Posted on 02/24/2021 5:07:24 PM PST by ebb tide
VATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) - Pope Francis' proposed interreligious prayer service for Muslims, Yazidis, Mandaean-Sabean and other religions at the site of Ur during his Iraq visit is being slammed as more evocative of the "Tower of Babel" than the "House of Abraham."
The Ziggurat of Ur
The Vatican has confirmed that Francis will fly to Nāṣiriya for a March 6 service titled "Prayer for the sons and daughters of Abraham" at the Plain of Ur after meeting the Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf.
"The Holy Father is holding the interreligious meeting near the house of Ibrahim the prophet," which has a religious meaning for Christians and Muslims and for all," Fr. Albert Hisham, the Iraqi priest organizing the event, told Church Militant.
The archaeological site of the pope's event comprises a pyramid-style ziggurat and a residential complex the size of a football field and may have been an administrative center for the ancient Sumerian city of Ur.
Iraq's tourism industry is hoping that the papal visit would lure both tourists and pilgrims to the site being promoted as the "House of Abraham."
But Nottingham University's Hebrew Bible scholar Gavin Fernandes told Church Militant that "there are several reasons why this is a bad choice of venue for such an event."
What is being hyped as "Abraham's house" is "widely acknowledged to not really be the patriarch's dwelling but a large public building that the Manchester University excavators thought was an administrative or religious complex because of its sheer size and the findings therein," Dr. Fernandes said.
The ziggurat very strongly evokes the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11, which itself becomes a symbol of rebelliousness and recalcitrance.Tweet
"This has not stopped naïve zealots from spouting claims of finding Abraham's boyhood home, even though pinpointing Abraham's historical person is an extremely difficult task even for those historians who want to support his existence," Fernandes lamented.
The biblical scholar also explained how "scholars are not even sure this is Abraham's Ur," since "while a southern location for Abraham's homeland was claimed at the start of the 20th century, it took the somewhat sensationalized claims of Leonard Wooley published from 1927 to cement the current location as the birthplace of Abraham."
"The biblical geography of Abraham's travels in Genesis and the biblical descriptions of his home country don't actually point to Wooley's Ur but to a northern location, nearer to Terah's city of Harran that was discovered some years after the wool had already been pulled over everyone's eyes by Sir Leonard," Fernandes remarked.
The academic also expressed surprise that the interreligious meeting was being held in the shadow of a ziggurat explicitly evocative of the Tower of Babel in the book of Genesis — a structure representing totalitarian humanism and flagrant defiance of God.
I don't remember Peter telling the Pharisees that Abraham was the name under Heaven by which people could be saved.Tweet
Fernandes explained:
A ziggurat is a representation carved in stone of nirvanic-like ascension to a pagan pantheon of gods. It is the Mesopotamian counterpart to the ancient Aztec and Egyptian "pyramidical faiths," all of which ought to be an affront to those attending as devout representatives from the world's major religions.
The ziggurat very strongly evokes the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11, which itself becomes a symbol of rebelliousness and recalcitrance based on a call of unity for contumacy against God and which swiftly provoked his anger. Experts agree that the Tower of Babel, according to the biblical narrative, would have been a ziggurat of some kind.
Meanwhile, the conservative website Not the Bee (part of the popular satirical Christian Babylon Bee media) is deriding the "woke pope" for preaching on harmony between the children of Abraham "instead of preaching Christ crucified."
Hebrew Bible scholar Dr. Gavin Fernandes
"It's funny, because I don't remember Peter telling the Pharisees that Abraham was the name under Heaven by which people could be saved," author Joel Abbott quips.
Noting that the interfaith prayer is "to be held on the site of the ancient Babylonian temple dedicated to the moon god Nanna," Abbott excoriates: "I look forward to Francis doing an 'ancient gods' tour where he offers alms and prayers at the temples of Baal, Asherah, Dagon, and Molech!"
Pope Francis also "skipped those days in pope school" where he would have learned that "God's covenantal promises — including the atonement of Christ — would come only through Abraham's son Isaac," Abbott stresses.
Muslims believe Ishmael to be the heir of God's promise.
Fernandes concludes that putting Abraham spiritually back in Ur may not be "the most fitting memorial to our great forefather" because "in Genesis 24, the patriarch is himself at pains to distance himself and his progeny from the land of his origins."
"God, he emphatically states, has called him away and says (in a manner of speaking), should he allow his progeny to return to that country, it would be 'over his dead body,'" Fernandes observes.
"One wonders whether Abraham's words to his servant, 'See to it that you do not take my son back there' might not also apply to any son of Abraham living today," the scholar asks.
Ping
Park rangers, wildlife managers and game wardens should start checking on where the bears are defecating
Because
This Pope sure isn’t Catholic.
It’s not enough to believe in Jesus,
You have to believe in the Right Jesus.....
Jorge Bergoglio is one more Jesuit off the reservation. No surprise there.
That picture is the funniest thing I have seen or heard today.
I’m also sorry that it’s not really a funny thread.
This Pope’s “Jesus” is more George Soros than George Washington. This fiend gives real Christians a daily double middle finger.
FALSANI: Who’s Jesus to you?
(He laughs nervously)
OBAMA: Right.
Jesus is an historical figure for me, and he’s also a bridge between God and man, in the Christian faith, and one that I think is powerful precisely because he serves as that means of us reaching something higher.
And he’s also a wonderful teacher. I think it’s important for all of us, of whatever faith, to have teachers in the flesh and also teachers in history.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/2578739/posts
LOL
Thank you for posting. This Pope is an admitted globalist so his religion is man-made systems. He is offensive. When the prayers are “for our Pope and all the clergy”, the Catholics pray the Pope is converted and becomes a Christian!
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“...Noting that the interfaith prayer is “to be held on the site of the ancient Babylonian temple dedicated to the moon god Nanna,” Abbott excoriates: “I look forward to Francis doing an ‘ancient gods’ tour where he offers alms and prayers at the temples of Baal, Asherah, Dagon, and Molech!” ...”
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That’s supposed to be a joke - but it isn’t. This is the Pope who introduced pachymama!
The video below is Dr Taylor Marshall interpreting the visions of Blessed Catherine Emmerich. She saw two popes - one in the past who cleaned up the early church by removing idols, and then a future one who pollutes the Church by introducing false idols. Funny, when I tried to understand a little about Hinduism just in the general education sense, my takeaway was that it was a religion where each person makes or picks their own god. Blessed Catherine describes a large church scene like that where at the service, each person pulls their personal idol out of their coat. Video 36:42 really interesting:
At this site, the pagans sacrificed 100’s of thousands of children. All this false prophet needs is a willing Antichrist. He calls it Interfaith prayer for the children of Abraham,........but there will be no Jews there. How Ironic.
Mocking God may have consequences.
The Vatican under the command of Pope Francis is busy rebuking and supressing followers of the pre Vatican 2 liturgy form including the latin mass But when it comes to other forms of mono theistic beliefs such as the One World Abu Dhabi Movement. Francis refuses to say one word disclaiming and decrying what practice adherents of the Islam code Sharia not only claim, but truly believe that God has authorized them to do kill those who refuse to submit to their version of Gods will .
Francis refuses to say one word disclaiming and decrying what practice adherents of the Islam code Sharia not only claim, but truly believe that God has authorized them to do kill those who refuse to submit to their version of Gods will.
From the Jesuit Extreme Oath of Induction:
“I furthermore promise and declare that I will, when opportunity present, make and wage relentless war, secretly or openly, against all heretics, Protestants and Liberals, as I am directed to do, to extirpate and exterminate them from the face of the whole earth; and that I will spare neither age, sex or condition; and that I will hang, waste, boil, flay, strangle and bury alive these infamous heretics, rip up the stomachs and wombs of their women and crush their infants’ heads against the walls, in order to annihilate forever their execrable race. That when the same cannot be done openly, I will secretly use the poisoned cup, the strangulating cord, the steel of the poniard or the leaden bullet, regardless of the honor, rank, dignity, or authority of the person or persons, whatever may be their condition in life, either public or private, as I at any time may be directed so to do by any agent of the Pope or Superior of the Brotherhood of the Holy Faith, of the Society of Jesus.”
Many Catholics love our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. But they are in Babylon. The Catholic Church as an institution is NOT Christian. It is ANTICHRIST.
Why not? That’s the origins of the church in Rome
He needs to stop monkeying around.
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