The Sunday Dispatch
Five stories about faith and culture you probably missed this week — delivered every Sunday morning.
Author: Abdul Masih
By Lucien Fong – As a Christian, you don’t have to take sides against the Arabs or the Jews, a Christian pastor from the West Bank says. You can be in favor of both sides and be opposed to evil done by either side. You can listen to the pain that both sides have gone through. But you should insist on a way forward not based on revenge and retribution but sees both peoples as they are, descendants of Abraham. Increasingly, the divide is widening between opposing camps over who the land belongs to, ever before since the Oct. 7…
By Wesley Moon – To give up New Age manifesting brought Kali Johnston tremendous relief. “It started to consume me. I thought I was attracting everything, good or bad,” Kali says. “I had to always be hyper aware of my thoughts. If something bad did happen, I thought it was my fault. It was super stressful.” Christianity, by contrast, doesn’t work like that; you pray for things and trust the results to Jesus. He has control of your life. But Kali didn’t know that when, after high school, she was given The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. The New Age book…
By Abdul Masih — For Hillel Neuer, the UN’s bombastic overstatement (now backtracked) that 14,000 Gazan babies are in danger of dying within the next 48 hours is simply the same “blood libel” of blaming Jews and fueling pogroms. “When you say Israel is murdering babies, it’s the old blood libel revived in a new form,” says the UN Watch executive director. The false claim of impending death was made by United Nations’ humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, on BBC’s Radio 4 Today, and replayed by NBC and other news. A UN spokesman later clarified that the claims meant that the…
By Abdul Masih — About 50 terrorist training camps are up and working inside of Afghanistan, according to a former CIA targeter, and the U.S. is doing nothing to disrupt their operations. The training camps, run by various interworking Islamic jihadist organizations, receive extremists from all over the world and issue them Afghan passports to get into the United States and other Western nations, says Sarah Adams, who says politicians are ignoring the warning signs because the voting public is weary of the war of terror. A large-scale mass casualty event is programmed for this year in 25 cities in…
By Abdul Masiah — The scenario is a familiar one: She is exasperated by his insensitivity, moral failings, sexist behavior. Her happily-ever-after has turned into never-happy, so she makes the logical move, the one encouraged by society. Even though she will suffer greater poverty, she thinks it will be worth it. She divorces. But does she consider the effects on her children? According to multiple studies, her kids will have a hard time moving upward financially, will struggle with self-esteem, will experiment sexually earlier, will trust less, see a decline in academic performance, become vulnerable to abuse or neglect, drink…
By Abdul Masih — Once on a medical mission in Nicaragua, Dr. Bob Hamilton decided to cross the lake and take care of patients of the Tasbapauni hamlet. They piled people and pills into rickety canoes and paddled off. Heavy-laden, the canoes’ gunwales was a mere couple inches from the water level. “It was actually pretty scary. We had to balance the the canoe. Thankfully there weren’t too many waves; it was an inland lake and it was very quiet,” Dr. Bob says. “One of our canoes however did take on water. Weended up having to rescue those guys.” Lighthouse…
By Abdul Masih — Every time archaeologists unearth a shard of Biblical history, it sends “shockwaves” through Israel’s enemies who wish to deny that the Jews were the original inhabitants of the land, a new book says. A seal from Jucal (Jer. 38:1) and a golden bell from the high priest’s garments are among the treasure trove dug up archaeologists in the last 20 years to confirm the Bible and the Jews’ right to the land, showcases When the Stones Speak: The Remarkable Discovery of the City of David and What Israel’s Enemies Don’t Want You To Know. “We have…
When he was a CIA agent, John Kiriakou worked well with half of the Pakistani intelligence staff; they were western-educated, competent spies, top notch agents. They helped John nab senior Al-Qaeda leader Abu Zabayda. The other half of the Pakistani agents had bushy beards, muttered beneath their breath in Arabic about who knows what. They looked like terrorists. John avoided them completely. The half-half makeup of Pakistani intelligence into counter-terrorist/pro-terrorist factions is a microcosm for nation. Pakistan is an important U.S. ally in the fight against terrorism. It also seems to coddle (encourage? sponsor?) terrorists. After India attacked Jaish-e-Mohammed installations…
By Abdul Masih – JojuJohn and his wife saw all the hardships their parents faced as pastors and decided they didn’t want to do ministry. “But deep inside our heart, we were thinking if God will send us, we will go to the difficult place,” Joju says. “We would go to a place where no one wants to go.” And that’s how in March 2012 he ended up in the India-administered area of Kashmir, a flashpoint for conflict with Pakistan. After Pakistan won its independence from India, the region of Kashmir was disputed and remains contentious today. On April 22,…
By Abdul Masih — California Democrats have shown again why CrazyCalifornia is a hashtag, forcing out of a bill the part that would make it a felony to solicit a minor prostitute. To get a hearing, the bill’s sponsor had to strike that part out. It will remain a misdemeanor. No one seems to know why certain Democrats wanted to keep the bar low for soliciting minors. “In order to get a hearing on the bill, we were forced to remove the piece of the bill that ensures the crime of purchasing a minor for sex applies in all cases…

