Breaking News

Religion

Jehovah’s Witnesses resume public ministry at Farm Show

HARRISBURG — While the blustery January wind is ushering in cold winter weather throughout the Northeast, Harrisburg is abuzz with excitement at the annual Farm Show. On your way to see the larger-than-life butter sculpture, or sample a famous Pennsylvania Dairymen’s milkshake, you may notice another pre-pandemic fixture: smiling faces standing next to a colorful display featuring a positive message and free Bible-based literature. Chelsea Althouse traveled from Robesonia to be among the first volunteers at the Bible display this year. “It’s super exciting!” she said. Prior ...

Asian faiths try to save sacred swastika corrupted by Hitler

The Associated Press Sheetal Deo was shocked when she got a letter from her Queens apartment building’s co-op board calling her Diwali decoration “offensive” and demanding she take it down. “My decoration said ‘Happy Diwali’ and had a swastika on it,” said Deo, a physician, who was celebrating the Hindu festival of lights. The equilateral cross with its legs bent at right angles is a millennia-old sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism that represents peace and good fortune. Indigenous people worldwide used it similarly. But in the West, this symbol is often ...

Religion Briefs

Editor’s note: To submit a nonprofit announcement to The Sentinel’s Religion section, contact Tom Laub at (717) 248-6741 or by email at living@lewistownsentinel.com. Items also may be faxed to (717) 248-3481 or sent to The Sentinel, 352 Sixth St., Lewistown, PA 17044. Items must be received by Tuesday for publication in the Saturday edition. Submissions will be published as space allows. The editor reserves the right to edit all submissions. ••• UMC to host Bible study LEWISTOWN — First Bakers United Methodist Church will host a Bible study every Wednesday at 7 p.m. ...

Remembering Benedict XVI

By VICTOR L. SIMPSON The Associated Press ROME — Flying back to Rome from Beirut in September 2012, I was escorted down the aisle to the first-class section of the papal plane and seated beside Pope Benedict XVI. The pope, then 85, looked and sounded weary. He had just completed a delicate, two-day visit to Lebanon as civil war raged in neighboring Syria. It was my 92nd such trip: The first was with Pope John Paul II, the master of papal globe-trotting, and then over the past eight years with Benedict. Because I was planning to retire, Benedict’s trip to Beirut was to be my ...

What God ‘gave’ in John 3:16

In our brief study of John 3:16, we now come to the word ‘gave.’ In the English language, the word gave is simply past tense for the word give. The word give can mean: to surrender, to give over, to grant, allow, or permit, to deliver. All of these definitions give a little insight into God the Father giving, or sending His Son into the world. In the original Greek language, the original word had many, many, different meanings. Thayer’s Lexicon list some different meanings under definition 3. Here is one of them: “To give one to someone to care for his interests.” Apparently, ...

God still has a purpose for Satan to serve

Would he come? While he was in England preaching a crusade, Dwight L. Moody was asked to visit a man who’d been paralyzed for years. Entering the man’s house, he expected to find a depressed and gloomy handicap man. Instead, he found him to be vibrant and full of life. After a long visit, Moody asked the man, “Don’t you ever get discouraged, having to lie here like this all day long, week after week?” “Yes,” the man replied, “When the devil comes in, walks over to my bed, and whispers in my ear, Does God really love you, letting you suffer like this? Whenever that ...