GordonMoyes.com

In this new millennium, a worldwide prayer movement is moving the Church of Jesus Christ.

A profound spiritual insight is symbolised by the fact that the Jewish Temple’s curtain separating people from God, and hiding the repeated sacrifice for their sins was torn from the top-down on the first Good Friday! The tearing apart of the curtain revealed the Holy Place to the eyes of ordinary people. Religion is now not what humans do, but what God has already done. The way to God was open for all to see, not only for Jews, but for any one of any race at all. Open access for all!

A new Australian film has already been named Best Feature in the Generation14plus category at the Berlin International Film Festival in Germany. Because the NSW Government Film Office partially funded this film, members of Parliament and their staff were invited to the premiere and to meet the scriptwriters, producers and film stars.

No other issue so works up some Australians into a sweat than any suggestion that Muslims will gain some advantage in our country. Such was the case this week following the Archbishop of Canterbury’s suggestion that aspects of Sharia Law involving family disputes, property and financial matters would eventually be accepted in Britain. Instantly everybody was an expert and countless emails flew around the world claiming that all Christian countries would be forced into cutting off hands for thieves, beheading adulterers and stoning women to death.

In a potential blow to themed resorts from Las Vegas to Tokyo, Egypt is to pass a law requiring payment of royalties whenever its ancient monuments, from the pyramids to the Sphinx, are reproduced. This was reported earlier this month in The UK Telegraph, London. It was first reported by Agence France-Presse.

After weeks of pressure from Israel and the USA to resist the pent up anger of the Palestinians in Gaza, Egyptian Boarder police apparently did little to stop thousands of hungry Palestinians from surging into Egypt. The Egyptian authorities, increasingly embarrassed by their obligations under agreements with Israel and the US to participate in the siege of Gaza did little to stop the crowds when Palestinian gunmen blew up a section of the border wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, allowing thousands of Palestinians to cross into Egypt.

On August 2007, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) reported that it had confirmed more than 500 cases of police abuse since 1993, including 167 deaths (three of which took place in 2007 were the result of torture and mistreatment). According to the EOHR, while Egypt’s population nearly doubled during the 25 years of Hosni Mubarak’s regime, the number of prisons increased by fourfold and that the number of detainees held for more than one year without charge or indictment grew to more than 20,000.

It is so easy these days when we live in a multi-racial society to assume that because different races have fundamentally different beliefs, we cannot work together on common social issues. Some Christians always react with fear, expecting the worse and making it more difficult for the others to live in this country. But Bethlehem this Christmas is showing the way.

In TIME magazine (Thursday, Nov. 08, 2007) a perceptive article called “Indecent Exposure” by writer Carla Power caused worldwide discussion. It touched on two of the basic differences faced by people living with Western and Islamic cultures and of the causes of tension between them.

Julie Bushey Trevor, writing in the Burlington Free Press, November 6, 2007, states, “In my lifetime I have witnessed the bravery of countless women who have risen to the challenge of ending the oppression of women worldwide. It is puzzling to me why at this time in our history, when women in this country in particular have made tremendous gains in their own status, they have willingly stalled their work toward freedom for certain women; especially the violent oppression of the Women in Islam.”