Christmas Story: Told Through Paintings by Metropolitan Museum of Art The Art of Christmas: + Christian Paintings - Jesus Christ by Daniel Ankele.
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- Christian heartland opens window into fight for China's soul
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Over different artists covering every aspect of Jesus adult life. We are allowing commercial use of the images contained in the cd without any further royalties paid. We want you to use the images to spread the good news of Jesus. Use the images in your crafts, hobby and art projects. Churches, Authors and Musicians are welcome to use the images in their projects. If you need the images for your church and don't have the resources to pay for the DVD, please contact us, we will accommodate you.
DVD will contain restrictions and free commercial use license document. Plus, bonus vintage Christmas postcards. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was thus: His mother, Mary, that is, having been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit. But Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man, and unwilling to expose her publicly, purposed to have put her away secretly; but while he pondered on these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, fear not to take to thee Mary, thy wife, for that which is begotten in her is of the Holy Spirit.
And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus, for He shall save his people from their sins. Now all this came to pass that might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord, through the prophet, saying, Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is, being interpreted, 'God with us. Since the beginning of creation women have played an important role in God's overall plan for mankind.
Beginning with the fall of man, when Eve ate the forbidden fruit to Mary giving birth to the Savior of the world. This gallery includes the most notable women in the Bible; Hagar, who was given to Abraham by Sarah to conceive an heir in her place. Potiphar's wife, who tried to seduce Joseph. Rahab, a Harlot who hid Israelie spies and gained the favor of God. Rebekah, married Isaac and gave birth to twins: Rachel, the wife of Isaac's son Jacob The only scene in the Bible of a man kissing a woman.
Delilah, a cunning woman who deceived Samson into telling the secret of his strength.
She prevented Jewish genocide by informing her husband the King of a secret plot by Haman the Agagite. Among them are an estimated 67 million Christians, including Catholics — a number that is expected to swell to become the world's largest Christian population in a matter of decades. This rapid growth has reinvigorated the party's longtime mission to domesticate a religion traditionally aligned with the West. Historians believe that Christianity was known to China as early as the seventh century, and was later propagated by Jesuit missionaries starting in the s.
Christian heartland opens window into fight for China's soul
In recent decades the religion has faced by turns heavy persecution and tacit acceptance. During the Cultural Revolution, when Mao sought to eradicate all religions, Christians were jailed, tortured and publicly humiliated. But they survived by operating covertly and grew steadily in number after Mao's death in , when a populace disillusioned with the Communist Party began to seek moral guidance elsewhere. Chinese Christians say the Bible gives them a sense of right versus wrong and the strength to endure in a country where power often trumps justice.
While China's rapid growth has brought prosperity to many, others despair at what they see as a deterioration of public morals. The deaths of children in scandals involving tainted infant formula and shoddily-built schools in recent years have led to the sense that modern China was in the midst of an ethical crisis. Officials once largely tolerated the unregistered Protestant house churches that sprang up independent of the official Christian Council, clamping down on some while allowing others to grow.
But this year they have taken a tougher approach that relies partly on "thought reform" — a phrase for political indoctrination. Last November, Christian residents of a rural township in southeast Jiangxi province were persuaded to replace posters of the cross and Jesus Christ inside their homes with portraits of Xi, a local official said. The poster campaign appears to symbolize what analysts see as the underlying force driving the change in the party's approach to religion: Various state and local officials declined repeated requests to comment. But in , Xi explicitly warned against the perceived foreign threats tied to faith, telling a religion conference: The state-backed Chinese Catholic church at recent conferences has also stressed the need to remain independent of the Vatican and to "Sinicize" itself.
Along with "thought reform", the government is cracking down on Christians more aggressively through legal means. In March, a prominent Chinese house church leader with U. And half a dozen Christians were sentenced last month to up to 13 years in jail for involvement in a "cult," according to U. The pressure has pushed several dozen pastors and their families to flee to the United States in recent years, ChinaAid says. The wife of one pastor under house arrest left for Midland, Texas about a year ago, after authorities warned that their children might have trouble getting an education in China.
She said members of their church in China were barred from being baptized, and even a simple Christmas service was interrupted. After Jin Mingri, a prominent pastor who leads Zion Church in Beijing, refused local authorities' request to install surveillance cameras inside his house church, police individually questioned hundreds of members of the 1,person congregation, he said. The congregants faced veiled threats, Jin said, and many were asked to sign a pledge promising to leave Zion, which the government agents called illegal, politically incorrect and a cult.
Some people lost their jobs or were evicted from rented apartments because police intimidated their bosses and landlords. For 11 years, the church has been housed on one floor of an office building, but the property management informed Jin in May that they would have to move out at the end of the summer. Jin said the management admitted to being influenced by external "pressures. At the epicenter of the drive to control the Christian community in China is Henan, the cradle of Chinese civilization and the entry point for many of the earliest foreign missionaries.
Today, the province is one of the most populous in the country and a key part of Xi's fight against poverty, as proclaimed by red banners across acres of peanut farms and oil fields. Around the time authorities ordered Guo's church to stop congregating in March, his district announced a crackdown on private Christian meeting spots. On a single Sunday morning, the announcement said, religious banners were removed, religious texts seized and 31 illegal Christian gathering places shut down.
Officials went door-to-door stripping decorative scrolls bearing the cross from home entrances. In Zhengzhou, Henan's capital, all that is left of one house church is shattered glass, tangled wires and torn hymnbooks, strewn among the rubble of a knocked-down wall. Pegged to another wall is a single wooden cross, still intact. The church inside a commercial building had served about believers for years.
But in late January, nearly 60 officials from the local religion department and police station appeared without warning. Armed with electric saws, they demolished the church, confiscated Bibles and computers and held a handful of young worshippers — including a year-old girl — at a police station for more than 10 hours, according to a church leader. The authorities called the church illegal. The church leader said they had brought documentation to the religion department three or four times in an attempt to formally register it, but never received a response. Now, they have ceased to congregate.
That space for Xu Shijuan, a year-old Seventh-Day Adventist, was her living room, where she held house church gatherings for four years.
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She stopped in March, after a group of men led by a local official ordered her to disband the meeting of about two dozen elderly Christians. The more you try to control it, the more it will grow. Even Protestant churches already registered with the state have not been spared greater restrictions.
When reporters visited five such churches in Henan this June, all bore notices at their entrances stating that minors and party members were not allowed inside. A banner above one church door exhorted members to "implement the basic direction of the party's religious work.
Christian heartland opens window into fight for China's soul - leondumoulin.nl
Some congregations now sing the national anthem during services, according to a house church pastor named Liu. Another pastor said his government-approved church shut down its Sunday school and cancelled all activities for children after receiving orders in February. Across Henan, house churches that once hosted gatherings of hundreds have now sealed their doors and split into groups of no more than a handful. Services are announced last-minute and held in different locations each week, often under the cloak of darkness. For a time, Guo's church did the same.
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They avoided congregating on Sundays to escape authorities' notice. But the church members were scared, and the group dwindled to Authorities appealed to Guo to help gather information on his fellow Christians. He was given a form, reviewed by the AP, which asked for churchgoers' names, educational background and addresses, as well as the length of time they had been faithful and whether they were baptized.
The brick house was largely deserted this summer. Around the door frame, tattered red outlines remained of a scroll that once read "God's love is as deep as the sea. Inside, Guo has refused to remove the cross and other decorations, telling authorities they are within his private property.