December 30, 2021

Conférence biblique sur « Les Secrets du ciel dans les paraboles enseignées par Jésus »

Au milieu d’un déclin mondial de la population religieuse, une explication claire de la Bible a attiré plus de 140 000 croyants et l’attention de millions de personnes.

NEW YORK, 30 décembre 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Shincheonji l’Église de Jésus, le Temple du Tabernacle du Témoignage, organise la « Conférence en ligne de Shincheonji: Témoignage sur les paraboles et la réalité des secrets du ciel ». Cette conférence sur la compréhension des paraboles dans la Bible dans le Nouveau Testament sera en direct sur YouTube tous les lundis et jeudis du 3 janvier au 28 mars.

« Les paraboles sont la clé pour comprendre les secrets du ciel. Les prophéties de l’Ancien Testament se sont accomplies à la première venue de Jésus, et maintenant les prophéties du Nouveau Testament s’accomplira « quand le temps viendra » (Jean 16:25). Nous nous dirigeons vers le vrai sens alors que la prophétie est révélée », déclare un responsable de l’église.

Les conférences précédentes sur Apocalypse ont été diffusées en 24 langues et ont atteint 7 millions de vues dans 136 pays dont 16 000. 1 200 dirigeants d’églises mondiales dans 57 pays ont signé des protocoles d’accord avec l’église pour renforcer la coopération internationale et l’échange de matériel.

Plus de 140 000 personnes ont rejoint l’église depuis 2019, malgré le début de la pandémie de Covid-19.

Un responsable de Shincheonji a déclaré: « À travers le monde, de plus en plus de personnes souffrent de maladies, de catastrophes et de difficultés dues au COVID-19, réfléchissant profondément au sens de la vie et de la souffrance. La religion doit pouvoir apporter des réponses à ces personnes. Dans le monde religieux où les activités en face à face sont limitées, l’éducation devrait toucher chaque individu dans les communautés locales. »

« Ce qui attire les gens à Shincheonji, l’explication claire de la mission de Jésus dans le Nouveau Testament », a-t-il ajouté.

(Vous pouvez regarder la conférence en recherchant « Conférence en ligne de Shincheonji:

Témoignage sur les paraboles et la réalité des secrets du royaume des cieux » sur YouTube ou via le lien SCJ Americas.)

PRENDRE CONTACT: revelation@scjamericas.com

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1717662/The_True_Biblical_Meaning_of_the_Secrets_of_the_Kingdom_of_Heaven.jpg

December 30, 2021

Seminar Reveals the Secrets of Heaven Hidden in Parables Taught by Jesus

Amid a decline in church membership, one church has drawn more than 140,000 believers and attracted the attention of millions

NEW YORK, Dec. 29, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Shincheonji Church of Jesus, The Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony, explains the Bible in plain language through free online seminars. Its latest seminar series, “Testimony on the Parables of the Secrets of Heaven and Their True Meanings” will be livestreamed via YouTube from January 3rd to March 28th. The series will provide a biblical explanation of the parables mentioned in the New Testament.

“Parables are the key element to understanding the secrets of the kingdom of heaven. The prophecy of the Old Testament was fulfilled at the time of Jesus in his first coming,” said a Shincheonji Church official. “Jesus gave the prophecies of the New Testament to be fulfilled ‘when the time comes’ (John 16:25). We are heading towards [receiving] the true meaning as the prophecy is revealed.”

Shincheonji Church concluded its series on Revelation in December. This seminar, which was released in 24 languages, reached 7 million viewers in 136 countries, including 16,000 pastors. As a result of their participation in the Revelation seminar series, 1,200 church leaders in 57 countries signed MOUs with Shincheonji Church to boost international cooperation and exchange educational materials.

“I want to be able to grow in the word and I want to teach our congregation…and help bring them from death to life. I want to be one with God’s kingdom and have open communication,” said Pastor Jerry Hagerman of Wayside Mission Church in Virginia, who signed an MOU with Shincheonji Church.

Shincheonji Church has seen a steady increase in membership. Over 140,000 people have joined the church since 2019, despite the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Across the world, more and more people are experiencing diseases, disasters, and hardships due to Covid-19 [and] thinking deeply about the meaning of life and suffering,” says a church official. “Religion must be able to provide answers to these people. In a world where face-to-face activities are limited, education should reach every individual in local communities.”

“What [makes] the Shincheonji Church appeal to people is the clear explanation of Jesus’ mission in the New Testament,” the church official said.

Watch “Shincheonji Online Seminar: Testimony on the Parables of the Secrets of Heaven and Their True Meanings” via the SCJ Americas YouTube Channel.

CONTACT: revelation@scjamericas.com

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1717662/The_True_Biblical_Meaning_of_the_Secrets_of_the_Kingdom_of_Heaven.jpg

December 30, 2021

Four Soldiers Killed in Mali Attack

Four Malian soldiers were killed and around a dozen others were wounded when they were attacked in the west of the county, the army said Thursday.

Mali’s Armed Forces said the attack occurred late Tuesday in a region of the country where jihadists have attacked soldiers in the past.

An army “unit in the Nara region was the target of a sophisticated attack combining IED [Improvised Explosive Devices] and heavy weapons,” the army said in a statement.

It said the army suffered at least “four dead and a dozen seriously wounded,” but did not say who carried out the attack.

On Wednesday evening, a brigade in Niena in the far south of the country was attacked, but without any casualties, the army said.

In the center of the country, a mortar attack targeted the Hombori camp also on Wednesday evening, but there was no material damage.

Mali is the epicenter of a jihadist insurgency that began in the north of the country in 2012 and spread three years later to neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso.

Thousands of people across the region have died and around two million have been displaced by the conflict.

Despite the presence of French and U.N. troops, the conflict spread to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.

France intervened in 2013 and now has roughly 5,000 troops in the region, but plans to lower that number to 2,500-3,000 by 2023.

The spiral of violence has continued despite the coup that brought the military to power in Bamako in 2020.

Source: Voice of America

December 30, 2021

South Africa Lifts Curfew, Says COVID-19 Fourth Wave Peaked

South Africa has lifted a midnight-to-4 a.m. curfew on people’s movement, effective immediately, saying the country has passed the peak of its fourth COVID-19 wave driven by the omicron variant, a government statement said Thursday.

However, wearing a face mask in public places remains mandatory. Failure to wear a mask in South Africa when required is a criminal offense.

The country made the curfew and other changes based on the trajectory of the pandemic, levels of vaccination in the country and available capacity in the health sector, according to a press release issued by Mondli Gungubele, a minister in the presidency.

South Africa is at the lowest of its five-stage COVID-19 alert levels.

“All indicators suggest the country may have passed the peak of the fourth wave at a national level,” a statement from the special cabinet meeting held earlier Thursday said.

Data from the Department of Health showed a 29.7% decrease in the number of new cases detected in the week ending December 25 compared with the number of cases found in the previous week, at 127,753, the government said.

South Africa, with close to 3.5 million infections and 91,000 deaths, has been the worst-hit country in Africa during the pandemic on both counts.

Besides lifting the restrictions on public movement, the government also ruled that alcohol shops with licenses to operate after 11 p.m. local time may revert to full license conditions, a welcome boon for traders and businesses hard hit by the pandemic and looking to recover during the festive season.

“While the omicron variant is highly transmissible, there have been lower rates of hospitalization than in previous waves,” the statement said.

Source: Voice of America

December 30, 2021

Atrocities, War Expand Beyond Ethiopia’s Tigray

What began as a conflict between the Ethiopian Federal government and a local military in late 2020, exploded into a civil war in 2021 that has forced two million people to flee their homes and left hundreds of thousands of people in famine-like conditions. The war continues expanding, with displacements, ethnic killings and mass rape in the increasingly devastated region.

By the beginning of 2021, the war in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, then more than a month old, had forced tens of thousands of people to flee across the border to Sudan. Refugees reported ethnic massacres, sexual assaults and mass arrests.

In the months that followed, the humanitarian crisis deepened. More than a million people were displaced inside Ethiopia and aid workers warned of looming famine.

The few hospitals not damaged or destroyed in the region were packed with war wounded, including children who had been stabbed, shot, or become victims of newly laid landmines.

Eleven-year-old Goitom lost one leg now suffers from infection and nightmares.

Goitom’s father, Gebreyohannes Ataklti, says his son was taking the goats to graze [and then he stepped on a landmine.] Goitom is too weak to speak.

The war broke out in the Tigray region in late 2020 between the federal government and local Tigrayan forces. It quickly expanded to include other regional forces allied on both sides and Eritrean forces fighting with the government.

Both sides have been accused of massacres, torture and other atrocities. Federal Ethiopian and Eritrean forces have been also accused of systematic mass rape.

Hundreds of women and girls have come forward, and aid workers say many, many more have not.

Mihira Redae is a case worker for sexual assault victims in Ayder Referral Hospital in Mekelle, Tigray’s regional capital. She says many women who are raped by soldiers are often afraid to come forward, and many others have no access to health care.

A national election in June re-established the authority of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, who then had control of the Tigray Region. About a week later, Tigrayan forces re-captured the region and the war escalated, now engulfing many areas beyond Tigray. Abiy has vowed to crush his enemies.

On December 17, the United Nations voted to investigate abuses by both sides of the conflict, including the reported mass detention of as many as 7,000 people allegedly sympathetic to Tigrayan interests, among them nine U.N. workers.

In the battered Tigrayan countryside, many say they have seen so much tragedy, they no longer fear arrest.

Haftom Gidey, a resident of the war-torn town of Hawsen, says he no longer fears war or arrest. He has seen too much already.

Mass graves litter the countryside as massacres continue here and in neighboring regions. Refugees are still fleeing to Sudan and many areas are cut off from humanitarian aid. Hundreds of thousands of people are living in “famine-like” conditions and the U.N. now says at least two million people in three Ethiopian states have fled their homes.

Source: Voice of America

December 30, 2021

Mali Conference Recommends Election Delay of Up to 5 Years

A conference in Mali charged with recommending a timetable for democratic elections following a military coup said on Thursday that polls scheduled for February should be delayed by six months to five years in part because of security issues.

Mali’s transitional government initially agreed to hold elections in February 2022, 18 months after an army faction led by Colonel Assimi Goita overthrew President Boubacar Ibrahim Keita.

But it has made little progress, blaming disorganization and Islamist violence in the north and central parts of the country.

ECOWAS, West Africa’s main political and economic bloc, has imposed sanctions on the coup leaders and had promised more if Mali did not produce a plan for February elections by Friday.

The government has said it will take the recommendations of the National Refoundation Conference and decide on a new election calendar by the end of January.

A prolonged transition back to democracy could isolate Mali from its neighbors and from former colonial power France, which has thousands of soldiers deployed there against insurgents linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State.

It could also undermine democracy in West and Central Africa, where military coup leaders in Chad and Guinea are also under pressure to organize elections and give up power.

The proposed election timetable comes at a delicate time politically. France is reducing its military presence in the north, and Russia has sent private military contractors to train Malian troops, a move Western powers worry is the beginning of a wider Russian deployment.

Source: Voice of America