Mary and Desert Fathers Appear In US News and World Report

From USNWR:

"MYSTERIES OF FAITH, a new special collector's edition from U.S.News & World Report, gives you a fascinating inside look at intriguing and hotly debated questions in religion, faith, and spirituality today."

Inside the cover is a collection of articles from secular, collegiate experts that outline the history of the world's major religions. A history plagued with bloodshed, corruption and power struggles. It also includes a pictorial of the Holy Land.

What emerges is a picture of humanity striving to define, declare and defend exclusive claims to the elusive divine. In turn, ideological conquests upon the geo-political landscape of the day are more power inspired than heavenly inspired.

The publication's interfaith position is made quite clear on page 7:

"Yet despite so much violence, horror, and hatred, there have been a few signal moments when tolerance and respect have been the hallmarks of some enlightened societies. One stellar example of ecumenical thinking discussed in this issue involves the metropolitan of the the Nestorian Christian Church, Timothy of Seleucia, who became an intimate at the court of the Muslim caliph Harun al-Rashid in Iraq during the eigth and ninth centuries. Another illustrious period of toleration- lasting from the end of the eight century to the end of the 15th-allowed Jews, Christians and Muslims to create a vibrant golden age in medieval Spain."

An attack on the authenticity of the Bible is sandwiched between religious archaeology and history. Bart Ehrman, author of Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions of The Bible, makes the case for forgery in some of the New Testament books. Ehrman comes the the conclusion that The reality is that documents with the new Testament are exactly that - forgeries.

Now that the voracity of the New Testament has been undermined, the publication slips in a little of the mystical and supernatural, treating these topics as the gospel truth...

On page 40, we find the synopsis of the Desert Fathers, and their monastic and contemplative lifestyles that now are back in vogue this time within Evangelicalism. On page 68 we find that the concept of "sin" was actually conjured up in 6 BC as a mechanism to exert social control in the event of moral lapse.

Last but not least on page 82, is the poignant story of the Mystery of Fatima. In 1915, three peasant girls in Fatima, Portugal witnessed a series of Marian Apparitions that caught the attention of Pope John Paul in the year 2000. The threes secrets given to the children prophesied of WWII, the Holocaust, the atomic bomb and the fall of Communism.

The takeaway from the publication: The claim to absolute truth is the cause for a bloody, intolerant past. The future of mankind now depends on deconstructing absolute truth in favor of constructing interfaith tolerance, accelerated by the mystical and supernatural.

Take note of the position of the fingers in the image on the front cover of the magazine. Then read what this "hand signal" actually represents.