~~~WHEN the noise and turmoil of the day are over ~ it is sweet to commune with God: the cool and calm of eventide agree most delightfully with prayer and praise. The hours of the declining sun are so many quiet alleys in the garden of time wherein man may find his Maker waiting to commune with him, even as of old the Lord God walked with Adam in Paradise in the cool of the day. It is meet that we should set apart a peaceful season ere the day has quite departed, a season of thanksgiving for grace abounding, of repentance for follies multiplied, of self-examination for evils insinuating.

To leap from day to day like a mad hunter scouring the fields, is an omen of being delivered over to destruction; but the solemn pause, the deliberate consideration - these are means of grace and ensigns of an indwelling life. The tide of ocean stays a while at ebb before it resolves to flood again; the moon some times lingers at the full; there are distinct hedges in nature set between the acres of time - even the strike of the bell is a little mound of warning: men should not remove landmarks, but beat the bounds frequently and keep up with due interval and solemnity the remembrance of the passing away of days, and months, and years: each evening it were well to traverse the boundaries of the day, and take note of all it has ‘brought and all it has seen.

The drops of the night come from the same fount as the dew of the morning: he who met Abraham at break of day communed with Isaac in the field at eventide. He who opens the doors of the day with the hand of mercy draws around His people the curtains of the night, and by His shining presence makes the outgoings of the morning and of the evening to rejoice.

A promise at dawn, and a sure word at sunset, crown the brow of day with light, and sandal its feet with love. To breakfast with Jesus and to sup with him also, is to enjoy the days of heaven upon the earth. It is dangerous to fall asleep till the head is leaned on Jesus’ bosom. When divine love puts its finger on the weary eyelids, it is brave sleeping; but that the Lord’s beloved may have such sleep given to him, it is needful that he should make a near approach to the throne, and unburden his soul before the great Preserver of men.

To enter into the blaze of Jehovah’s presence by the way of the atoning blood is the sure method to refine ourselves of earthly dross, and to renew the soul after exhausting service. The reading of the word, and prayer, are as gates of carbuncle to admit us into the presence chamber of The August Majesty, and he is most blessed who most frequently swings those gates upon their sapphire hinges. When the stars are revealed, and all the hosts of heaven walk in golden glory, then surely is the time when the solemn temple is lit up, and the worshipper is bidden to enter.

If one hour can be endowed with a sacredness above its fellows, it must be the hour when the Lord looseth the bands of Orion, and leadeth forth Arcturus and his sons : then voices from worlds afar call us to contemplation and adoration, and the stillness of the lower work prepares an oratory for the devout soul. He surely never prays at all who does not end the day as all men wish to end their lives - in prayer.

In many households the gathering of the family for evening prayer is more easy than the morning opportunity, and in all the tents of our Israel the evening sacrifice should he •solemnly remembered. Ere we cower down beneath the wings of the Eternal, let us entreat Him to deliver us from the terror by night, and give us safe dwelling in His secret place. It is blessed work to set the night warders in their posts by supplication, and then commit ourselves without fear to the embraces of divine love.

Having had the seal of our Master’s blessing set upon our former volume, entitled “Morning by Morning,” we have felt encouraged to give our best attention to the present series of brief meditations, and we send them forth with importunate prayer for a blessing to rest upon every reader. Already more than twenty thousand readers are among our morning fellow-worshippers. 0h that all may receive grace from the Lord by means of the portion read; and when a similar number shall be gathered to read the evening selection, may the Father’s smile be their benison.
We have striven to keep out of the common track, and hence we have used unusual texts, and have brought forward neglected subjects. The vice of many religious works is their dullness – from this we have striven to be free: our friends must judge how far successfully. Out of our own experience we have drawn much of our matter, and we have always felt assured that a truth which has been sanctified to our own good will not be without an unction for others. If we may lead one heart upward which otherwise had drooped, or sow in a single mind a holy purpose which else had never been conceived, we shall be grateful. The Lord send us such results in thousands of instances, and His shall be all the praise. The longer we live, the more deeply are we conscious that the Holy Spirit alone can make truth profitable to the heart; and therefore in earnest prayer we commit this volume and is companion to His care. – C.H. Spurgeon: Foreword from Evening By Evening.

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Here is the sin and punishment of an evil man.

1. His sin. He is an evil man indeed that seeks all occasions to rebel against God, and the government God has set over him, and to contradict and quarrel with those about him. Quærit jurgia–He picks quarrels; so some. There are some that are actuated by a spirit of opposition, that will contradict for contradiction-sake, that will go on frowardly in their wicked ways in spite of all restraint and check. A rebellious man seeks mischief (so some read it), watches all opportunities to disturb the public peace.

2. His punishment. Because he will not be reclaimed by mild and gentle methods, a cruel messenger shall be sent against him, some dreadful judgment or other, as a messenger from God. Angels, God’s messengers, shall be employed as ministers of his justice against him, Ps. 78:49. Satan, the angel of death, shall be let loose upon him, and the messengers of Satan. His prince shall send a sergeant to arrest him, an executioner to cut him off. He that kicks against the pricks is waited for of the sword.
- Matthew Henry Commentary

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Note, 1. A passionate man is a brutish man. However at other times he may have some wisdom, take him in his passion ungoverned, and he is a fool in his folly; those are fools in whose bosom anger rests and in whose countenance anger rages. He has put off man, and is become like a bear, a raging bear, a bear robbed of her whelps; he is as fond of the gratifications of his lusts and passions as a bear of her whelps (which, though ugly, are her own), as eager in the pursuit of them as she is in quest of her whelps when they are missing, and as full of indignation if crossed in the pursuit.

2. He is a dangerous man, falls foul of every one that stands in his way, though innocent, though his friend, as a bear robbed of her whelps sets upon the first man she meets as the robber. Ira furor brevis est–Anger is temporary madness. One may more easily stop, escape, or guard against an enraged bear, than an outrageous angry man. Let us therefore watch over our own passions (lest they get head and do mischief) and so consult our own honour; and let us avoid the company of furious men, and get out of their way when they are in their fury, and so consult our own safety. Currenti cede furori–Give place unto wrath.
-Matthew Henry Commentary

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A malicious mischievous man is here represented,

1. As ungrateful to his friends. He oftentimes is so absurd and insensible of kindnesses done him that he renders evil for good. David met with those that were his adversaries for his love, Ps. 109:4. To render evil for evil is brutish, but to render evil for good is devilish. He is an ill-natured man who, because he is resolved not to return a kindness, will revenge it.

2. As therein unkind to his family, for he entails a curse upon it. This is a crime so heinous that it shall be punished, not only in his person, but in his posterity, for whom he thus treasures up wrath. The sword shall not depart from David’s house because he rewarded Uriah with evil for his good services. The Jews stoned Christ for his good works; therefore is his blood upon them and upon their children.
- Matthew Henry Commentary

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Al-Qaida’s terror network in North Africa is growing more active and attracting new recruits, threatening to further destabilize the continent’s already vulnerable Sahara region, according to U.S. defense and counterterrorism officials.

The North African faction, which calls itself Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), is still small and largely isolated, numbering a couple hundred militants based mostly in the vast desert of northern Mali. But signs of stepped-up activity and the group’s advancing potential for growth worry analysts familiar with the region.

The rapid recent rise of the al-Qaida group in Yemen — which spawned the Christmas airliner attack — is seen by U.S. officials and counterterrorism analysts as evidence that the North African militants could just as quickly take on a broader jihadi mission and become a serious threat to the U.S. and European allies.

The Mali-based militants have yet to show a capability to launch such foreign attacks, but are widening their involvement in kidnapping and the narcotics trade, reaping profits that could be used to expand terror operations, officials and analysts said.

Several senior U.S. defense and counterterrorism officials spoke about AQIM on condition of anonymity to discuss internal analysis.

Those advances have set off alarms within the counterterrorism community, which watched as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula quickly transformed over the past year from militants preoccupied with internal Yemeni strife to a potent group recruiting and training insurgents for terror missions inside the U.S.

That threat was underscored by the failed Christmas airliner attack, which officials say was planned and directed by Yemeni insurgent leaders.

A key fear is that as AQIM expands, its criminal and insurgent operations will continue to destabilize the fragile governments of heavily Islamic North Africa, much as it has in Mali. The Maghreb includes the North African nations of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania.

As a result, the U.S. has been working to boost poverty-stricken Mali’s defenses. Last year, the U.S. gave $5 million in new trucks and other equipment to its security forces, and Pentagon funds also have been approved to provide training.

But others suggested that non-military aid is also needed.

“For too long, al-Qaida’s growth in this critical region of Africa has been overlooked,” said Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., on Monday. “Our embassy presence in many of these countries is quite limited, which handicaps our ability to better understand a region that has become a terrorist safe haven. We need a greater non-military, on-the-ground presence devoted to this part of the world in order to better understand local dynamics, identify emerging threats and prevent future attacks.”

Several senior U.S. defense and counterterrorism officials spoke about AQIM on condition of anonymity to discuss internal analysis.

Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution Saban Center and a former CIA officer, said that the North African terror group has a larger area to operate in and a wider Islamic population pool to draw from, but has not launched the kind of large-scale attacks initially feared when it became an al-Qaida affiliate three years ago.

“Now, if it is beginning to reorganize, recruit and develop, because of this international potential, it could become a much more dangerous threat,” Riedel said. “And if there is a role model in al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, that is very disturbing.”

Born as an Algerian insurgency in the early 1990s, the group was largely defeated and driven into a swath of ungoverned desert land — about the size of France — in northern Mali. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the group reached out to al-Qaida in an effort to survive. AQIM was officially recognized as an al-Qaida affiliate by Osama bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Both the U.S. and the European Union have designated AQIM a terrorist organization.

The group has since absorbed some of al-Qaida’s techniques for roadside bombs and suicide attacks. Occasionally it has issued videos and statements on jihadi Internet forums.

In December 2007, for example, the group attacked the U.N.’s Algerian headquarters, killing 37 people, including 17 U.N. staff members.

At the same time, AQIM has increased its recruiting efforts, drawing insurgents from Mauritania, Nigeria and Chad, officials said. The recruits are trained in small arms and roadside bomb construction, officials said, then return to their home countries to plan and execute attacks.

The spike in recruiting and training, along with the increase in kidnappings and other crimes, has made the region more insecure and unstable in just a year, several officials said.

The militants often partner with local criminals, who kidnap tourists then sell them to AQIM, which then demands ransoms, officials said. Those alliances cement contacts between the criminal groups and AQIM, broadening its reach and membership.

The kidnappings have had mixed results. Last week, the group released French hostage Pierre Camatte after holding him for three months. The move was spurred by a Mali court decision that released four jailed AQIM members.

Some hostages have been killed — including Edwin Dyer, a British tourist who was captured with three others including two U.N. envoys. Britain had refused to pay ransom to the group.

So far, the group has not moved beyond kidnappings to push al-Qaida’s global jihad aims, creating tensions between the offshoot organization and core al-Qaida leaders in Pakistan, said Haim Malka, deputy director for the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Middle East program.

“They have not yet become more globally focused, they’ve stayed in the Sahara region and they’ve failed to make inroads in other parts of North Africa,” he said. Malka cautioned that the group’s broadening efforts to work with local criminal networks on kidnappings may give the appearance that it is expanding more than it actually is.

Despite the group’s limited reach, British and American authorities have issued strong warnings against travel to northern Mali, saying there is a “high threat from terrorism” and from criminal acts and kidnappings.

- From Prophecy News Watch

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Despite an intensive lobbying effort on the part of European Jewish groups, the European Parliament has endorsed the Goldstone report, the UN’s official investigation into the bombardment of the Gaza Strip in January 2009, a report that accuses Israel of war crimes and calls for the prosecution of Israeli officials in the Hague.

In a 335-to-287 vote splitting the house between left and right, MEPs backed a joint resolution from the centre left, far left, Greens and Liberals calling on the EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and the bloc’s member states to “publicly demand the implementation of the report’s recommendations and accountability for all violations of international law, including alleged war crimes.”

In April, 2009, a team of UN investigators headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone, a former member of the South African Constitutional Court and chief prosecutor with the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, was established to look into violations of international human rights law during the Gaza conflict in which Israeli forces killed over 1,400 Palestinians and Hamas killed 13 Israelis.

While the report found that both sides had committed war crimes, Tel Aviv has since attempted to rubbish the document, an effort that has met with success in the US Congress, which last November passed a resolution calling the report “irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy.”

EU parliamentary deputies in recent days have been inundated by lobbying emails from the European Jewish Congress over the vote. A spokesperson for the group told this website that it had been “definitely a really major effort by the EJC, but it’s only a work in progress and there’s still a lot of work to do.”

Moshe Kantor, the president of the European Jewish Congress, which represents 42 Jewish organisations on the continent, warned in one letter: “It appears inconceivable that while the United Nations itself hasn’t yet officially adopted this report, the European Parliament, in this motion for a resolution, calls for and demands its implementation.”

He said that if the European Parliament backed the document, it would give it its most important international endorsement yet.

Mr Kantor travelled to Israel last week to meet with foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman to strategise over the vote.

On Tuesday afternoon, the level of lobbying had reached such an extent that Irish socialist MEP Proinsias de Rossa, the chair of the chamber’s Palestinian Legislative Council liaison delegation, sent around his own email encouraging deputies not to buckle under the pressure.

“You are being bombarded with mails at present seeking to undermine your support for the the Goldstone Report in the vote tomorrow,” he said.

“Tomorrow’s vote is a test of the credibility of this parliament’s commitment to human rights irrespective of political considerations,” he continued. “The joint resolution is a fair and balanced position negotiated by all the main political groups. I appeal to you to support it.”

All the major groups in the house had originally agreed to a compromise resolution on the subject in a meeting last Thursday, but by Monday, the centre-right grouping, the European People’s Party, which traditionally has been the most sympathetic to the Israeli perspective in the conflict, pulled out of the agreement, blocking the joint text.

In the end, even the EPP draft still endorsed the Goldstone report, but did not go so far as to criticise Israel’s blockade of supplies to the Gaza Strip or make mention of reported intimidation of NGOs in the wake of the conflict.

The resolution backed by the centre and left of the house however “expresses its concern about pressure placed on NGOs involved in the preparation of the Goldstone report and in follow-up investigations, and calls on authorities on all sides to refrain from any measures restricting the activities of these organisations.”

Close call

As recently as yesterday, the EJC thought it had won the lobbying battle. A report that appeared on Wednesday morning in Israeli daily Haaretz described how all the party grouping leaders had backtracked from their demands that the Goldstone recommendations be implemented as a result of lobbying by European Jewish leaders and that the EPP counter-resolution was most likely to be endorsed instead.

The EJC’s Mr Kantor said following the vote that his organisation was disappointed in the result and that it threatened EU participation in the Middle East peace process.

“Blaming the conflict and placing the onus for it on Israel, as the report does, will push the Palestinians further away from the negotiating table and make them more recalcitrant, believing they can use international bodies to fight Israel’s case rather than reaching a negotiated solution,” he said.

However, with over 45 percent of deputies voting against the resolution, he said he was pleased at his organisation’s efforts. “We can see our lobbying efforts bore fruit due to the fact that the resolution passed by only a narrow margin, and not the consensus that was expected,” Mr Kantor said. “This shows that we are on the right track.”

The Israeli mission to the EU called the result counterproductive towards reconciliation in the Middle East: “While the other players are striving to find ways to support the peace process, and as ‘proximity talks’ are about to start between Israel and the Palestinians, the European Parliament chooses to concentrate on a highly controversial issue, one that has already been deliberated in other fora.”

- From Prophecy News Watch

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The European Union’s foreign affairs chief laid out a stark choice for the region on Wednesday, saying it must pull together in foreign policy or be sidelined by China and India.

Presenting her agenda for the next five years after widespread criticism of her performance, Catherine Ashton told the European Parliament that Europe was declining as a world power and losing influence.

Europe’s share of the world’s population has fallen from a quarter a century ago to just 7 percent today and its share of global output has dropped from 28 percent to 21 percent since World War Two, leaving it lagging Asian powers, she said.

“The economies of China, India and others are racing ahead at 10 percent a year. Economic weight is translating into political clout and self-confidence,” said Ashton, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy.

“You feel it everywhere from negotiations on climate change and Iran, to big energy deals in Africa or Central Asia. If we pull together we can safeguard our interests. If not, others will make the decisions for us. It’s that simple.”

Ashton, 53, a former EU trade commissioner, was a surprise appointment to her new post. She has struggled to overcome her critics since starting the job in December, has little experience in diplomacy and has never held elected office.

She signalled to parliament she would be pragmatic in foreign policy, and link it closely with trade and finance.

Ashton described the EU’s priorities as maintaining close ties with the United States but also having a strong “neighbourhood” policy for countries close to the EU borders.

She said the Union, representing 27 countries and more than 500 million people, should build on its alliances with NATO and the United Nations.

“Our wider international credibility depends on getting our neighbourhood right,” she said, referring to EU policy in the Balkans and with former Soviet republics such as Georgia and Ukraine, a transit route for Russian energy supplies to Europe.

EU FOREIGN SERVICE

Ashton also underlined the importance of the Middle East — where she will travel next week, visiting Israel and the Palestinian territories, Egypt, Syria and Jordan — and development and security in Africa, particularly Somalia.

“To protect our interests and promote our values, we must be engaged abroad,” she said, adding that many poorer states wanted more European involvement but Europe was not doing enough. “This is the time to be smart and ambitious.”

The EU has reformed its institutions under its new Lisbon treaty, hoping to gain more diplomatic influence to match its trade and business power.

Ashton is in charge of setting up an EU diplomatic corps, or External Action Service (EAS), which will have as many as 3,000 diplomats driving foreign, aid and trade policies.

Ashton said the EAS, whose structure was expected to be finalised by the end of April but now looks likely to be delayed because of bureaucratic infighting, was essential to the EU avoiding being left behind by other powers.

“Right now we have a chance to build what many across Europe and many in this house have long wanted — a stronger, more credible European foreign policy,” she said.

“We should respond as Europeans. First by pulling together, because unity is a precondition for influence. And second by taking action, because the answer to a problem cannot be a paper or a meeting. If you want results, you have to act.”

- From Prophecy News Watch

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