Commonly known as the "Alpha Center".
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Editorial Bautista Independiente (EBI) is the Spanish literature division of Baptist Mid-Missions.
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A Palestinian civil defense team on Thursday called on the United Nations to investigate what it said were war crimes at a Gaza hospital, saying nearly 400 bodies were recovered from mass graves after Israeli soldiers departed the complex."There are cases of field execution of some patients while undergoing surgeries and wearing surgical gowns at the Nasser Medical Complex," the civil defense forces said at a press conference, without presenting any evidence.Palestinian authorities have this week reported finding hundreds of bodies in mass graves at Nasser hospital, the main medical facility in central Gaza, after Israeli troops pulled out of the city of Khan Younis.Bodies were also reported to have been found at the Al Shifa hospital in northern Gaza, which was targeted in an Israeli special forces operation.UN rights chief Volker Turk said on Tuesday he was "horrified" by the destruction of the Nasser and Al Shifa medical facilities and by the reports of the mass graves, according to a spokesperson.The Israeli military said claims by Palestinian authorities that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had buried the bodies were "baseless and unfounded."It said forces searching for Israeli hostages had examined bodies previously buried by Palestinians near Nasser hospital and had returned them after they had been examined."The examination was conducted in a careful manner and exclusively in places where intelligence indicated the possible presence of hostages. The examination was carried out respectfully while maintaining the dignity of the deceased," it said in a statement.Israel has denied killing those found in the graves and has released footage they say shows Palestinians digging these graves before the IDF operation.The Palestinian Civil Defense Team accused Israel of burying a number of bodies in the Nasser complex in plastic bags at a depth of 3 meters (10 ft), where they quickly decomposed concealing evidence of its "crimes," including torture, it said.The office of the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague is investigating both sides in the Israeli-Gaza war, including the events of October 7 and their aftermath.Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan has said his team is "actively investigating any crimes allegedly committed" in Gaza and that "those who are in breach of the law will be held accountable."
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Worshipers join together in prayer for the return of the hostages, for the well-being of the IDF soldiers and security forces, for the healing of the wounded, and for peace for the people of Israel
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The popular kids series reminds parents that playfulness is next to godliness.When my oldest daughter, Elaine, was four, I watched her chase a soap bubble around the yard, utterly spellbound, and it struck me as a tiny window into how God must have felt as he watched Adam and Eve encounter each of the animals in Eden. Likewise, when I discovered that my youngest, Olivia, had held a full conversation with me while cutting our kitten’s whiskers under the table, I felt attuned with God’s anger when he flung his judgments at Israel through the prophets.These kinds of moments, and a thousand others, make raising kids and building a family spiritually illuminating tasks—especially when they ask theologically stimulating questions like “Does Jesus wear undies?” And although the creators of Bluey, an Emmy-awarded animated kids series, seem to have no overtly religious leanings, the show unexpectedly taps into unseen realities.If you haven’t yet discovered Bluey, let me catch you up. The series, streaming on Disney+, centers around a family of Australian blue heelers: six-year-old Bluey, her younger sister Bingo, Mum (Chilli), and Dad (Bandit). Each episode is less than 10 minutes long and targets a preschool audience—but the popular show draws all ages, and, in 2023, was the second-most acquired streaming program with 43.9 billion minutes consumed.When the producers announced that a longer episode was slated for season 3, the public grew panicked that the show may be ending (thankfully, it’s not!), revealing just how deeply the series meets a need in our culture—and I think it’s worth exploring why.The Heelers are just your average Australian family, with no superpowers or high-stakes problems to solve. But through their ...Continue reading...
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A veteran missiologist shares a lifetime of lessons on bringing the gospel into unfamiliar settings.In an important new book, missiologist Darrell Whiteman tells a revealing story about a missionary who had been preaching in a particular community. Without realizing it, the missionary gave offense by wearing expensive shoes in a place where people couldn’t afford shoes of any type. For Whiteman, this anecdote illustrates how much missionaries need to learn—and how many presumptions they might need to abandon—in order to bring the gospel to people in other cultures.Whiteman’s book Crossing Cultures with the Gospel: Anthropological Wisdom for Effective Christian Witness, challenges his readers—and missionaries in particular—to recognize the possible ethnocentrism in their perspective, which can distort and impede their ability to communicate well across cultural boundaries. As he explains, each culture has its own ways of understanding and coping with the problems of life. All of us understand biblical truths in ways that seem natural to us in our own cultures but not to people who have grown up in other cultures.In each community, traditions of communication and interaction develop over time, resulting in distinct customs. Every community has its own sense of the past, its own traditions of loyalty and obligation, its own rules of courtesy, and its own conceptions of virtue and honor. If missionaries are to communicate with people who have grown up in other cultures, argues Whiteman, they must lay aside their own presuppositions and cultural conventions and commit to acquiring knowledge of unfamiliar customs and ways of thought.Watching, listening, and asking questionsThe missionary project, as Whiteman reminds us, is to insert the universal message of the gospel “within the very ...Continue reading...
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By Tyler Durden The latest U.S. inflation figures were released in early April, revealing that the consumer price index (CPI) had risen by? 3.5%? in March 2024,...Where US Inflation Hit The Hardest In March 2024
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