A Muslim man in the Philippines, named Noor Lucman, rescued 64 Christians by hiding them in his home, as ISIS terrorists were searching for victims to slaughter. According to Lucman, if the terrorists would have found them, they would have been beheaded. This is another story of a Good Samaritan, a man who is not a Christian, but has a noble and good soul. I doubt the counterjihad loons are reporting on this one. Here is a video interview of Lucman recounting his story:
According to the report:
Groups of people who managed to escape the fighting in Marawi arrived at a madrasa in the city on Saturday. The army says that more than 150 people were rescued on Saturday, 46 of them children.
Among the escapees was Noor Lucman, an Islamic writer who helped shelter Christians from the Islamic State-affiliated (IS; formerly ISIS/ISIL) attackers. Lucman described proecting a group of Christians who were carrying out repair works at his home. “I had an ordeal because one day before the attack, there were some Christian workers who were in the house, fixing the small tower,” he said. “So when it happened, they could not leave the city. So I had to take responsibility and protected them.”
Lucman went on to explain that when the IS-affiliated fighters came knocking at his door he told them to leave. “If they knew that there were Christians in my house, they would all be beheaded and executed,” he stated.
"The following days, other Christian workers took refuge in my house. There were about 64 of them in my hands and I was very determined that nothing happens to them," the man said, adding that the people he sheltered would only be revealed to terrorists "over [his] dead body."
"When ISIS came, they recognized me and they showed respect by just leaving when I told them to leave," he went on to say. "They didn't know I was hiding Christians. If they knew that there were Christians in my house, they would all be beheaded and executed."
As clashes between the military and the jihadists intensified in Marawi, with the army having admitted the fight is far harder than they've expected, Lucman "took an initiative to get the Christians out."'
When heard that the military "planned to bomb the whole city if ISIS did not accede to the demands of the government," and also considering that he was running out of food, the Muslim man resolved to fleeing with the people at his mercy.
"I told myself that if I don't take these people out of the house, they would die of hunger, so we might just try and break through, no matter what. There were a lot of snipers along the way, and we had to hope against hope they would not ask those people if they were Christians or Muslims," Lucman said, explaining that the militants "ask you to recite a Muslim reading, and if you don't know it, they kill you."
More than 2,000 civilians remain trapped in the southern Philippines city, besieged by some 250 Islamist militants, according to Reuters. There have been reports of an imminent military assault in the region, where Christians have been killed and taken hostage by the militants. The jihadist fighters represent a mix of local Islamist militants and those from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Chechnya and Morocco, who joined the cause under the Islamic State banner, officials say.
By Theodore Shoebat
Countless screams cry from measureless Heaven; endless oceans of blood cry from underneath the earth; and the mournings from the innumerable images of humanity, are as countless as the luminaries of the starry skies, and all are the victims of the same spirit, and that spirit is Evil. There is no king more tyrannical, more blood thirsty, more cruel and callous, than King Evil. He comes in so many different faces, so many different cloaks, and he masquerades himself to the liking of your perception. But perception is where the danger lies.
Since evil has no problem in suiting our fancies, our prejudices, our emotional compromises, our sycophancies, and our perceptions, the inevitable consequence is that while we reject other evils, we will embrace other evils, defend other evils, and make excuses for some evils. This way of acting is done solely for the reason of a perceived peace; a peace that gratifies our impulses, a peace that will "wink with the eye" and "hate me without a cause. For they do not speak peace, But they devise deceitful matters Against the quiet ones in the land." (Psalm 35:19-20)
It is the voice that says "'Peace, peace!’ When there is no peace" (Jeremiah 6:14) It is the peace of which Christ spoke of when He said, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth" (Matthew 10:34), it is the peace that Christ came to destroy with the sword. Christ did not come to compromise with some evil and combat others, He came to destroy all evils. "For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil." (1 John 3:8)
The Scripture does not say that He came to destroy some evils, but quite emphatically it declares plainly that He came to destroy the works of the devil. There is no compromise, not exceptions, no fear of offense, no favoritism. All of the evils are obliterated without mercy, cut off by the Sword of Eternal Love, slain as St. George slew the dragon, and trampled by holiness as Mary steps over the crescent moon in the vision of St. John.
This is why I really am not a follower of the secular conservative movement, it only focuses on some evils, why ignoring others. They want an American empire, but not a Christian empire. While secular conservatives will "expose Islam" (in the most vague and superficial ways actually), they will not focus on the extreme evils of abortion, psychiatric drugs, homosexuality and other insidious actions and ideologies. They will say something like, "I do not believe in gay marriage, but I have gay friends, I have dinner with them and they are lovely people. I just disagree with them on this issue."
They will say they are "Christian," but if they were ever to meet Christ, they would condemn Him for taking up a whip and driving the thieves out of His Father's House. They would be amongst the crowd crying "Crucify him!" because he "broke the law," and the law of the state should always be honored, since we are to "obey our governments."
These secular conservatives will praise Israel, but for the wrong reasons. They will say something like, "Israel is the most gay-friendly nation in the Middle East," as if this is something praiseworthy. This is a reason to praise Israel? The land that God chose to illuminate the world, praised because it tolerates a man stabbing another man with his phallus? This is not praiseworthy but demonic, and people who encourage praise of Israel for this reason, is following the words the devils whisper into their ears.
Here on Shoebat.com, we like to fight against all evils. This is why we fight against the Muslims, the leftists, the Hindus, the Buddhists, the Mormons and feminists, the fake "right wing," and neutral deistic conservatism. We do this because our Lord came not to destroy one work of the devil, but all works of the devil.
Yet there are those who complain and bicker, and say: "Just focus on Islam!" Where in all of Scripture do you see any of the people of God isolating one evil and ignoring the rest? They will argue that, "We are living in America, and Muslims are killing Americans." If this is the basis for your determination, then you should be most enthusiastic against abortion, for millions upon millions of American babies get massacred in such a short amount of years. When a Muslim does a shooting, we all act as though we have never seen such violence.
In Virginia Tech, a man murdered over thirty people, and he was a devil worshipping occultist. But did the same people who are "fighting Islam" all the time say anything against devil worship or occultism? They simply say that he was "mentally ill" and move on with it. If they truly cared they would be fighting against Islam AND all other demonic religions. When the Germanwings plane crashed, everyone assumed that the person was Muslim. And when we found out that he was not Muslim, but a sodomite deviant, the people who were screaming "Islam!" were no where to be found. Why? Because they don't want to fight the evils of homosexuality, or speak of how the homosexual ideology leads people to murderous rampages.
This tells us something about these secular conservatives who act like this. They don't care about human life. The lives of the 149 people who were killed in the Germanwings massacre would have only mattered to them if the killer was Muslim. But because the person was a sodomite, they just say "mental illness," hush hush, and continue on praising some atheist because he (or she) "fights Islam."
Do you understand the hypocrisy of these people?
They should be picketing mosques AND abortion clinics; they should be fighting the homosexual agenda and the occult devil worshippers. But they do not. Why? Because they do not fight for Christianity, but for some utopian view of "freedom" in which "anyone can do whatever he or she wants, including putting a statue of Christ in urine."
There is something truly beautiful and majestic about Christianity, in that it is the only honest religion. All wicked people are victims until they reach a position of power, and then they become the victimizer, and oppress with more violence and cruelty than their former persecutors. They are like the unforgiving debtor who tells his master ‘Please, be patient with me, and I will pay it all", but then, in a position of power, turns around and abuses the other who owes him money (Matthew 18:26). When evil people are in the weaker position, they will project a persona of toleration, and speak cunning terms, such as "we can agree to disagree," or "I respect all opinions." Amazingly, Islam plays the same strategy, with the Koran stating lingo that (if we did not know it came from the Koran) we would think was being said by a modern: "You shall have your religion and I shall have my religion." (Koran 109:6)
The Buddhists and the Hindus, while in America, love to just pour out this idea that they are peoples of toleration and openness, but go to Buddhist nations, or go to India, and you will see brutality and unapologetic cruelty being done to Christians, and other human beings. As Michael Brown, a learned theologian, recently wrote:
Come to India with me into a radical Hindu village where you are told not to address certain volatile subjects like idolatry, adultery and murder, and then get up and preach on those very themes because you feel God wants you to – and the next night, have your meeting shut down by Hindu militants who take over the stage with knives and razor blades in their hands.
All of this madness springs from the double-mindedness of the sinister. It is the mindset of Cain that invites his brother to the fields before killing him. It is the mindset of the Sultan Alp Arslan who, before releasing a rageful wave of kicks and beatings on the Christian king Romanos Diogenes, promised him that no hand would touch him. It is the mindset of the Muslims who attacked the mall in Kenya, where after they slaughtered so many people and hung their victims on meat hooks, made baby faces at the little child of one of the victims, with one of the attackers begging for forgiveness from one of the hostages.
It is as though they are fighting with themselves, as though they are in a struggle with their own beings, a struggle between the flesh and spirit, for "Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do." (James 1:8)
This is the nature of all other religions. It is the Christian Faith that is the only faith that is not double-minded, that does not speak peace in one moment and declares war in the next. Christianity is the only religion in the world that looks at all of the evils that man can devise, and says, "I declare war on you." The Christian Faith is absent of all compromise; it does not pretend peace, but instead takes up a whip and drives the harlots out, drives out the compromisers, drives out the thieves and the liars. It cuts out the fat of sycophants, and makes the body lean with the strength of the warrior's arm.
In Christianity, peace and war are one. When the holy Faith declares war, it is pursuing peace, for to end wars is the blissful aspiration, to usher peace the ultimate desire, and the use of war is the bridge between chaos and serenity. As the warrior David tells us:
Depart from evil and do good; Seek peace and pursue it. The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, And His ears are open to their cry. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, To cut off the remembrance of them from the earth. (Psalm 34:14-16)
To be against evil, and to cut it off from all remembrance, is to "Seek peace and pursue it." You may think, "This is not peace! We must be open and acceptable to all lifestyles, because it is the humane thing to do." To know what is humane, is to know what is human. Let us ask ourselves the simple question: "What makes us human?"
Such a modest question, and yet the wonder it brings is more majestic than all of the cosmos. You may say that what makes us human is our ability to focus on the future. Step on a trail of ants, and the ants runaway. Why? Because the ants as well think upon the future; they run away to reach that future. So then, what makes us to different from the ants? What makes us so different from all other creatures? They eat like we do, they sleep, they have sex, they desire to live, and not one of these traits is absent in human beings. So then what separates us from the animal kingdom? At the surface, nothing.
Human beings can actually be, at times, worse than animals. Spirituality is what separates humanity from the animal kingdom. Animals have sex, but it is man who partakes in matrimony and esteems it as a sacrament before God. The animal is constantly looking to the earth, but man, he is the only one with the gift of inspiration, to look up to Heaven and smile with graceful bliss. Man is made of dirt, but the purpose of his creation was not to live centered around the dirt, for God breathed His breath into the dirt, and thus was man given a destiny, to forsake the earth, and ascend heavenward.
Heaven and earth came together, and from this beginning was man made in the image of God. Thus, to be human, is to return to this beginning, and reach the end of humanity's purpose, and that is, to be like God through Jesus Christ. In this beautiful and sublime path, the end is the same as the beginning, and that is, to be an image of God, an image of Christ, and rise above the animal impulses. In the words of St. Maximus the Confessor,
To the inherent goodness of the image is added the likeness (cf Genesis 1:26) acquired by the practice of virtue and the exercise of the will. The inclination to ascend and to see one's proper beginning was implanted in man by nature. (Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, Ambiguum 7, 1084A, trans. Blowers & Wilken)
So many today have raped the word spirituality. They will say that two men sodomizing each other, and loving "God" at the same time, is "spiritual." They will say that some beach where deviant and depraved people fornicate and intoxicate themselves, has "spiritual vibes." They will say that some heretic speaking of embracing all beliefs "demand our contemplation and reflection." These are all examples of how spirituality has been somehow confused with harlotry and decadence; these are illustrations of how people have identified spirituality with the antithesis of spirituality, and that is unrestrained indulgence.
True spirituality is to rise above the animal impulses, to transcend that which is seen, and join what is unseen. One of the most beautiful gems of spirituality was articulated by the mystic, Gregory Palamas, when he said:
We must transcend ourselves altogether, and give ourselves entirely to God, for it is better to belong to God, and not to ourselves. It is thus that divine things are bestowed on those who have attained to fellowship with God. (Palamas, The Triads, Deification in Christ, 68, trans. Gendle)
It is union with God that severs us from the animal kingdom, and brings us away from the animalistic inclinations. Satan wants us to imprison ourselves in the animalistic impulses. Such is the evils of Darwinism and Evolutionism, which seek to reduce mankind to just being an animal. People who seek to combine Evolutionism with Christianity, as if the two are compatible, in the name of "reason," are doing the devil's work. For they seek to take away the beautiful teachings of Christianity, and make the Faith into an ugly nihilistic religion, in which man would become a slave to himself.
It is Christianity that sails us through the capricious winds of the passions, and ascends us up to the holy mountain of enlightenment. As we are taught by Lactantius: "the light of the human mind is God, and he who has known and admitted Him into his breast will acknowledge the mystery of the truth with an enlightened heart; but when God and heavenly instruction are removed, all things are full of errors." (Lact. Treatise on the Anger of God, ch. i, trans. William Fletcher)
The Indians of the Americas were so trapped in the animalistic impulses, that they emulated the animals to the point that they cannibalized each other. But when Christianity arrived, and the flame of enlightenment illuminated their hearts, they placed themselves on the path of truth, eschewed the ways of the animals, and returned to the image in which they were created. Man is made in the image and likeness of God, and to emulate God, is to be like God. But to emulate Satan, is to be like the animals.
This is the purpose of spirituality, not to embrace the ways of the animals, but to rise above them. "For if we must look to heaven," says Lactantius, "it is undoubtedly for no other reason than on account of religion; if religion is taken away, we have nothing to do with the heaven. …We must therefore devote ourselves to religion, and he who does not undertake this prostrates himself to the ground, and, imitating the life of the brutes, abdicates the office of man." (Lact. Div. Inst. 3.10, trans. William Fletcher, ellipses mine)
Christianity transcends us from the ways of the dirt, and brings us to God, in Whose likeness we are made. Since what separates man from animals is the ability to be like God, then to be like God is to be human. To be as God is, is to hate evil. Therefore, to be human is to fight against evil. To fight against evil, is the essence of spirituality, and the truest participation in the Christian life. "The fear of the LORD is to hate evil" (Proverbs 8:13), and "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10), and since Christ is "the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24), to possess this Wisdom, is to hate evil. To be a Christian is to hate evil.
To be in the likeness of God, is to hate evil. To not hate evil is to be as the lax herd, lost in their fornication and slaves to their impulses, indifferent to the forces of darkness and careless before storms of the sinister, being serious about what is superficial, and humorous before the devil, for "It is as sport to a fool to do mischief: but a man of understanding hath wisdom." (Proverbs 10:23)
But please do not assume that I am saying that only Christians are humans and the rest animals. Do not think that I do not know that endless are the multitudes of those who put upon themselves the title of Christian, and are more savage and depraved than any heathen. I fight more against those who call themselves Christians, than anyone else.
There are Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists more righteous than many so-called Christians out there. We have had Muslims in Pakistan help us protect Christians from Islamic persecution, in our rescue mission; and when we have brought persecuted Christians from Pakistan into Thailand, we have had Buddhists help house them, and supposed Christians refuse to help us. When we brought Christians from Pakistan into Sri Lanka, Buddhist lawyers helped the Christians to get residency in the country. I will tell you this now, that these nonbelievers are closer to God than the "born again Bible believing Christian" who sees his brethren being persecuted and callously does nothing. To them can we say with Christ, "That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you." (Matthew 21:32)
The Samaritans rejected all of the books of the Bible except for the Five Books of Moses (See St. John of Damascus, On Heresies, 9), they as well did not consider the Temple to be the legitimate sanctuary of God. They made an evil alliance with Antiochus Epiphanies when he tyrannized Israel and desecrated the Temple; they changed the Tenth Commandment to be about the sanctity of Mount Gerizim. In other words, they were heretics, and were not orthodox in their theology.
So much anger did the Jews have for them, that we read in the Gospel that the Samaritan woman told Christ, "the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans." (John 4:9) And despite all of the corruptions of their theology, Christ uses a Samaritan in His parable on who is and who is not our brothers, after a sophistical lawyer asks Christ, "And who is my neighbour?" (Luke 10:29)
A man is beaten, almost to his death, and left on the side of the road. A priest comes, sees the anguishing man, and keeps walking. A Levite comes by, and callously continues on. But then a Samaritan passes by, and what made him different from the first two? In the words of Christ, "he had compassion on him" (Luke 10:33), and this compassion was evidenced through action. The Samaritan "went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee." (Luke 10:34-35)
What distinguishes the sons of God from the sons of Belial, is what distinguished the Samaritan from the two priests: love, for "He who does not love does not know God, for God is love." (1 John 4:8) There are many examples of good samaritans in our own modern times. During the Armenian Genocide, when the Muslim Ottoman Empire was slaughtering millions of Christians, there were cases in which Arab Muslims righteously rescued Armenian Christians from death. One Armenian family was brutally butchered by Ottomans, and there was only one survivor, a boy named Khatchik, who was rescued by Arab Bedouins and lived with them for nine years before he left and joined a relief center for Armenians. As one scholar notes, "Some Armenians were rescued by Bedouins and other Arabs who sympathized with the Armenian situation. Sympathetic Turkish families also risked their own lives to help their Armenian neighbors escape."
Such righteous people were good samaritans. They follow God without knowing it, for they emulate God to the best of their ability. They do not prove that Islam is peaceful, but that the compassion that kindled within their souls transcended the evil teachings of Islam, and flamed so hot with the flames of love, that they burned away whatever corruptions Islam could have brought. They were righteous deeds, and such noble acts were done by God through the hands of these people.
This is why I do not like the vague talk that I hear sometimes, such as, "Lets get guns and shoot Muslims at random." Or "Lets kill the Muslims and pour pig's blood on them." Such talk is devoid of intelligence, and the intentions behind them are neither said for Christianity, but for some dry system of conservatism. What about these Muslims who rescued Christians, kill them too? Saddam protected the Christians, and when America killed him the conservatives were acting as though they won some sort of a crusade. Gaddafi was a Muslim who protected Christians, and America brought him to the slaughter. Mubarak was Muslim, and protected Christians, and look how America encouraged a mob to overthrow him, thus enabling the Muslims to kill Copts. Assad is a Muslim who is protecting the Christians, and look how the Western forces are working to get rid of him!
Even when the Israelites came to Canaan to massacre the Canaanites, they spared Rahab because she was righteous, and they spared the Hivites because they desired peace with Israel. Secular conservatism is of a diabolical nature; it tries to portray a facade of some Christian morality, but it is filled with a very callous view of humanity.
Christianity is now identified with GOP politics and materialism. I remember in one argument I saw about illegal immigration. My father and I were in a car with a woman, who is very much into this way of thinking, and her husband. We saw a Mexican man selling ice cream, and she pointed her finger at him saying, "You see this guy here, he is probably illegal!" My father asked her: "A Muslim comes into America to conspire and support terrorism, but he is legal; another, a Mexican man selling ice cream on the streets, lives in America but he is illegal, but has no ill will. Which one do you prefer?" She coldly said, "The Muslim, he is legal." She said this even though she could not stand Muslims.
Another horrifying story creeps into my memory. A boat filled with Christians and Muslims was traveling from Africa to Italy, and the Muslims seized twelve of the Christians, threw them off the boat, and laughed as they watched them drown to death. The Italian government was compassionate enough to accept the rest of the Christians and arrest the Islamic perpetrators. I remember seeing conservatives in America say that the Christians deserved to drown, that there should be no sympathy for them, and that the Italians should have never accepted them, because they were "illegal immigrants." Such people who express themselves this way, do not know God, but worship a false, mechanical, callous, cold and deistical god, who runs like a ticking clock, only functioning like a machine, without a single drop of compassion.
All of the tears of the world could not stir this god to sympathy, for it is a devil. The God of Christianity, however, has passion, emotions, anger, jealously, and love, and He honors the nonbeliever who has love, over the "conservative" who could not shed tears for martyred Christians. Such is the purpose of the parable of the Good Samaritan: to show the callousness of self-esteemed people who think they are righteous because they mechanically follow some set of rules set up by societal tradition, and accepted as "conservative." These supposed "conservatives" will show more love towards "gay people" and politicians who lie to their faces, than they would suffering Christians because they are "illegal," or even righteous Muslims just because they are "rag heads."
Human beings are born with sinful nature, and thus any good that man does is done by God through him. As the Italian mystic, Lorenzo Scupoli, said:
There is nothing He [God] loves and desires to see in us more than a sincere consciousness of our nothingness and a firm and deep-felt conviction that any good we may have in our nature and our life comes from Him alone, since He is the source of all good, and that nothing truly good can ever come from ourselves, whether a good thought or a good action. (The Unseen Warfare, ch. 2, trans. E. Kadloubovsky & G.E.H. Palmer)
Thus when man does good, that goodness comes from God, and he is only the instrument by which the righteous act is accomplished. It is quite ineffably beautiful, and truly something of wonder: man, with all passion and enthusiasm, does good, but it is God that is working through him, and he is but the paintbrush of this immaculate painting of Providence.
We must destroy Islam, but this does not mean we destroy all Muslims. We fight Islam by declaring Christianity as superior to Islam, and through the Christianization of society (which at times require the use of force), we bring the Muslim world into the fold of Christendom. The power of Islam in the Islamic world must be destroyed through military force, and once the authority of Islam is broken and tendered, then that is when the preachers of the Gospel are sent, to bring the Muslims into the Church. This is what the Conquistadors did when they invaded Mexico.
This would be love, for it is done -- not to mock and cruelly kill people -- but to bring man into enlightenment. It is done in union with God, and by God, with man simply being the instrument of divine justice. The warrior is filled with love, because he has God, and through him, the enemies of light are crushed. "God has broken through my enemies by my hand like a breakthrough of water." (1 Chronicles 14:11)
With this said I would like to add a reflection on Mother's Day:
While everyone is wishing each other a happy Mother's Day, we are forgetting to give our felicitations to the most important mother who ever lived, and that is Mary, the Mother of God in the flesh. She succeeded where Eve -- the first mother -- failed, by giving the utmost of obedience to the cause of mankind's redemption and forsaking the pernicious desires of the flesh
"A sword will pierce through your own soul" (Luke 2:34), foretold Simeon to Mary, and surely did she suffer this travail.
From her womb, came the One Who all of existence could not contain; from her womb came the One for Whom the heavens were made, through Whom the endless cosmos sail across the oceans of stars, and to Whom the vast seas of numberless universes give their adulations. In her womb did Humanity and Eternity become one; in her womb did despair and glory unite.
Before her eyes lied the Man Child; before her eyes our Hope; before her eyes our Salvation; before her eyes the Savior made water into wine, and before her eyes shall the Eternal King tread "the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God." (Revelation 19:15)
John saw her in her glory, "a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars." (Revelation 12:1) The stars were above her head, because she, being the mother of the King, is the queen of the Church. Since Christ identifies Himself with His Church, Mary then is the mother of the Church. And so twelve stars, representing the twelve Disciples, and thus the Church, represent her royal position in Christendom.
The moon is under her feet, because the Church, headed by Christ, through Christ, and for Christ, her Son, crushes the crescent moon idols of the Antichrist, for in the end shall the armies of the Cross make the enemy "like Oreb, and like Zeeb: yea, all their princes as Zebah, and as Zalmunna", when Gideon took down the crescent idols of the pagans.
Mary is clothed with the light of glory, because she abided in Christ more than anyone, giving birth to the Holy One, obtaining what the Savior promised to His servants, "ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love." (John 15:10)
Mary abided in love, giving birth to Love Incarnate. Mary's abiding in God, Who is Love, did not end with her death, but continues on in eternity.
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