European Nightmare
Wednesday, April 2, 2025
Tuesday, April 1, 2025
What Does Love Look Like?
April 1, 2025
A compilation
Audio length: 10:11
Download Audio (9.3MB)
Download Audio (9.3MB)
What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.—Saint Augustine
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[Joni Eareckson Tada, who is a quadriplegic and was also suffering cancer when this was written, said:] It’s quite wonderful—when you’re going through the worst of it and it’s just a nightmare—to have someone standing by you. The other night I was in such pain, and I prayed right before I went to bed, “Oh, Lord Jesus, would You please show up tonight? Let me see You and feel You. Let me know You’re with me. You’ve promised that You will never leave or forsake me. Let me sense that tonight.”
Well, sure enough, I had to wake Ken up to help me, and as he was standing there in the dim light of the bedside lamp, I said, “You’re Him! You’re Jesus! Ken, I feel Him in your touch, I see Him in your face, in your smile. [I hear Him] in the tone of your voice.” It was the sweetest thing to feel the presence of Jesus through my husband.—Joni Eareckson Tada
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John 3:16 tells us what it means to love like Jesus loves: “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.” Godly love gives sacrificially. Loving like Jesus means we hold everything we own with loose hands. We are willing to part with money, time, and possessions in order to serve other people. … When we see a brother or sister in need, and we have resources that could help, we are to share what we have with them (James 2:15; 1 John 3:16–17).
Jesus was undiscriminating in the way He loved. He warned us that it is easy to love those who are like us (Luke 6:32–33). But Jesus loved even His enemies and expects His followers to do the same (Luke 6:35). … We are to treat every human being with dignity and respect, remembering that this person is a special creation, designed in the image of God (1 John 2:9–10; 4:20–21). …
Loving like Jesus means we care enough about the souls of others to tell them the truth. … We do not love people by watering down the gospel that could save them. … Forgiveness is another way we can love like Jesus. … Jesus told His disciples that the primary way the world would know they were His was by their love for one another (John 13:35). If we love Jesus, then we will love what He loves, which is people. And as we practice loving like He loved, we become more like Him.—GotQuestions.org1
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A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him for dead.
Now by chance a certain priest came down that road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite [temple assistant], when he arrived at the place, came and looked, and passed by on the other side.
But a certain Samaritan [a people despised and shunned by the Jews of those days], as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. So he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him, “Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you.”
So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?—Jesus, Luke 10:30–36
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With the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus taught that our neighbor is anyone who needs our help, regardless of race, creed, color, nationality, condition, or location. If we have love, we can’t just pass by someone in need; we’ll take action, like the Samaritan did. That’s the difference between pity and compassion. Pity just feels sorry; compassion does something about it. The compassionate put feet to their prayers and kind deeds to their kind words. Love is making a connection between God and somebody who needs His love, and we do that by showing others His real love and manifesting it by genuine proving action. “The love of Christ compels us” (2 Corinthians 5:14).—D. B. Berg
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His name is Bill. He has wild hair, wears a T-shirt with holes in it, jeans, and no shoes. This was literally his wardrobe for his entire four years of college. He is brilliant, kind of esoteric and very, very bright. He became a Christian while attending college.
Across the street from the campus is a well-dressed, very conservative church. They want to develop a ministry to the students, but are not sure how to go about it.
One day Bill decides to go there. He walks in with no shoes, jeans, his T-shirt, and wild hair. … The service has already started, and so Bill starts down the aisle looking for a seat. The church is completely packed, and he can’t find a seat.
By now, people are really looking a bit uncomfortable, but no one says anything. Bill gets closer and closer and closer to the pulpit, and when he realizes there are no seats, he just squats down right on the carpet. (Although perfectly acceptable behavior at a college fellowship, trust me, this had never happened in this church before!) Now the people are really uptight, and the tension in the air is thick.
About this time, the minister realizes that from way at the back of the church, a deacon is slowly making his way toward Bill. The deacon is in his eighties, and has silver-gray hair, and wears a three-piece suit. He is a godly man, very elegant, very dignified, and very courtly.
He walks with a cane, and as he begins to move toward this boy, everyone is pondering that you can’t fault him for what he’s about to do. How can you anticipate a man of his age and his upbringing to comprehend some college kid on the floor? It takes quite a while for the man to approach the boy. The church is utterly silent except for the clicking of the man’s cane. All eyes are focused on him. You can’t even hear anyone breathing. The minister can’t preach the sermon until the deacon does what he has to do.
And now they see this elderly man drop his cane on the floor. With great difficulty, he lowers himself and sits down next to Bill and worships with him so he won’t be alone. Everyone chokes up with emotion. When the minister regains composure, he says, “What I’m about to preach, you will never remember. What you have just seen, you will never forget.”—Rebecca Manley Pippert, retold by Alice Gray2
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Be careful how you live. You may be the only “Bible” some people will ever read.—Author unknown
Published on Anchor April 2025. Read by Gabriel Garcia Valdivieso. Music by Michael Fogarty.
1 “What does it mean to love like Jesus?” GotQuestions, January 4, 2022, https://www.gotquestions.org/love-like-Jesus.html
2 Alice Gray, “A Guy Named Bill,” in More Stories for the Heart (Portland: Multnomah Press, 1997), 32–33, https://bible.org/illustration/guy-named-bill
Copyright © 2025 The Family International
Why Do You Eat the Apple Seeds with Your Apple?
Vitamin B17/Laetrile/Amygdalin (a Review) Marinela ENCULESCU Research & Development Institute for Bovine Breeding–Balotesti Sos. Bucuresti-Ploiesti, km. 21, Ilfov, 077015 Balotesti, Romania marinelaenculescu2006@yahoo.com Abstract.
Vitamin B 17 is a natural substance whose anti-cancer properties have been known empirically for many years, but in the last twenty years they have been scientifically proven. It was co-discovered by Ernst T Krebs, Jr. in 1952 called it Laetrile.
Vitamin B 17 is found in the seeds of those fruits in the Prunus rosacea Family (bitter almond, apricot, cherry, nectarin, peach and plum). It is also contained in grasses, maize, sorghum, millet, cassava, apple seeds and many other foods. Dr Krebs and other researchers maintain that cancer is a chronic metabolic disease, like scurvy or pellagra. This review contains the mechanism of action by vitamin B17 and anticancer activity to humans and animal. Keywords: cancer, apricot of kernels, rhodanese, beta-glucosidase, pancreatic enzymes, trophoblast cell
INTRODUCTION Vitamin B17/Laetrile/Amygdalin is one of the most controversial vitamin in the last 30 years. It is simply a concentrated form of Nitriloside. There are 3 names which are interchangeable being Vitamin B17, Laetrile and Amygdalin. Vitamin B17 was extracted from the kernels of apricots by a biochemist named Ernst T Krebs Jr. He also called it Laetrile which is simply short for Laevo-mandelonitrile and was awarded its vitamin status officially in 1952. But the systematised study of Vitamin B17 began when the chemist Bohn (1802) discovered that during the distillation of the water from bitter almonds hydrocyanic acid was released.
In 1830 two French chemists, isolated a crystalline amygdalin from the bitter almond, Amygdalus communis Linnaeus, now known as Prunus amygdalus Batsch, of the rose family Rosaceae (Robiquet and Boutron, 1830). Either way all 3 are essentially the same thing. Antitumour action was known empirically for many years, but in the last thirty five years has been scientifically proven by more researchers with equally impeccable credentials (Griffin, 1974).
Various documents from the oldest civilizations such as Egyptat the time of the Pharaihs and from China 2.500 years before Christ mention the therapeutic use of derivatives of bitter almonds. Egyptian papyri from 5000 years ago mention the use of aqua amigdalorum for the treatment of some tumours of the skin (Contreras, 1980). The Greeks and Romans also attributed therapeutic properties to that extract in low doses.
Chemically, it is cyanogenic diglucoside, with a condensed formula C20H27NO11, with a molecular weight of 457,42g moll-1, a chemical name of D (1) Mandelonetrile-betaglucoside-6 beta-D-glucoside (J. Yan et al., 2006). Vitamin B17 had the following formula. Chemical structure of amygdalin.
Foods that contain vitamin B17 (June de Spain, 1976) are as follows: - Kernels or seeds of fruit: The highest concentration of vitamin B17 to be found in nature, aside from bitter almonds, apricot, apple, cherry, nectarine, peach, pear, plum etc; - - - Beans: broad (Vicia faba), burma, lentils (sprouted), lima, mung (spruted), rangoon; Nuts: bitter almond, macadamia, cashew; Berries: almost all wild berries-blackberry, chokeberry, christmas berry, cranberry, elderberry, raspberry, strawberry; - Seeds: chia, flax, sesame; - - Grasses: acacia, alfalfa (spruted), wheat grass, white dover. Grains: oat groats, barley, brown rice, buckwheat groats, millet, sorghum, rye, wheat berries.
There are isolated tribes and peoples around the world who do not have cancer. These include the Abkhazians, the Hopi and Navajo Indians, the Hunzas, the Eskimos and the Karakorum. They have in common a diet rich in vitamin B17.
HOW VITAMIN B17 KILLS CANCER? According to research conducted by Ernest T. Krebs Jr. the mechanism of action is following: our body has one particular enzyme called Rhodanese found everywhere in the body except at the cancer cells, and the enzyme Beta-Glucosidase found in very large quantities only at the cancer cell but not found anywhere else in the body. If there is no cancer in the body there is no enzyme Beta-Glucosidase.
Vitamin B17 is made up of 2 parts glucose, 1 part Hydrogen Cyanide and 1 part Benzaldehyde (analgesic/painkiller). When B17 is introduced to the body, it is broken down by the enzyme Rhodanese. The Rhodanese breaks the Hydrogen Cyanide and Benzaldehyde down into 2 by-products, Thiocyanate and Benzoic acid which are beneficial in nourishing healthy cells and forms the metabolic pool production for vitamin B12.
When the B17 comes into contact with cancer cells, there is no Rhodanese to break it down and neutrelise it but instead, only the enzyme Beta-Gucosidase is present in very large quantities. When B17 and Beta-Glucosidase come into contact with each other, a chemical reaction occurs and the Hydrogen Cyanide and Benzaldehyde combine synergistically to produce a poison which destroys and kills the cancer cells.
This whole process is known as selective toxicity. Only the cancer cells are specifically targeted and destroyed (Griffin, 1974).
