that recorded an asteroid thought to have been more than half a mile across. The tablet, found by Henry Layard in the remains of the library in the royal place at Nineveh in the mid-19th century, is thought to be a 700 B.C. copy of notes made by a Sumerian astronomer watching the night sky. He referred to the...

ISIL is obliterating the Middle East's cultural landmarks. But should we arm ourselves in order to save threatened sites, asks Dan Cruickshank. ‘When Egypt comes under the auspices of the Khalifa [Caliphate], there will be no more Pyramids, no more Sphinx, no more idolatry.” This, I was told by British Muslim political activist Anjem Choudary, “will be just”. This chilling recent interview with Choudary in east London was part of a journey that started in early 2002. I went to Afghanistan in March of that year, just after the fall of the Taliban, to report for a television programme on...