Woman kills toddler while reenacting story of Abraham

Woman kills toddler while reenacting story of Abraham

Bible study gone wrong: Inspired by a church sermon on the Book of Genesis, a Florida woman allegedly killed a 2-year-old girl and attempted to kill the girl’s 10-year-old brother in a failed attempt to recreate the Biblical story of Abraham.

According to police, Kymberley Dawn Lucas, 40, is accused of killing 2-year-old Elliana  and trying to kill her 10-year-old brother Ethan before trying, unsuccessfully, to end her own life.

Lucas and her longtime partner had raised the boy and girl since their birth.

Investigators report Lucas attended a sermon by Metropolitan Community Church pastor Lea Brown this past Sunday. Brown’s sermon covered the Biblical story of Abraham attempting to sacrifice his son Isaac on orders from God, only to be stopped by God at the last minute.

Pastor Brown says she stands by her sermon on Abraham, saying “It’s what I was called to do, there’s no way anyone could have predicted this.”

Brown confirmed that the children and both women attended her service, and that her sermon covered Genesis 22, in which God challenges Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac.

In the Biblical account, Abraham follows God’s instructions, taking the boy to a mountain, laying Isaac on an altar in preparation for the sacrifice. At the last second, God orders Abraham to spare the child.

In a suicide note Lucas reports that unlike the Biblical account of Abraham, God did not step in and stop her from taking the child’s life. An excerpt from the note reads:

“Lea’s sermon really, really touched me yesterday but God never told me to stop!”

Lucas is being held at the Palm Beach County Jail and faces charges of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder.

Abraham and Isaac

Saudi ‘Witch’ Beheaded for Black Magic

Saudi ‘Witch‘ Beheaded for Black Magic

Benjamin Radford, Life’s Little Mysteries Contributor

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An accused witch, Amina bint Abdulhalim Nassar, was beheaded in Saudi Arabia earlier this week. She had been convicted of practicing “witchcraft and sorcery,” according to the Saudi Interior Ministry. Such a crime is a capital offense in Saudi Arabia, and so Nassar was sentenced to death. Nassar’s sentence was appealed — and upheld — by the Saudi Supreme Judicial Council.

Nassar, who claimed to be a healer and mystic, was arrested after authorities reportedly found a variety of occult items in her possession, including herbs, glass bottles of “an unknown liquid used for sorcery,” and a book on witchcraft. According to a police spokesman, Nassar had also falsely promised miracle healings and cures, charging ill clients as much as $800 for her services.

Many Shiite Muslims — like many fundamentalist Christians — consider fortune-telling an occult practice and therefore evil. Making a psychic prediction or using magic (or even claiming or pretending to do so) are seen as invoking diabolical forces. Fortune-telling, prophecy and witchcraft have been condemned by Saudi Arabia’s powerful religious leaders. There is some question as to whether Saudi law technically outlaws witchcraft, though in a country where politics and religion are so closely aligned the distinction is effectively moot.

Just last year a Lebanese man named Ali Sabat, who for years had dispensed psychic advice and predictions on a television show, was accused of witchcraft. Sabat was arrested in Saudi Arabia by the religious police, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. His crime, like that of Nassar, was practicing sorcery, and Sabat was condemned to death in April 2010, though it’s still unknown if his sentence has been carried out.

Accusations of witchcraft and sorcery are not unheard of around the world, especially in political campaigns where they are used as a smear tactic. Close associates of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were accused last year of using witchcraft and summoning genies by influential clerics in that country. According to news reports, about two dozen of Ahmadinejad’s close aides have been arrested and charged with being “magicians.” One man, Abbas Ghaffari, was reportedly accused of summoning a genie who caused a heart attack in a man who was persecuting him.

Even the United States is not immune; Christine O’Donnell, the Republican who ran a failed bid for a Senate seat in 2010, had to answer political questions about whether she had practiced witchcraft. For centuries, accusations of (and laws against) witchcraft have been used as a tool by those in power to silence dissenters; whether that was the case with Nassar is unknown, but her death is a reminder that belief in magic is taken very seriously in many parts of the world — and can have grave consequences.

This story was provided by Life’s Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.

Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine and author of Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries. His website is http://www.BenjaminRadford.com.

Related articles

• Saudi ‘Witch’ Beheaded for Black Magic (livescience.com)
• Saudi ‘Witch’ Beheaded for Occult Practices (ibtimes.com)
• Amina bint Abdel Halim Nassar, Saudi Woman, Executed for Practicing ‘Witchcraft’ (blippitt.com)
• Saudi woman beheaded for ‘witchcraft’ (cnn.com)
• Saudi woman beheaded for ‘witchcraft’ (edition.cnn.com)
• World Briefing | Middle East: Saudi Arabia: Woman Is Beheaded After Being Convicted of Witchcraft (nytimes.com)
• Saudi Woman Beheaded for ‘Witchcraft’ (abcnews.go.com)
• Witchcraft in Saudi Arabia (mrboylen.wordpress.com)
• How Do You Prove Someone’s a Witch in Saudi Arabia? (theromangate.wordpress.com)

Religious Crazies Hear Gods Approval In Thunder

God speaks to Rick Joyner & Jim Bakker through thunder

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on December 6, 2011 – 4:51pm

Rick Joyner was a guest for a series of episodes of “The Jim Bakker Show” last month where they discussed everything from reclaiming the Seven Mountains of influence to the looming End Times and America’s relationship with Israel.

The shows were clearly recorded during inclement weather, as thunder could be heard booming several times over the several episodes … but to Joyner and Bakker, it was not some minor uncontrollable inconvenience but rather proof that God was approving of the things they were saying, such as the need to support Bakker’s ministry through donations and the importance of supporting Israel:

God speaks to Rick Joyner & Jim Bakker through thunder

Religious Death Dealers

Six Die After Evangelical Churches Tell Them to Stop Taking HIV Medication

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According to Sky News, evangelical churches in four British cities have been claiming to cure HIV through faith healing. Three undercover reporters entered the Synagogue Church of All Nations, told pastors that they were HIV positive, and all were informed that they could be healed.

The healing process involves the pastor shouting, over the person being healed, for the devil to come out of their body, and spraying water in their face.

Pastors also told the reporters posing as HIV patients that they should throw away their medication after the healing because they had been cured.

If it occurs to you that this might be dangerous, you will be saddened but not surprised to learn that at least six people have died after being told by these churches to stop taking their HIV medication. I applaud the efforts of Sky News to investigate this atrocity. I don’t think America’s corporate media would dare to do something like this. I sincerely hope British authorities prosecute the hell out of these churches.

 

Vatican Press Release: “must reflect on what allowed abuse” !!

December 21st, 2010 by Dave Gamble

There has been an bizarre press release today from the Vatican … it is quite extraordinary in that is illustrates the astonishing degree of pure stupidity and complete detachment from reality. Here it is … with my comments in red …

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI told Vatican officials Monday that they must reflect on the church’s culpability in its child sex-abuse scandal, but he also blamed a secular society in which he said the mistreatment of children was frighteningly common.

[Does he truly not remember that when running the congregation for the doctrine of the faith before becoming Pope, he issued a directive in 1980 to all catholic Bishops worldwide to cover-up the abuse and keep it a secret and that failing to do so would result in their excommunication … that resulted in abusers being protected and allowed to continue the abuse, this had nothing to do with secular society]

In his traditional, end-of-the-year speech to Vatican cardinals and bishops, Benedict said revelations of abuse in 2010 reached “an unimaginable dimension” that required the church to accept the “humiliation” as a call for renewal.

[Thats code for, we got caught telling lies and covering up abuse]

“We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our proclamation, in our whole way of living the Christian life, to allow such a thing to happen,” the pope said.

[Seriously! … they truly don’t know … they honestly don’t yet appreciate that protecting folks who bugger little children is not a great idea, is their disconnect from reality that vast?]

Benedict also said, however, that the scandal must be seen in a broader social context, in which child pornography is seemingly considered normal by society and drug use and sexual tourism are on the rise.

[He actually thinks the society considers child pornography to be normal!! … can you, the reader, name one single individual who truly thinks like that … this is utterly bizarre … and exactly how does he know that drug use and sexual tourism are on the rise, he has no factual data to back that claim up … he is just making this up … but then he makes everything else up as well … and for that matter, what has any of this got to do with catholic priests abusing young children and the cover-up … unless perhaps he is suggesting that catholic priests are also drug users and sexual tourists ]

So how on earth can you ever respond to stuff like that, its such a gross denial of what is really happening. As you might imagine, representatives of abuse victims have a few words to say about this …

“He is trying to say that the modern world is corrupt and sexually rampant. It is blaming society for what is actually their responsibility,” Margaret Kennedy, founder of the U.K.-based Minister and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors organization, told The Telegraph today. “No one in any age has ever thought that adults having sex with children is right.”

However, not everybody has lost all integrity, because tens of thousands of Germans have cancelled their church membership this year, according to new research by the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper and the DPA press agency, and that in the end is the very best way forward … walk away … simply vote with your feet.