One of the world’s largest and most controversial Pentecostal churches has been given permission to build a US$200 million replica of Solomon’s Temple in Sao Paulo.
The 10,000 capacity “mega-church,” which is the brainchild of Brazil’s Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, will also house a replica of the Ark of the Covenant and be built according to “biblical orientations.”
The Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper said planning permission was granted this week and church officials say it should be completed in four years.
BLOGGING
“We are preparing ourselves to build the temple, in the same mold as Solomon’s,” the church’s leader and founder, Bishop Edir Macedo said in a televised service, posted on his blog.
“[Solomon’s] Temple ... used tonnes of gold, pure gold ... We are not going to build a temple of gold, but we will spend tonnes of money,” he said.
Macedo said his church had signed an US$8 million contract to import stones from Israel.
“We have commissioned the stones that will come from Jerusalem, just like the ones that were used to build the temple in Israel; stones that were witnesses to the powers of God, 2,000 [years] ago,” he said.
“It is going to be beautiful — the most beautiful of all. The outside will be exactly the same as that which was built in Jerusalem,” the blog said, adding that the 55m high temple would be “twice the height of [Rio’s] Christ the Redeemer statue.”
The project was drawn up by Brazilian architect Rogerio Silva de Araujo. It includes a car park for 1,000 vehicles, TV and radio studios, and classrooms for 1,300 children.
BELIEF IN PROSPERITY
Founded in Brazil in 1977, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God claims an estimated 8 million followers in 180 countries, with a TV channel and a free newspaper, the Folha Universal, which it says has a weekly print run of 2.5 million.
The church supports so-called “prosperity theology” by which acts of faith including donations are rewarded with material wealth.
Sao Paulo’s public prosecutor last year accused 10 senior members of the church, including Macedo, of siphoning off billions of dollars of donations to buy cars and property. Macedo, who denied the charges, owns a US$45 million private jet.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS