The owner of the Be With Me, The Children’s Playseum in Bethesda, Md. was told recently that no Montgomery public school would send children to her facility because her website mentioned the words “God,” “life,” and “family,” according to The Washington Post.

From her website:

“We Value

LIFE-Every child is God’s gift to this earth.

FAMILY-The most vital part of our community. We treasure the opportunity to offer you a place to create family moments and memories while using our proceeds to help a family far away.

GOD-Giver of breathe and we endeavor to honor Him in all of our affairs.”

Be With Me, The Children’s Playseum is an indoor space that mixes creative play and education.

Geina Seebachan, owner of the children’s activity center, was told however that if she edited her website, schools would send children to the playseum.

Sean Bulson, an acting community superintendent for the county system, said he was “not aware” of any countywide decision about the playseum.  He did say that many parents expressed discomfort with their children going to the facility, The Washington Post reported.

The issue came to Seebachan’s attention when Westbrook Elementary School canceled a scheduled trip to the center.

All four of Seebachan’s children had attended Westbrook Elementary School.

However, according to Seebachan, Jeff Ewald, principle, told her that parents expressed concern that the Playseum was overtly or covertly religious, The Washington Post said.

Seebachan, an evangelical Christian, has among her teaching staff one from Peru, one from Sri Lanka, one vegan, one kosher Jew, a fellow from Trinidad and a woman from Congo, according to The Washington Post.

According to the play calendar on their website, there will be activities to celebrate Jerusalem Day, Waisak Day in Indonesia, Corpus Christi in Chile, and Memorial Day in the United States.

Seebachan, who studied international relations in college, also has activities at Pthe activity center that celebrate Thai and Shinto holidays, the prophet Muhammad’s birthday, Chinese New Year and Jewish holidays.

But on her Web site, she also advertises a Christian youth group she runs, according to the Washington Post.

Seebachan had experience in leading after school clubs and daycamps, has taught in China, and lived and visited over 22 nations.  The playseum’s on-hands activities are diverse, sensitive in spirit and reflect what she has gained from her travels, according to their website.

However now the Be With Me Playseum is being sabotaged through a whisper campaign and Seebachan has been receiving threats.

Anonymous Web postings saying Seebachan handed out antiabortion literature at the Playseum, accepts support from right-wing Christian groups and plays Christian rock music at the play space, according to The Washington Post.

One anonymous post from someone who claimed to be Jewish said that Seebachan told her that unless she accepted Jesus as her personal savior, the client and her children would go to hell, The Washington Post reported.

Seebachan said she has no literature about abortion, her sponsors are all secular, including Safeway and Strosniders hardware store, and if she knew anyone of her staff who told a client that she and her family might go to hell, she would fire them on the spot, according to The Washington Post.

“I’m not marketing to Christians,” Seebachan says.  “I imagined this place like a big, refreshing swimming pool for anybody to come to and be together with their children in a different way, without computers, TVs or cellphones,”  Seebachan told The Washington Post.

A poll conducted recently in Ireland showed that 70 percent of Irish people would like their constitution to protect the unborn and ban abortion.

The survey, funded by Ireland’s Pro-Life Campaign and carried out by Millward Brown Lansdowne, recorded the opinions of nearly 1000 people aged 18 and older from Jan. 27 to Feb. 6.

The poll revealed that only 13 percent opposed protection for the unborn, while some 16 percent were undecided.

The survey also revealed that respondents were okay with Ireland’s current medical ethics and laws which allow intervention in case a mother’s life is endangered by her pregnancy.

The Pro-Life Campaign’s Dr. Berry Kiely highlighted the fact that the poll distinguished necessary medical interventions in pregnancy from induced abortion which directly targets the unborn child.

“This is a critical ethical distinction which abortion advocates constantly seek to blur,” Kiely said.

“Abortion advocates ignore the humanity of the unborn child throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy and the latest research highlighting the negative consequences of abortion for women.We cannot arbitrarily airbrush the unborn child out of the debate, or the many testimonies of women who regret their abortions.”

“To deny the right to life simply because the unborn child is at an early stage of development completely undermines an authentic vision of human rights,” Kiely commented.

Ireland is currently listed as the safest country in the world for pregnant women by the latest U.N. survey on maternal health.

Other countries where abortion is banned are Chile, El Salvador, Malta, Nicaragua and Bangladesh.

Is the current increase in natural disasters matching up with Bible prophecy of the “end times?”

People have been announcing the “last days” for millennia.

In antiquity, Old Testament prophets such as Daniel (Daniel 12:1) spoke of them.

As did Jesus in Matthew 24:3-8.

“As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

⁴Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. ⁵For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ,^[a]‘ and will deceive many. ⁶You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. ⁷Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. ⁸All these are the beginning of birth pains.”

Today, statements of 20^th century increases in natural disasters are coming from worldwide sources.

MSNBC, CBC and Fox News have all done reports on the increase in natural disasters.

In 2006, the European Journal of Public Health reported, “Natural disasters are increasing in frequency because of the worldwide deterioration in the natural environment. The incidence of floods, storms, earthquakes and droughts and the number of people affected by them are escalating greatly.”

“Weather-related disasters throughout the world continue to rise, from an annual average of 200 in 1993–1997 to 331 per year in 1998–2002.”

The UN Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery more recently stated,
“The 21st Century has already been marked by escalating economic losses and human devastation caused by natural disasters.”

“In 2008 alone, more than 300 disasters killed more than 235,000 people, affected more than 200 million others and caused losses and damage worth $181 billion.”

Although most of these Web sites and authorities relate the catastrophes more to climate change than biblical prophecy, the reports sound eerily similar to “end times” Bible verses.

Six major earthquakes in the last seven years, plus some of the deadliest hurricanes (Katrina and Rita) -– does that look like the birth pains Jesus referred to, meaning the beginning of the end of the world as we know it?

Of course, anything we may say is certainly speculation, but one thing is certain, the number of natural disasters in the past 20 years outweighs any other written recorded history.

This may be something to think about as we ponder God’s will for our lives and what we do with the time He has given us.