Zion Christian Church

The Zion Christian Church (or ZCC) is the largest African initiated church in Southern Africa. The church's headquarters are at Zion City Moria in Limpopo Province, South Africa (Northern Transvaal).

According to the 1996 South African Census, the church numbered 3.87 million members. By the 2001 South African Census, its membership had increased to 4.97 million members. (More recent official statistics are unavailable, since the last South African Census – 2011 – did not ask any questions about religious affiliation.)

History

The ZCC was formed by Engenas Lekganyane in 1910 after a long journey of trying to find a spiritual home. After being educated at two Anglican missions, Lekganyane joined the Apostolic Faith Mission around 1911 in Boksburg. He then joined the Zion Apostolic Church schism in 1916 and eventually became a preacher of a congregation in his home village during late World War I. After falling out with the ZAC leadership, Lekganyane went to Basutoland to join Edward Motaung's Zion Apostolic Faith Mission in 1920. After some time he returned to the Transvaal as the regional leader for Lion.

Zion

Zion (Hebrew: צִיּוֹן‎ Ṣiyyôn), also transliterated Sion, Sayon, Syon, Tzion or Tsion, is a place name often used as a synonym for Jerusalem. The word is first found in 2 Samuel 5:7 which dates from c.630–540 BCE according to modern scholarship. It commonly referred to a specific mountain near Jerusalem (Mount Zion), on which stood a Jebusite fortress of the same name that was conquered by David and was named the City of David. The term Tzion came to designate the area of Jerusalem where the fortress stood, and later became a metonym for Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, the city of Jerusalem and "the World to Come", the Jewish understanding of the hereafter.

In Kabbalah the more esoteric reference is made to Tzion being the spiritual point from which reality emerges, located in the Holy of Holies of the First, Second and Third Temple.

Etymology

The etymology of the word Zion (ṣiyôn) is uncertain. Mentioned in the Bible in the Book of Samuel (2 Samuel 5:7) as the name of the Jebusite fortress conquered by King David, its origin likely predates the Israelites. If Semitic, it may be derived from the Hebrew root ṣiyyôn ("castle") or the Hebrew ṣiyya ("dry land," Jeremiah 51:43). A non-Semitic relationship to the Hurrian word šeya ("river" or "brook") has also been suggested.

Zion (The Matrix)

Zion is a fictional city in The Matrix films. It is the last human city on the planet Earth after a cataclysmic nuclear war between mankind and sentient machines, which resulted in artificial lifeforms dominating the world.

History

Following the United Nations attack upon the newly established machine civilization of Zero One, a global nuclear war between both factions began for control of the Earth. After several desperate plans to halt the seemingly never-ending waves of robot-soldiers, the human leaders realized that the Machines had a good chance of winning. The human leaders began the construction of an entirely underground city, called Zion, that was built for the purpose of preserving the human species. When the war ended in the Machines' favour, the remnants of humanity were left struggling to survive on the cold, dangerous, and desolate surface. It was quickly becoming uninhabitable due to the cloud created by Operation Dark Storm. The Machines captured or killed almost all humans with the exception of the inhabitants of the unfinished Zion. The captured survivors were imprisoned and put into the newly constructed bio-electric towers with their minds placed in the Matrix to keep them docile. Twenty-three prisoners were freed by a mysterious Matrix-controlling figure referred to as "The One" and led to the unfinished Zion where they worked to complete it. After making the city operational and regaining technological usage from geothermal energy from the Earth's core, the One taught the humans to continue building and maintaining a war effort, and to fight inside and outside the Matrix. After the One's death, the humans learned to survive on their own and began waging a partial-guerrilla war from Zion against the Machines, and at the same time trying to free the Matrix's population from their virtual "prison".

List of The Dead Zone episodes

The following is a list of episodes from the USA Network original series The Dead Zone. The series debuted on June 16, 2002.

Series overview

Episodes

Season 1: 2002

Season 2: 2003

Season 3: 2004

Season 4: 2005

Season 5: 2006

Season 6: 2007

References