Apocalypse
Now:
The Planet
Ravaged by Disasters and Deception
For
years, we have provided ample proof that the upheavals the world is
experiencing these days are connected with the prophecies about the end of this
age. All the signs that Jesus Christ
spoke about in connection with those prophecies have come to pass exactly as He
said they would.
One such prophecy is found in the
book of Revelation. What is remarkable
about this prophecy is that God relates it to human activity, more specifically
to human sins. Here it is in its
context. Bear in mind that Revelation
prophecies are highly symbolic. Even so,
it is easy to relate it to our time, in particular verses
Men were scorched with great heat, suffered pains and sores, yet what did they do? They did not repent of their deeds but blasphemed God even more. These things are already happening before our very eyes, however, because humans do not repent of their deeds, God is about to unleash His wrath upon this world with even more devastating plagues: islands will disappear, mountains will be flattened, and men will fall under great hail from heaven.
Two decades ago, when we perceived that biblical prophecies were being ignored, we began publishing The Christian Herald in an attempt to bring knowledge of these prophecies to the attention of world leaders – religious and secular – and their people. Yet instead of taking note of the danger that this world is blindly heading into, we encountered a never ending chain of problems and obstacles from the same people. Even now, when it has become clear that humanity is on the edge of the precipice, religious leaders are still engaged in pathetic attempts to obscure and belittle our work. Have a look at this.
“Jury out on climate change?” ”THE drought
this year has been particularly cruel in the country. Not simply because this
is the seventh year and most farmers are broke, but because there were good
early rains. Hopes were high, but nothing followed.
The climate has changed, but Australia has long known terrible
droughts. I suspect it was not only
distance that precluded a large population before European settlement, when
only a few hundred thousand Aborigines had the skill to survive our harsh
environment. But is human industrial activity making the weather worse?
Are we
on the brink of a man-made catastrophe? Could we do anything to change global
weather patterns, even in the unlikely eventuality that the Great Powers agreed
and society could afford it? These are
big and different questions.
I am a
believer in the Catholic understanding of faith and morals. I reserve my leaps
of faith for religion: e.g.the Incarnation and Redemption.
I am
certainly sceptical about extravagant claims of impending man-made climatic
catastrophes, because the evidence is insufficient. Climate change has always occurred.
Scientific debate is not decided by any changing consensus, even if it is
endorsed by public opinion. Science is a
process of experimentation, debate and respect for all the evidence. Often it's
dealing with uncertainties rather than certainties, so its forecasts and
predictions can be spectacularly wrong.
In the 1970s, some scientists were predicting a new ice age because of
global cooling. Today, other scientists are predicting an apocalypse because of
global warming. It's no disrespect to science, or scientists, to take these
latest claims with a grain of salt.
Uncertainties
on climate change abound. Temperatures in Greenland were higher in the 1940s
than they are today, and the Kangerlussuaq glacier is growing in size, not
shrinking.
[Wrong!
The glaciers in Greenland did not melt in the 1940’s at the speed they do now].
The
journal American Scientist recently published a study on the melting glacier on
Mt Kilimanjaro.
The study confirms that air temperature around the glacier continues to be
below freezing, so it's not melting because of global warming. Instead, the melt pattern of the glacier is
consistent with the effect of direct radiant heat from the sun. Human activity
can't be blamed for that. The day before
Al Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were jointly
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, England's High Court ruled that DVDs of Gore's
documentary An Inconvenient Truth could not be shown in schools without
teachers providing additional materials to correct nine "significant
errors'' in the film.
Among
them were claims that Pacific atolls were being evacuated because of rising sea
levels, and that polar bears were drowning because they had to swim as far as 100km to find ice. The court found
there was "no evidence'' to support either claim. [Wrong
again! Some islands have shrunk in size,and many people have lost their homes.
Tuvalu is one of them].
Some
allege preachers raise their voices when they have a weak point. It has never
worked for me, and it doesn't work in science or politics. (Cardinal Pell, The Sunday Telegraph, Oct 28, 2007).
This is
none other than the head of the Catholic Church in Australia. He reckons that human beings have had nothing
to do with the current climate change.
More than that: he denies that there is even a global warming. The current worldwide increase in
tempereature, he says, is nothinmg more than a natural cycle the likes of which
this world has experienced many times in its long history. If Cardinal Pell had wanted to be properly
informed and kept up to date with the latest scientific discoveries, he would
have read none other than the very newspaper that publishes his
concoctions.
“Turning up the heat” “LOS ANGELES: Climate models predicting the Earth's
temperature could rise up to 5.6C by the end of the century may have
underestimated the increase by as much as 2.3C.
Research at the University of
California Berkeley suggested that, as carbon dioxide emissions heat the globe,
hotter oceans and soils would release stored carbon dioxide, kicking up the
thermostat. "We've probably
underestimated the problem," University of California Berkeley ecologist
John Harte said yesterday.
Current
models predict a doubling of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which at
current emissions rates should happen within the next 50 years. That would
raise global temperatures between 1.5C and 4.5C. The Berkeley lab predicted a doubling of
carbon dioxide production would mean more of the gas would be released
naturally, pushing the global thermostat up by between 1.6C and 6.2C. By the end of the century, the rise could be
as much as 7.8C. "It's a vicious
cycle where more warming causes more greenhouse gas emissions, and more
greenhouse gas emissions cause more warming," biogeochemist Margaret Torn
said. "That could have serious
consequences both for human populations and biodiversity." Global temperatures fluctuate naturally with
the intensity of sunlight hitting the Earth.
The
scientists studied past warm periods in a 360,000-year climate record contained
in Antarctic ice cores.
Using
air bubbles trapped in the ice, they estimated past global temperatures using
the ratios of oxygen isotopes and deuterium, which vary with the
temperature. They then checked the
effect of hotter temperatures on the level of carbon dioxide and methane in the
bubbles. They found that, as
temperatures rose, the production of two greenhouse gases increased more than
would be expected from just the increased sunlight that initiated the
warming. "The extra greenhouse gas
emissions that occurred would lead to a significant amount of extra warming in
the future," Ms Torn said. (Betsy Mason, The Daily Telegraph, May 24, 2006).
Cardinal Pell preferred the
opinion of a judge to that of scientists.
And to make sure his message is understood in the right places, he sunk his boot into what he called
“allege preachers”. What he does not
know, or does not want to admit, is that virtually all of God’s prophets were
“allege preachers” for their contemporaries, including Jesus Christ. (See the article, “Why the prophets of
God have never been welcomed by this world” elsewhere in this edition). If it were not for these “alege
preachers”, we would have no Bible today, and the world would not know where it
stands in relation to its Creator.
Let us now look more closely at the scientific evidence and see whether the
jury is indeed still out on climate change.
The same
day Cardinal Pell published his article, Chanel Nine television network,
presented two documentaries on global warming in its “60 Minutes” program. One
from the Greenland, and the other from California. Here are parts of their transcripts. First the one from Greenland.
The Greenland’s
dissapesring ice cap “The
Greenland’s ice cap is melting at an astonishing speed … even
as we watch, it is changing. Huge ice
blocks are collapsing into the sea. “The
disappearing ice is a weather vein, proof that global warming is right here,
right now.” “In the past 30 years,
temperatures have increased by 1.5 degrees, more than double the world average
… High up into the mountain … a glacier has retreated in the last ten years by
almost 100 metres. You are really
experiencing global warming. You see it happening … “When you fly north and over Greenland’s vast
ice cap, the downside of global warming becomes frighteningly clear. Eighty per cent is still under ice. If it were all to melt, sea levels around the world would rise by a
disastrous seven metres. That thow is
already under way, and glaciers here are retreating at a rate that is shocking
glaciologists like Gene Katania. “It has
been increasing over the last 15 years or so. Every year we see more and more
of it.”
“Do you
have any doubt that man has anything to do with this?”
“No!”
“Gene
has been tracking the movement of the ice using satelite positioning. The glacier in this area is the fastest in
the world, moving 15 kilometres a year down fiord.”
“It
definitely has been speeding up. We never thought that ice could move that fast
…
“Disappearing
icebergs, rising sea levels, unpredictable weather, this is the downside of a
climate change, but for Greenlanders global warming gives them the best shot at
a good life.”
Now a
transcript of the documentary from California.
“California ablaze”. Reporter: It’s a frighgtening warning for
us. Enough to make you wonder what we
are in for this summer. Let’s just hope
it’s nothing like this, an absolute catastrophe. A daily fire storm that’s raced through
America’s west coast, forcing more than half a million people to evacuate their
homes. And the terrible thing is it’s
all part of a global pattern: fires that get worse and worse every year, at
least ten times bigger than we’ve ever seen before. There is no doubt that we are living in the
age of the mega fire.”
Tom
Boatner, US Fire Chief: “The fire of this size and this intensity in this
country would have been extremely rare 15, 20 years ago. They are common place
these days.
Reporter: “Ten years ago, a big fire was what?”
T.B.: “Ten years ago, if you had a 100,000 acres
fire you were talking of a huge fire. And if we had one or two a year that was
probably normal. Now we are talking of 200,000 acres fires like it is just
another day at the office. It’s been a huge change.”
Reporter: “And the biggest fires are what now?”
T.B.:
“We’ve had, I believe, two fires this summer that’ve been 500,000 acres, half a
million acres. And one of those was
600,000 acres . . . Seven of the ten bussiest fire seasons have been since
1999.”
Naration:
“It was 20 years ago that fire fighters got their first glimpse of what was to
come. This is Yellow Stone 1998, when a
third of the national park was burned.
Since then, fires have broken records in nine States. Several mega fires like this one in Arizona
have burned over half a million acres each.”
Reporter: “Is it possible we get these mega fires and
we just can’t fight them, because they are too large?”
T.B.: “Well, we’re …we’re there already. We have had to fight fires this summer that
we knew we can’t put them out with the resources that we have now.
Naration: “The fire season over the last 15 years has
increased by 78 days due to the melting ice on top of mountains. Global warming and climate change have
increased temperatures in the west by one degree and that has increased the
fire season. With these super fires,
some forests may never recover. In 2006,
the Feds spent 2 billion dollars on fire fighting, seven times more than just
ten years ago.”
Reporter: “You know, there are a lot of people who
don’t believe in climate change.”
T.B.:
“You won’t find them in America’s west, because we’ve had climate change
beating us in the last ten or fefteen years.
We know what we are seeing and we are dealing with a period of climate
change in terms of temperature, humidity and drought that’s different than
anything people have seen in our life time.”
So, is the jury still out on climate change? Or is it a case that there is none as blind as he that will not see. Far from the case of the jury being out on climate change, scientists are alarmed by the speed with which the globe is warming.
“2008 critical for shrinking ice cap” PARIS:
The Arctic ice cap has shrunk by an area twice the size of France's land mass
over the past two years, the Paris-based National Centre for Scientific
Research said yesterday. "The
year 2008 promises to be a critical year on every level," said Jean-Claude
Gascard, the body's research director and co-ordinator of the European
scientific mission monitoring the effects of climate change across the Arctic.
Measurements in September last year
show ice covering 4.13 million sq km, down from 5.3million sq km in 2005.
"Melting could result in the loss
of another million in one (2008) summer," Mr Gascard said.
"Summer 2007 was marked by a major
retreat in the ice cap, one we were not anticipating. The decline is also two
or three times faster than (observed) beforehand." International models used to predict
retreating ice have some "catching-up" to do, he said. Over the past 20 years, 40 per cent of the
ice cap has melted, with the average thickness halved from three to 1.5
metres. Year-round ice coverage has reduced,
with summer melting also lasting longer, the centre reported.
The team highlighted the role of ocean
currents, namely in the northern Pacific, behind the warming of waters.
Mr Gascard's research colleague, Gerard
Ancellet, also spoke of recently-formed Arctic mist, pollution clouds that
"trap" Earth's naturally emitted infrared rays, thereby raising
temperatures.
In last year's summer, the Northwest
Passage, historically an ice-jammed potential shortcut between Europe and Asia,
was "fully navigable" for the first time since monitoring began in
1978, according to the European Space Agency. It lasted five weeks, according
to Canada's environment ministry.” (AFP/
The Australian,January 25, 2008).
“Wild weather a taste of things to come” “A MONSOON
dropped 35 centimetres of rain in one day across many parts of South Asia this
month. Germany had its wettest May on record, and April was the driest there in
a century. Temperatures reached 45 degrees in Bulgaria last month and 32
degrees in Moscow in late May, shattering long-time records. The year still has almost five months to go,
but it has already experienced a range of weather extremes that the UN's World
Meteorological Organisation says is well outside the historical norm and is a
precursor to much greater weather variability as global warming transforms the
planet.
The warming trend confirmed in February
by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - based on the finding that 11
of the past 12 years had higher average ground temperatures than any others
since formal temperature recording began - appears to have continued with a
vengeance into 2007. The meteorological organisation reported that January and
April were the warmest worldwide ever recorded.
"Climate change projections indicate it to be very likely that hot
extremes, heatwaves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more
frequent," the organisation said.
The heavy rains in South Asia have
resulted in more than 500 deaths and displaced 10 million people, while 13.5 million
Chinese have been affected by floods, the report said. In England and Wales,
the period from May to July was the wettest since record-keeping began in 1766,
resulting in floods that killed nine and caused more than $US6billion
($7billion) in damage. The World
Meteorological Organisation, which is co-sponsoring a series of meetings and
reports on global climate change, is putting together an early-warning system
for climate extremes and establishing long-term monitoring systems, and plans
to help countries most vulnerable to climate change.
"The average Northern Hemisphere
temperatures during the second half of the 20th century were very likely the
highest during any 50-year period in the last 500 years, and likely the highest
in the past 1300 years," the report said.
Global warming is expected to result in
more extreme weather because of changes in atmospheric wind patterns and the
ability of warmer air to hold more moisture, said Martin Manning, the head of
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's working group on the physical
science of climate change. He said that one year of heavier than normal rains
and warmer than usual temperatures said nothing definitive about climate
change, but they were consistent with the panel's long-term predictions. "What we have projected is an increase
in extreme events as the global temperatures rise," Dr Manning said.
"Floods, droughts and heatwaves are certainly consistent with that."
The World Meteorological Organisation
reported the extreme weather occurred in many parts of the world. In May, a
series of large waves (estimated at up to 3.6 metres) swamped almost 70 islands
in 16 atolls in the Maldive Islands off south India, causing serious flooding
and extensive damage. Halfway around the globe, Uruguay was hit during the same
month by the worst flooding since 1959 - floods that affected more than 110,000
people and severely damaged crops and buildings. Two months later, an unusual
winter brought high winds, blizzards and rare snowfall to parts of South America. Meanwhile, two extreme heatwaves affected
south-eastern Europe in June and July. Dozens of people died, and firefighters
worked nonstop battling blazes that destroyed thousands of hectares. On July
23, temperatures hit the record 45 degrees in Bulgaria. (Marc Kaufman, The Washington Post/SMH, August 9, 2007).
“Antarctica shows need for action on climate
change, Ban Ki-moon says”
“Ban Ki-moon, during his historic visit to Antarctica, the first by a
United Nations Secretary-General, has said warming temperatures on the
continent show the growing dangers of climate change and the need for action to
address it.
“It is here where our work, together, comes into focus,” Mr. Ban said in
a statement issued on Friday. “We see Antarctica's beauty – and the danger
global warming represents, and the urgency that we do something about it.”
The Secretary-General, who has made climate change a priority issue and
is working to galvanize support for an international conference to be held in
Bali in December on global commitments to stop it, said he is personally
determined to push forward. He said the
landscapes on Antarctica are “rare and wonderful” but also deeply disturbing as
the ice continues melting at a fast pace.
“All this may be gone, and not in the distant future, unless we act,
together, now,” he warned.
“Antarctica is on the verge of a catastrophe – for the world.”
The Secretary-General offered stark figures to illustrate his point,
noting that the glaciers on King George Island have shrunk by 10 per cent,
while some in Admirality Bay have retreated by 25 kilometers. He also recalled
how the 87-kilometer “Larsen B ice sheet” collapsed several years ago and
disappeared within weeks and warned that the entire Western Antarctic Ice Shelf
is at risk. “It is all floating ice, one
fifth of the entire continent. If it
broke up, sea levels could rise by 6 meters or 18 feet,” he noted, pointing
out that 138 tons of ice are now being lost every year. Other “deeply worrying signs” he mentioned
were the shrinking penguin population of Chabrier Rock, which has dipped by 57
per cent in the last 25 years.
“What will happen to the annual march of the penguins in the future?
Will there even be one?”
At the same time, grass is growing for the first time ever on King George
Island, where it rains rather than snows increasingly in the summer. “These things should alarm us all. Antarctica
is a natural lab that helps us understand what is happening to our world. We
must save this precious earth, including all that is here. It is a natural
wonder, but above all, it is our common home,” said Mr. Ban. (eGov Monitor, United Nations, Nov. 12, 2007).
Notice carefully: if only one fifth of the Antarctic continent were to melt, sea levels would rise by 6 metres. Add to that seven metres if Greenland’s ice sheets melts, and you have a rise in the sea levels of 13 metres. If that is not a catastrophe in the making, we would like to know what it is. And this is happening right now. The question is not whether sea levels are rising, but how they could be stopped from rising any further.
Cardinal Pell said that the current phase in global warming is not caused by human activity but is a cycle like many others in the earth’s history caused by disturbances in the sun which have come and gone without much damage to the earth. Well, perhaps the following story might change his mind.
“Fewer trees, less rain: study uncovers deforestation
equation” “Australian scientist
says they have found proof that cutting down forests reduces rainfall. The finding,
independent of previous anecdotal evidence and computer modelling, uses physics
and chemistry to show how the climate changes when forests are lost. Ann Henderson-Sellers, director of
environment at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, at
Lucas Heights, and Dr Kendal McGuffie, from the University of Technology,
Sydney, made the discovery by analysing variations in the molecular structure
of rain along the Amazon River. Not all
weather, Professor Henderson-Sellers said, was made from the recipe of two
atoms of “common” hydrogen and one of “regular” oxygen. About one in every 500 molecules had its
second hydrogen atom replaced by a heavier version called deuterium. And one in every 6500 molecules included a
heavy version of the oxygen atom.
Knowing the ratio allowed scientists to trace the Amazon water as if
flowed into the Atlantic, evaporated, blew back inland with the trade winds to
fall again as rain, and finally returned to the river.
“It’s as if
the water was tagged,” she said. While
the heavier water molecules were slower to evaporate from rivers and
groundwater, they were readily given off by the leaves of plants and trees,
through transpiration. “Transpiration
pumps these heavy guys back into the atmosphere.” But the study showed that since the 1970s the
ratio of the heavy molecules found in rain over the Amazon and the Andes had
declined significantly. The only
possible explanation was that they were no longer being returned to the
atmosphere to fall again as rain because the vegetation was disappearing. “With many trees now gone and the forest
degraded, the moisture that reaches the Andes has clearly lost the heavy
isotopes that used to be recycled so effectively,” Professor Henderson-Sellers
said.
Tom Lyons,
professor of environmental sciences at Perth’s Murdoch University, said there
was now “certainly very strong evidence that changes in surface conditions have
an impact on the climate. In some parts of the world the impact is very
marked”. The Amazon research “helps us understand the mechanism”. Professor Henderson-Sellers said the average
water molecule fell as rain and re-evaporated five times during its journey
from the tropical Atlantic to the river’s starting point in the Andes
mountains. Forests played a vital role in keeping the heavy molecules, and
their far more common relatives, moving through the water cycle. “People will tell you that when you remove
the forests it rains less,” she said, adding, however, such anecdotal evidence,
and even computer modelling, did not convince everyone. “This is the first demonstration that
deforestation has an observable impact on rainfall.” (Sydney
Morning Herald, March 4, 2005).
And if this is not enough, there is a now a new “time bomb” for
the earth resulting from human activity that is even more threatening than
global warming.
“Ocean Acidification – The BIG Global Warming Story”
“This is a scary story.
For decades we’ve been acidifying our oceans and we haven’t been aware
of it. We already know that warmer water is bleaching the coral of the Great
Barrier Reef, but just recently it was discovered that there’s a new threat to
the reef’s survival ... carbonic acid.
It’s only been in the science journals for the last few years but ocean
acidification is a time bomb. It could not only destroy the Great Barrier Reef
but it could wreak havoc on marine life around the world and, ultimately,
affect land dwellers like ourselves.
“Ocean acidification is destined
to be one of the biggest issues humanity has ever faced”, says reef expert
Dr. Charlie Veron. Ocean acidification
is a side-effect of putting too much carbon dioxide into the skies. This gas
ultimately ends up dissolved in the oceans where it forms weak carbon
acid. With the focus of global warming
largely trained upon increased levels of CO2 above sea level, Catalyst asks the
question, what’s happening below the surface of the ocean? Presenter/Reporter Dr. Graham Phillips meets
scientists who, for the first time, have found evidence that acidification is
affecting marine organisms in the Southern Ocean. Will this change the delicate balance of
ocean chemistry that we take largely for granted? Transcript of the program.
Narration: This is a scary story. For decades we’re been acidifying
our oceans and we haven’t been even aware of it till recently. Acidification is
a time bomb.
Dr Will Howard: This
problem will continue to affect the oceans even if we stopped all carbon
emissions now.
Dr Charlie Veron: It’s
like having a party on a railway track. You know the train is coming. And it’s
really frightening. It’s terrifying.
Dr Will Howard: We have put
in train a process that will probably last for centuries.
Dr Charlie Veron: It is
the most serious problem of climate change. It is the big one.
Narration: The
acidification of the world’s oceans is a side-effect of putting too much carbon
dioxide into the skies. You may not have heard of it – it’s only been in
science journals for the last few years - and the consequences could be huge. .
. Acidification is caused by our carbon
dioxide emissions not staying up in the atmosphere. They end up dissolved into
the oceans, mixed in by the wind and waves to form carbonic acid. To understand how this acid damages coral
reefs you need to know how reefs form. They’re produced by vast colonies of
little sea anemone like creatures – they’re the actual corals.
Dr Charlie Veron: You can see here some really big colonies. Hundreds of
colonies there all together. And the actual coral itself.
Every tiny little lip here is an individual coral.
Dr Graham Phillips: So that’s a little animal. Each one of those is a little
animal. . . It’s the little critters’ internal workings that are relevant here.
They have a stomach to digest food and water that comes in from the mouth at
the top. And here’s the key: the corals excrete limestone. A multitude of
corals endlessly expelling this rocky material - for 100s and 1000s of years -
builds up the vast skeleton scaffolding of a coral reef. And that’s the problem with acidification. As
you learn in chemistry class…acids and limestone don’t mix.
Narration: Here’s a piece of dead coral skeleton. As you can see it’s
hard – rock hard. But here’s the thing about limestone. Chemically it’s calcium
carbonate and anything with carbonate in it can be dissolved by acid. Here’s a
solution of weak hydrochloric acid and as you can see it bubbles instantly. Any
sea creature that uses calcium carbonate to build its body will struggle as the
oceans become more acidic. Now the oceans won’t become anywhere near as
acidified as this and actually dissolve corals, rather slight ocean acidification
will stop them growing. Check this out.
Dr Graham Phillips: These are two relatively similar looking pieces of
coral.
Dr Charlie Veron: Yeah they are, yeah they are. That one’s grown in a
natural environment. You can try and crush it.
Dr Graham Phillips: Pretty hard.
Dr Charlie Veron: Don’t try too hard cause you’ll just cut your fingers.
Dr Graham Phillips: Yeah.
Dr Charlie Veron: Yeah corals are tough. This guy has grown in an
environment where there is artificial acidification such as would occur around
the middle of this century. Now if I squeeze that.
Dr Graham Phillips: Oh yeah it’s just spongy.
Dr Charlie Veron: Yeah I can crush it. It all falls to pieces.
Narration: While corals haven’t been affected yet, there are some
important critters under even more immediate threat, according to new research
out of Hobart.
Dr Graham Phillips: In this beaker of clear-looking water are 1000s of
little creatures…plankton. They’re not as impressive as corals, of course,
because you can’t see them, but they too build their bodies out of calcium
carbonate.
Narration Could plankton have already been affected by acidification?
That would be disturbing because they’re at the very base of the ocean’s food
web. Plankton are eaten by krill, for instance, and krill by the larger
animals.
Dr Will Howard: This will have an ecological cascade effect right up to
parts of the food web that are important to human beings, that is fish, shell
fish for example a lot of the organisms that we depend on as food supply sources
will directly or indirectly be effected by this process.
Narration: So a scientific expedition was mounted to the wild southern
ocean to study the plankton. Down here is where the effects of ocean
acidification would first appear.
Dr Will Howard: We see them first in the southern ocean because the
southern ocean has absorbed a disproportionate amount of the anthropogenic
carbon dioxide that has already entered the atmosphere because it’s a cold
ocean and carbon dioxide is more soluble in colder water than in warmer water.
Narration: Plankton samples were collected…but how would the scientists
know if the critters had been changed by acidification? The trick was to
compare them with plankton fossils extracted from sea floor mud. When the
debris was washed away the little white flecks become visible…plankton from
long before the industrial age. When cleaned and dried, it’s under an optical
microscope for a first peek.
Andrew: What I’m looking at under here is, there are about 4 or 5
different planktonic foraminifera, which are calcite shells.
Narration: The foraminifera’s calcium carbonate shells are what interest
the scientists. Could they be becoming thinner and more feeble with ocean
acidification? To find out, it’s to the
more powerful scanning electron microscope.
And the answer is yes. This is the first evidence in the world that
acidification is already changing organisms in the ocean.
Dr Graham Phillips: So can we see those changes here?
Dr Will Howard: Yes we can. What you see in this shell is much thicker
crystals on the shell.
Dr Graham Phillips: So the crystals are here.
Narration: That shell belongs to the pre-industrial plankton. This shell
is one of today’s. It’s visibly more feeble.
Dr Will Howard: This shell is a thinner shell with a lot more porosity
in it.
Narration: Side-by-side, the contrast is dramatic.
Dr Will Howard: These organisms have having to make thinner smaller
shells than they would have in the pre-industrial ocean.
Narration: Now it’s too early to say what the flow on effects of more
frail plankton species will be, but one concern for us land dwellers is that
plankton currently take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
Dr Will Howard: All this extra carbon dioxide derived from fossil fuels
will remain in the atmosphere that much longer because the ocean will become
saturated.
Narration: What worries Charlie is, major ocean acidification has helped
extinguish life before in Nature. These formations in north-western Australia
are the remains of coral reefs. They suddenly died 360 million years ago.
Dr Charlie Veron: And we call those the great mass extinction events.
Mass extinction. That means the extermination of a huge percentage of life on
Earth. And coral reefs have taken at least four million years to recover. Now
that’s quite well known, and been known for most of my life.
Dr Will Howard:There really is only one mitigation strategy and that is
in this case to limit the extent and rate of carbon emissions into the
atmosphere.
Dr Charlie Veron: It’s no use saying by 2030 that we’ll do this or we’ll
do that, by 2030 it will all be too late. That is the problem. So we have to
change. And humans are, I believe, very good at change. But there’s not an ounce of hope in a world
that wants to procrastinate and to say we can’t do this or that. We’re going to
have to. (Antarctic Climate &
Ecosystems CRC, ABC – Catalyst, Sept.
13, 2007).
Things are moving at break neck speed these days. The planet is being denuded of is forests, glaciers are melting, and the oceans are being acidified. Humanity is slowly waking up to the realization that this planet is no longer as accommodating as it used to be. Climate change, global warming and ocean acidification have passed from the realm of news to that of well-established grim facts. Yet, the Catholic Church would not even acknowledge that there is a crisis, let alone countenance the possibility that the life of this planet is in danger. Why? Because Rome is an “eternal city”, and as such it could never have an end. You will never hear a Catholic priest talk about the end of this age, even though Bible prophecies about the end time correlate well with what is happening in the world at present.
Not long ago, when a Catholic priest wrote a book about the mysteries of Revelation, he was promptly defrocked.
Genesis and Revelation are two
books that have come under severe attack by the Catholic Church. Why? The first, because if Genesis is true
evolution is wrong. Since the Catholic
Church has taken a firm position in favour of evolution, it follows that,
according to them, the Bible must be wrong.
And the second, because Revelation speaks of “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE
ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” The Catholic
Church wants this to remain a mystery forever.
Only that there is a problem with that.
The Bible speaks of a time when the mystery of God will be
finished.
Little does the Catholic Church know that this angel has already
spoken. If you want to know what he has
revealed, read The Christian Heralds
Post Scriptum: Only hours, before we were to publish this edition, Cardinal Pell was at it again. We had to cut out other articles in order to accommodate his latest diatribe on global warming. This is what he said this time.
“Global warming is over” “Canada has experienced the coldest winter and the heaviest snowfalls since 1970-71, which was called a once-in-1000-years event. Another 18 cm of snow would set an all-time record. A Kingston newspaper had a marvellous cartoon of a tough old Canadian, rugged up against the cold and hacking the ice off the windscreen of his car. The caption read: Global warming my a***”! In China, the Chinese New Year coincided with a fierce cold snap and snowstorms, which prevented many city workers returning to their village for the celebrations. Police had to deal with the ensuing riots. London has just experienced snow at Easter.
The
world is much more bigger than both China and Canada combined, which might be
the exceptions to the new rule of man-made global warming, but they are
inconvenient facts for the climate-change bandwagon. And it is an intolerant bandwagon with loud,
exaggerated claims that the issue is settled and that an unchallenged consensus
among scientists confirms the hypothesis of dangerous, humanly caused global
warming. In fact the issue is far from settled. Politicians sceptical of these claims would
need unusual courage to resist the strong tides of public opinion. However, the rest of us are not so constrained
and we should consider all information.
Three points are of some significance.
Last December, more than 100 international scientists, some of them
members of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warned the UN that
attempting to control climate was “ultimately futile”. So did 500 experts in
Manhattan in March. Fighting change was
distracting governments from helping the most vulnerable citizens adapt to the
threat of inevitable natural climate changes, whatever they might prove to be. Futile attempts to prevent global climate
change would be a tragic misallocation of resources, they claimed. Secondly, none of the natural changes
observed with glaciers, sea levels and species migration is outside the bounds
of known variability, including the warming of 0.1C to 0.2C per decade, in the
late 20th century. But the 1930s decade was warmer than the 1990s.
Most importantly, the global temperature has not increased since 2001. Global warming has ceased (New Statesman,
19/12/2007). This finding invalidates
the global-warming hypotheses because the amount of carbon dioxide continues to
increase and the temperature should be increasing, too. It isn’t. The last point is that today’s computers
cannot predict climate over long periods, as there are too many unknowns and
variables. We should never forget that
while computers are miracles of human ingenuity, they are also limited, cannot
think for themselves and are totally obedient to their last human master. More than this is needed to predict the
future.” (The Sunday Telegraph, April
20, 2008).
If this sounds like a desperate cry of one who clings on to straws in order to deny reality, is because it is. As early as 2006, The Christian Herald No 15, pointed out that: 1. global warming is not equally spread all over the world, and 2. there are reliable scientific discoveries which show that global warming will, in most likelihood, be followed by an even greater evil – global dimming. 500 Manhattan “experts” who deny that there is a global warming problem, sounds a lot, but when you put that against the weight of the scientific world who believe that climate change has, if anything, been underestimated, you get a different perspective. Cardinal Pell shows no suspicion that those “experts” come from the business capital of the most polluting nation on earth, which belches out gargantuan quantities of carbon dioxide into the air, the main culprit for global warming. Reducing that to a “sustainable” level would be extremely costly, something that neither its political nor its business leaders are prepared to contemplate. Cardinal Pell uses the example of Canada, which has experiencing the coldest winter since 1970-71, to “prove” that global warming is over, but conveniently ignores the fact that on the other side of the world, Australia experienced the hottest summer on record at the same time.
“Climate change
‘underestimated” “Climate-change experts have warned the rest of Australia to brace
for record heatwaves similar to the one that has paralysed Adelaide for more
than a week. Adelaide yesterday
sweltered for the ninth day in temperatures of more than 38C – a record for an
Australian capital. The city’s maximum
daily temperature has not dipped below 35C since March 2, raising the risk of
heatstroke among the young and elderly and causing a surge in power and water
usage.
The heat has spread to western NSW, with
Broken Hill and Ivanhoe due to hit 40C yesterday. Edwin Jackson, policy and research director
at the Sydney based Climate Institute, said the heatwave was an indication
predictions of climate change may have been conservative. “Climate change is not just something our
children are going to have to worry about; it’s something we are already
seeing,” he said. “Temperature and
sea-level rises are at the top end of the range of the predictions . . . we
might be significantly underestimating the extent of climate change. ”Based on what we are seeing in the real
world this is a much more serious problem than we would have considered a year
ago. It’s becoming hotter, drier and
more extreme. We’re heading
into dangerous uncharted territory.”
South Australian regional director Andrew Watson is confident the
heatwave is influenced by climate change, showing global warming could be
taking place quicker than forecast.
“If we had the same weather 20 years ago, we doubt temperatures would
have been as high. Because the
greenhouse effect, the atmosphere can contain more heat than ever before,” he
said. (The Sunday Telegraph, March 16, 2008).
This
was published less than five weeks earlier in the same newspaper, which shows
how much attention Cardinal Pell gives to the newspaper that pays for his
articles. As for the fact that “none of
the natural changes observed with glaciers, sea levels and species migrations
is outside the bounds of known variability”, we do not know where he is getting
his facts from, but they are plainly wrong.
We have published enough on this topic to go into it again. What we did instead, was to check out the New
Statesman which he quoted as saying that “Global warming has ceased”. Well, this is what title that publication
carried: “Has global warming stopped?” Notice the difference? One is a statement of fact, the other a
question. When you put a question mark
after a statement, it is not a fact, but a possibility. The article does nothing but raises the
possibility that, based on the data from the last few years, global warming may
have stoped. Since Cardinal Pell was so
selective with his facts, here are some statements from the same article that
show a lesser certainty on global warming.
“The fact is that the global
temperature of 2007 is statistically the same as 2006 as well as every year
since 2001. Global warming has, temporarily or permanently, ceased.
Temperatures across the world are not increasing as they should according to
the fundamental theory behind global warming – the greenhouse effect. Something
else is happening and it is vital that we find out what or else we may spend hundreds
of billions of pounds needlessly. . .” “Certainly the working hypothesis of
CO2 induced global warming is a good one that stands on good physical
principles but let us not pretend our understanding extends too far or that the
working hypothesis is a sufficient explanation for what is going on.”
Saying that “global warming has, temporarily or
permanently, ceased”, and that we do not know all the facts about what is going
on, is not the same as making a definite statement that “Global warming is over”.
When you see Jerusalem
surrounded by armies,
you
know that its desolation is not near
There
is a prophecy in the Bible that has been much misunderstood by biblical
scholars, which says: “When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know
that its desolation is near”. We will
prove to you that in our contemporary context if Jerusalem is surrounded by
armies, it cannot be the end of it. First, here is that prophecy.
Luk 21:1 And He
looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury,
Luk 21:2 and He saw also a
certain poor widow putting in two mites.
Luk 21:3 So He said, "Truly
I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all;
Luk 21:4 for all these out of
their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put
in all the livelihood that she had."
Luk 21:5 Then, as some spoke of
the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and donations, He said,
Luk 21:6 "These things which
you see—the days will come in which not one stone shall be left upon
another that shall not be thrown down."
Luk 21:7 So they asked Him,
saying, "Teacher, but when will these things be? And what sign will
there be when these things are about to take place?"
Luk 21:8 And He said: "Take
heed that you not be deceived. For many will come in My name, saying, 'I am He,'
and, 'The time has drawn near.' Therefore do not go after them.
Luk 21:9 But when you hear of
wars and commotions, do not be terrified; for these things must come to pass
first, but the end will not come immediately."
Luk 21:10 Then He said to them,
"Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
Luk 21:11 And there will be great
earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be
fearful sights and great signs from heaven.
Luk 21:12 But before all these
things, they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you
up to the synagogues and prisons. You will be brought before kings and rulers
for My name's sake.
Luk 21:13 But it will turn out
for you as an occasion for testimony.
Luk 21:14 Therefore settle it
in your hearts not to meditate beforehand on what you will answer;
Luk 21:15 for I will give you a
mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries will not be able to contradict or
resist.
Luk 21:16 You will be betrayed
even by parents and brothers, relatives and friends; and they will put some
of you to death.
Luk 21:17 And you will be hated
by all for My name's sake.
Luk 21:18 But not a hair of your
head shall be lost.
Luk 21:19 By your patience
possess your souls.
Luk 21:20 "But when you see
Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near.
Luk 21:21 Then let those who are
in Judea flee to the mountains, let those who are in the midst of her depart,
and let not those who are in the country enter her.
Luk 21:22 For these are the days
of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled.
Luk 21:23 But woe to those who are
pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! For there will be
great distress in the land and wrath upon this people.
Luk 21:24 And they will fall by
the edge of the sword, and be led away captive into all nations. And Jerusalem
will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
Luk 21:25 "And there will be
signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of
nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring;
Luk 21:26 men's hearts failing
them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the
earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
Luk 21:27 Then they will see the
Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
Luk 21:28 Now when these things
begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws
near."
Luk 21:29 Then He spoke to them a
parable: "Look at the fig tree, and all the trees.
Luk 21:30 When they are already
budding, you see and know for yourselves that summer is now near.
Luk 21:31 So you also, when you
see these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near.
Luk 21:32 Assuredly, I say to
you, this generation will by no means pass away till all things take place.
Luk 21:33 Heaven and earth will
pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.
Luk 21:34 "But take heed to
yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and
cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly.
Luk 21:35 For it will come as a
snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth.
Luk 21:36 Watch therefore, and
pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will
come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man."
Luk 21:37 And in the daytime He
was teaching in the temple, but at night He went out and stayed on the mountain
called Olivet.
Luk 21:38 Then early in the
morning all the people came to Him in the temple to hear Him.
This prophecy
parallels that of Mathew 24. Mathew however,
does not mention Jerusalem. Being a
relevant prophecy for our time, let us see what Mathew had to say, before we
consider the implication of Luke’s reference to Jerusalem.
Mat 24:1 Then Jesus
went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him
the buildings of the temple.
Mat 24:2 And Jesus said to them,
"Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one
stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down."
Mat 24:3 Now as He sat on the
Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, "Tell us,
when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and
of the end of the age?"
Mat 24:4 And Jesus answered and
said to them: "Take heed that no one deceives you.
Mat 24:5 For many will come in My
name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many.
Mat 24:6 And you will hear of
wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things
must come to pass, but the
Mat 24:7 end is not yet. For
nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be
famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.
Mat 24:8 All these are the
beginning of sorrows.
Mat 24:9 "Then they will
deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all
nations for My name's sake.
Mat 24:10 And then many will be
offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another.
Mat 24:11 Then many false
prophets will rise up and deceive many.
Mat 24:12 And because lawlessness
will abound, the love of many will grow cold.
Mat 24:13 But he who endures to
the end shall be saved.
Mat 24:14 And this gospel of the
kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and
then the end will come.
Mat 24:15 "Therefore when
you see the 'ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION,' spoken of by Daniel the prophet,
standing in the holy place"
(whoever reads, let him understand),
Mat 24:16 "then let those
who are in Judea flee to the mountains.
Mat 24:17 Let him who is on the
housetop not go down to take anything out of his house.
Mat 24:18 And let him who is in
the field not go back to get his clothes.
Mat 24:19 But woe to those who
are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days!
Mat 24:20 And pray that your
flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath.
Mat 24:21 For then there will be
great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until
this time, no, nor ever shall be.
Mat 24:22 And unless those days
were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect's sake those days
will be shortened.
Mat 24:23 "Then if anyone
says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or 'There!' do not believe it.
Mat 24:24 For false christs and
false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if
possible, even the elect.
Mat 24:25 See, I have told you
beforehand.
Mat 24:26 "Therefore if they
say to you, 'Look, He is in the desert!' do not go out; or 'Look, He
is in the inner rooms!' do not believe it.
Mat 24:27 For as the lightning
comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son
of Man be.
Mat 24:28 For wherever the
carcass is, there the eagles will be gathered together.
Mat 24:29 "Immediately after
the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not
give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens
will be shaken.
Mat 24:30 Then the sign of the
Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will
mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with
power and great glory.
Mat 24:31 And He will send His
angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect
from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
Mat 24:32 "Now learn this
parable from the fig tree: When its branch has already become tender and puts
forth leaves, you know that
Mat 24:33 summer is
near. So you also, when you see all
these things, know that it is near—at the doors!
Mat 24:34 Assuredly, I say to
you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take
place.
Mat 24:35 Heaven and earth will
pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.
Mat 24:36 "But of that day
and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.
Mat 24:37 But as the days of Noah
were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.
Mat 24:38 For as in the days
before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in
marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark,
Mat 24:39 and did not know until
the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of
Man be.
Mat 24:40 Then two men
will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left.
Mat 24:41 Two women will be
grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left.
Mat 24:42 Watch therefore, for
you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.
Mat 24:43 But know this, that if
the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have
watched and not allowed his house to be broken into.
Mat 24:44 Therefore you also be
ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
Mat 24:45 "Who then is a
faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to
give them food in due season?
Mat 24:46 Blessed is that
servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing.
Mat 24:47 Assuredly, I say to you
that he will make him ruler over all his goods.
Mat 24:48 But if that evil
servant says in his heart, 'My master is delaying his coming,'
Mat 24:49 and begins to beat his
fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunkards,
Mat 24:50 the master of that
servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him and at an hour
that he is not aware of,
Mat 24:51 and will cut him in two
and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping
and gnashing of teeth.
As you ca see
there are some differences between the two Gospel accounts. Matthew’s is much longer and more
detailed. Yet he does not mention
Jerusalem, or of being brought before kings and rulers for a testimony for
Jesus Christ. Matthew was a Jew, and Luke was a Gentile. It appears that each wrote the Gospel from
their own perspective. This may explain
why Luke makes no mention of the Sabbath.
What is important to realise though is that although there are some
differences, they do not contradict, but merely compliment each other.
Luke’s, which is
the weakest Gospel of them all, is given credence in this case by a reference
in the book of Revelation to a gathering of armies against the Lord in a place
called Armageddon. Biblical scholars
have interpreted Armageddon to mean Megiddo, a valley not far from Jerusalem. Let us look at that prophecy in its context
too.
The book of
Revelation, like the rest of the New Testament, was recorded in the Greek
language (or at lest it reached us in the Greek language). Yet verse 16 is sending us to the Hebrew
language, in other words, to the Jews.
Now, Jesus Christ knew that the time of this prophecy would be after the
Jews were returned from their long Diaspora.
He also knew that this would be just prior to the Great Tribulation that
would herald His return. But the Great
Tribulation is a time of worldwide nuclear conflagration. This begs the question, what role would a
place called “Armageddon” play in an age of ballistic missiles, if that is
indeed located near Jerusalem, as so many people seem to think?
There are at
least two reasons why Armageddon could not be Megiddo. 1) It is tenuous to say the least to link the
two words linguistically. 2) No hostile
armies could possibly gather near Jerusalem, or anywhere else in the Jewish
state, under the circumstances of a nuclear-armed Israel. The Jews will not sit down and watch as
another Holocaust is looming just next door to Jerusalem. The point we want to make is that just
because
It should not be forgotten
that
Mat
24:30 Then the sign of the Son of Man
will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and
they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and
great glory.
You can be sure of one thing: the Jews will
fight against Jesus Christ as much, or more than, the rest of the world. Remember what
The whole world,
Jews included, are gathered to the battle of that great day of God
Almighty.
There are two other
prophecies that we need to look at, if we are to understand the order in which
those events will take place. Here is
the first one.
Zec 14:1 Behold, the day of the
LORD is coming, And your spoil will be divided in your midst.
Zec 14:2 For I will gather all
the nations to battle against Jerusalem; The city shall be taken, The houses
rifled, And the women ravished. Half of the city shall go into captivity, But
the remnant of the people shall not be cut off from the city.
Zec 14:3 Then the LORD will go
forth And fight against those nations, As He fights in the day of battle.
Zec 14:4 And in that day His feet
will stand on the Mount of Olives, Which faces Jerusalem on the east. And the
Mount of Olives shall be split in two, From east to west, Making a very
large valley; Half of the mountain shall move toward the north And half of it
toward the south.
Zec 14:5 Then you shall flee through
My mountain valley, For the mountain valley shall reach to Azal. Yes, you shall
flee As you fled from the earthquake In the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Thus
the LORD my God will come, And all the saints with You.
Zec 14:6 It shall come to pass in
that day That there will be no light; The lights will diminish.
Zec 14:7 It shall be one day
Which is known to the LORD Neither day nor night. But at evening time it shall
happen That it will be light.
Zec 14:8 And in that day it shall
be— That living waters shall flow from Jerusalem, Half of them toward
the eastern sea And half of them toward the western sea; In both summer and
winter it shall occur.
Zec 14:9 And the LORD shall be
King over all the earth. In that day it shall be "The LORD is
one," And His name one.
Zec 14:10 All the land shall be
turned into a plain from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem. Jerusalem
shall be raised up and inhabited in her place from Benjamin's Gate to the place
of the First Gate and the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Hananel to
the king's winepresses.
Zec 14:11 The people shall
dwell in it; And no longer shall there be utter destruction, But Jerusalem
shall be safely inhabited.
Zec 14:12 And this
shall be the plague with which the LORD will strike all the people who fought
against Jerusalem: Their flesh shall dissolve while they stand on their feet,
Their eyes shall dissolve in their sockets, And their tongues shall dissolve in
their mouths.
Zec 14:13 It shall come to pass
in that day That a great panic from the LORD will be among them.
Everyone will seize the hand of his neighbor, And raise his hand against his
neighbor's hand;
Zec 14:14 Judah also will fight
at Jerusalem. And the wealth of all the surrounding nations Shall be gathered
together: Gold, silver, and apparel in great abundance.
Zec 14:15 Such also shall be the
plague On the horse and the mule, On the camel and the donkey, And on
all the cattle that will be in those camps. So shall this plague be.
Zec 14:16 And it shall come to
pass that everyone who is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem
shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to
keep the Feast of Tabernacles.
Zec 14:17 And it shall be that
whichever of the families of the earth do not come up to Jerusalem to worship
the King, the LORD of hosts, on them there will be no rain.
Zec 14:18 If the family of Egypt
will not come up and enter in, they shall have no rain; they
shall receive the plague with which the LORD strikes the nations who do not
come up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles.
Zec 14:19 This shall be the
punishment of Egypt and the punishment of all the nations that do not come up
to keep the Feast of
Zec 14:20 Tabernacles. In that day "HOLINESS TO THE LORD"
shall be engraved on the bells of the horses. The pots in the LORD's
house shall be like the bowls before the altar.
Zec 14:21 Yes, every pot in
Jerusalem and Judah shall be holiness to the LORD of hosts. Everyone who
sacrifices shall come and take them and cook in them. In that day there shall
no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the LORD of hosts
Their flesh shall
dissolve while they stand on their feet, their eyes shall dissolve in their
sockets, and their tongues shall dissolve in their mouths. This could only happen in a nuclear war. What is different about this prophecy is
that, unlike others, it gives us a glimpse into what follows – a time of
abundance, peace, and holiness. It also
tells us that all the nations that survive the great conflagration will come to
Jerusalem from year to year to, ”worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to
keep the Feast of Tabernacles”. That
would seem to imply that the devastation will be so great that only a tiny
fraction of the world’s population will survive into the Millennium Kingdom,
enough for them all to be accommodated at a Feast of Tabernacles in
Jerusalem. What is more likely to happen
is that representatives of all nations will come to Jerusalem to bring their
tithes and offerings on behalf of their people to the Feast of Tabernacles
while the rest of them will keep that Fest wherever they are located on the
face of the earth. This is borne out by
the fact that remnants of Gog and Magog will be scattered in the four corners
of the earth in the aftermath of the Great Tribulation.
It would be all
but impossible to bring to Jerusalem all people from the four corners of the
earth after the devastation of the Great Tribulation when the means of transport
will be reduced to a trickle, if at all functional. And of course, it would be impossible to
accommodate them all in Jerusalem, even in booths of reefs and tree
branches. Even so, there is no dispute
that few nations will survive this end time catastrophe.
The question we
must ask now is what do we make of the first two verses of Zechariah’s prophecy, which say that
Jerusalem will be taken, the women ravished, and half the people taken into
captivity and half left into the city?
If you have a New
King James Version of the Bible, the most accurate that we know of, you will
notice that verse 3 is a boldfaced numeral.
This is what the translators say on page XI about that fact: “A
boldfaced verse numeral in the text indicates a paragraph break.” In this case, a paragraph break means a break
in prophecy – a time lapse of almost two millennia. What this means is that the first two verses
were fulfilled when the Roman legions, which could rightly be said to have been
armies of the nations, destroyed Jerusalem and sent the Jews into their long
Diaspora. The prophecy then takes us
forward to the time following the return of the Jews to their ancestral land,
and the return of Jesus Christ.
It is clear then that
the attack on Jerusalem in the end time will no longer result in half the city
being taken into captivity, and half left, for as we said earlier, in the
context of a nuclear-armed Israel any attempt to do such a thing would be
suicidal. Moreover, the Lord says that
He will fight against the nations that came up against Jerusalem: “Then the
LORD will go forth And fight against those nations, As He fights in the day of
battle” (Verse 3). Now why would He
fight against the nations that come against Jerusalem, if the Jews continue to
refuse to repent of the horrible sin they had committed against Jesus
Christ? Because they do not mean to
merely conquer the Jews, they want to obliterate them and Jerusalem form the face
of the earth, the city the Lord had chosen as the Capital of His Kingdom, so
that He would have no place to return to.
That is how the nations of this world are preparing to fight against the
Lord. The Jews unwittingly bear the
brunt of that fight.
Zec 14:4 And in that day His feet
will stand on the Mount of Olives, Which faces Jerusalem on the east. And the
Mount of Olives shall be split in two, From east to west, Making a very
large valley; Half of the mountain shall move toward the north And half of it
toward
Zec 14:5 the south. Then you shall flee through My
mountain valley, For the mountain valley shall reach to Azal. Yes, you shall
flee As you fled from the earthquake In the days of Uzziah king of Judah.
Thus the LORD my God will come, And all the saints with You.
The Jews shall
flee when they see the glorious Christ standing on the Mount of Olives. That they will suffer severe devastation
during the Great Tribulation, like all nations of the earth, there is no doubt,
for we know that all life would perish if God Almighty does not intervene to
cut those days short, but they will not be obliterated from the face of the
earth.
Where then is
Armageddon in this context? Clearly,
Megiddo could not be that place, for it would be suicidal for any army to even
breach the border of Israel let alone advance to the proximity of
Jerusalem.
The nation that
has been raving for some time now of wiping Israel off the map is Iran. Now let us assume that Iranian armies reach
as far as the Megiddo. Since the Bible
tells us that this will be a nuclear conflict, a massive attack on Jerusalem
will affect people living dozens of kilometres from that city, including
Megiddo. Of course, if the Iranians, or
anyone else, will mount such an attack, they would not target just Jerusalem,
but several other cities plus military targets.
Given the size of Israel, that would mean nothing less than wiping off
the map the entire nation. That,
however, would also mean that the aggressor, or aggressors, would be wiping off
the map their own armies.
If Israeli
leaders wanted an assurance against a nuclear attack on their nation, they
could do no better than to have a few Iranian divisions posted in various
places in the country. Mind you, given the value the Islamists are putting on
the life of their own people these days that may not be much of an assurance.
Can you see now
why we say that if you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies it cannot be the end
of it?
The truth is that
in an age of nuclear missile technology, you do not look for infantry divisions
in Megiddo, in readiness to attack Jerusalem.
You look to where the real danger comes from, and that is hundreds and
thousands of kilometres away.
In that context,
Jerusalem is already being surrounded by deadly enemies. Have a look at this prophecy.
Eze 38:1 Now the word of the LORD
came to me, saying,
Eze 38:2 "Son
of man, set your face against Gog, of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh,
Meshech, and Tubal, and prophesy
Eze 38:3 against him, and say,
'Thus says the Lord GOD: "Behold, I am against you, O Gog, the
prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal.
Eze 38:4 I will turn you around,
put hooks into your jaws, and lead you out, with all your army, horses, and
horsemen, all splendidly clothed, a great company with bucklers and
shields, all of them handling swords.
Eze 38:5 Persia, Ethiopia, and
Libya are with them, all of them with shield and helmet;
Eze 38:6 Gomer and all its
troops; the house of Togarmah from the far north and all its troops—many
people are with you.
Eze 38:7 "Prepare yourself
and be ready, you and all your companies that are gathered about you; and be a
guard for them.
Eze 38:8 After many days you will
be visited. In the latter years you will come into the land of those brought back
from the sword and gathered from many people on the mountains of Israel,
which had long been desolate; they were brought out of the nations, and now all
of them dwell safely.
Eze 38:9 You will ascend, coming
like a storm, covering the land like a cloud, you and all your troops and many
peoples with you."
Eze 38:10 'Thus says the Lord
GOD: "On that day it shall come to pass that thoughts will arise in
your mind, and you will make an evil
Eze 38:11 plan: You will say, 'I will go up against a land of
unwalled villages; I will go to a peaceful people, who dwell safely, all of
them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates'—
Eze 38:12 to take plunder and to
take booty, to stretch out your hand against the waste places that are again
inhabited, and against a people gathered from the nations, who have acquired
livestock and goods, who dwell in the midst of the land.
Eze 38:13 Sheba, Dedan, the
merchants of Tarshish, and all their young lions will say to you, 'Have you
come to take plunder? Have you gathered your army to take booty, to carry away
silver and gold, to take away livestock and goods, to take great plunder?'
" '
Eze 38:14 "Therefore, son of
man, prophesy and say to Gog, 'Thus says the Lord GOD: "On that day when
My people Israel dwell
Eze 38:15 safely, will you not
know it? Then you will come from
your place out of the far north, you and many peoples with you, all of them
riding on horses, a great company and a mighty army.
Eze 38:16 You will come up
against My people Israel like a cloud, to cover the land. It will be in the
latter days that I will bring you against My land, so that the nations may know
Me, when I am hallowed in you, O Gog, before their eyes."
Eze 38:17 Thus says the Lord GOD:
"Are you he of whom I have spoken in former days by My servants the
prophets of Israel, who prophesied for years in those days that I would bring
you against them?
Eze 38:18 "And it will come
to pass at the same time, when Gog comes against the land of Israel," says
the Lord GOD, "that My fury
Eze 38:19 will show in My
face. For in My jealousy and in
the fire of My wrath I have spoken: 'Surely in that day there shall be a great
Eze 38:20 earthquake in the land
of Israel, so that the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, the beasts of
the field, all creeping things that creep on the earth, and all men who are
on the face of the earth shall shake at My presence. The mountains shall be
thrown down, the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the
ground.'
Eze 38:21 I will call for a sword
against Gog throughout all My mountains," says the Lord GOD. "Every
man's sword will be against his
Eze 38:22 brother. And I will bring him to judgment with
pestilence and bloodshed; I will rain down on him, on his troops, and on the
many peoples who are with him, flooding rain, great hailstones, fire,
and brimstone. Thus I will magnify
Myself
Eze 38:23 and sanctify Myself,
and I will be known in the eyes of many nations. Then they shall know that I am
the LORD." '
Those armies from
the north, from the furthest parts of the earth, that come like a cloud in the
latter years against those brought back from the sword, have gained their
greatness because of a misguided Hebrew atheistic philosophy, called communism. God is about to unleash those armies upon
their own heads. That is what Armageddon
means in Hebrew – a massive army the likes of which this world has never seen,
coming against Israel not on land but by air like a cloud. An attack
against which Israel will have no defence and no remedy, except a divine
intervention. However, God will not
intervene to save them until they atone for their sin, their deicide, and turn
to the only Power that can save them in heartfelt repentance. The longer they wait, the more of them will
perish, in a doomsday scenario that is now in the making before our very
eyes.
“Russia Sends Warships to Mediterranean” “In response to the US turnaround on Iran,
Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to send six Russian warships, led by
the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier and the Moskva
guided missile cruiser, the Russian Navy's Black Sea flagship, to the
Mediterranean. As the the first prolonged stay of a Russian carrier in
the eastern Mediterranean vicinity of Israel's shores and waters patrolled by
the US Sixth Fleet, the move is more than significant. The Admiral
Kuznetsov carries on its decks 47 warplanes and 10 helicopters. The Admiral Kuznetsov is a
Class CV carrier, built in 1991. It is 999 ft. in length, displaces 67,500 tons
and has a top speed of 30 knots. It
accommodates a crew of 1,700. Sources in
Moscow say that the Kremlin acted quickly to make its presence known after the
NIE report was released. The Russian
fleet, which has already set out for its new mission from the North and Black
Seas, will reportedly have the use of naval facilities at Syria's Tartous port.
Its presence for several months will be a complication for the Israel navy's
operations opposite the Lebanese and Syrian coasts, especially if the Russians are
joined at Tartous by Iranian submarines or warships. Russia also sent ships to
the northeastern Atlantic.” (The Lekarev Report,
Dec. 6, 2007).
“Russian Ships in Syrian Ports” “For the first time since
the fall of the Iron Curtain, Russian ships will again operate the Tartus and
Latakia ports in Syria as permanent
bases for the Russian Navy in the Mediterranean.
During a recent visit to the Russian
Navy base in the Sevastopol port in Ukraine, Russian Navy commander, Admiral
Vladimir Masorin said, "Being present in the Mediterranean is very
important for our Navy in the Black Sea." Western media picked up on this
statement, as did Arabic stations like Al-Jazeera.
According to reports, Syria plans to
let the Russian use its ports as part of the large arms deal signed between the
two countries a few months ago. Syria had been deeply indebted to Russia to the
tune of $11 billion but recently, Russia 'forgave' some 70% of the debt and
made an 'arrangement' with Syria by which some of the remaining 30% will be
paid in cash and the rest will be 'paid' through permanent services rendered to
the Russian Navy in the two Mediterranean ports.
The Russian Navy is known to
massively operate spy ships. Israeli officials believe that a renewed base in
Syria will help the Russians carry out spy missions against Israel,
particularly electronic spying aimed at observing new weapon systems and the
flow of information in channels used by the army and the defense establishment.
(The Lekarev Report, June 8, 2007).
“Iran Gets Anti-Aircraft Missile System from
Russia”
“Iran's
Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar announced on Iranian TV Wednesday that
Russia will provide Iran with the sophisticated and powerful S-300
anti-aircraft missile defense system, vastly improving the Islamic Republic's
ability to protect its nuclear development facilities.
The missiles can intercept targets at an
altitude of up to 27 kilometers (90,000 feet) and at ranges of up to 150
kilometers (95 miles) from the launch point. They are effective against cruise
missiles and ballistic warheads as well, and are equivalent to the PAC-3
Patriot missiles which Israel is considering purchasing.
Russian military officials contend that the S-300
is of a higher operational standard than the U.S.-built Patriot missiles
currently used by Israel. The S-300 systems are also a major improvement over
the 29 Tor-M1 air defense missile systems delivered to Iran from Russia earlier
this year. The $700 million contract for that purchase was signed in December
2005. Former Israel Air Force Commander Eitan Ben-Eliyahu told Channel 10 TV
that the missiles will make it significantly harder for Israel to attack Iran
from the air, if it chooses to do so.
Even aircraft that do not directly participate in the attack will be
endangered by the missiles, he said, adding that AWACS planes, standby rescue
planes and other planes with protective missions could be targeted by such long
range missiles. Najjar did not specify how many S-300 systems would be
shipped to Iran, nor did he say when this would happen. An unidentified Russian
source confirmed that dozens of S-300 batteries would be transferred to Iran
and that the contract had already been signed several years ago.” (The
Lekarev Report, Dec. 27, 2007).
“Russia
Sending Nuclear Fuel to Iran” “In a dramatic turnaround, Russian president
Vladimir Putin indicated Friday that Moscow would send uranium to Iran's atomic
reactor in Bushehr. International Atomic Energy inspectors were invited to the
Novosibirsk Plant on Nov. 26 to verify and seal the fuel before shipment. On
that day, too, the US-promoted Middle East conference is provisionally set to
open in Annapolis, Maryland. The Quartet of which Russia is a member will not
be there. This decision means that
Moscow has backed away from the commitments Putin gave President Bush and
Israeli prime minister Olmert, after his mid-October talks with Iranian leaders
in Tehran broke down in discord. He then promised to withhold the fuel from the
Bushehr reactor and in fact, pulled all the Russian staff out before they had
completed work on the project's final stages.
Olmert received Putin's commitment to withhold the uranium fuel from
Iran when they met in the Kremlin on Oct. 18 and passed it on to President Bush
and later to French president Nicolas Sarkozy and British premier Gordon Brown
in special trips he made to Paris and London. The Israeli prime minister
announced then that Israel had a true friend in the Russian leader. Olmert is
deeply embarrassed by Putin's about-face, putting it mildly. It also bodes ill
for the third round of sanctions, for which the Bush administration is pushing
at the UN Security Council, where Russian holds a veto, now that the nuclear
watchdog confirmed in its latest report Nov. 15 that Iran had not given up
uranium enrichment. DEBKAfile's
Moscow sources report that the Russian president has reverted to his previous
tactic of broadcasting to Muslim nations a message that Moscow has its own
agenda and is willing, unlike Washington, to help them develop their nuclear
programs. The question mark hanging over
UN sanctions also affects the decision on military action against Iran's
suspect military nuclear facilities, which President Bush had put on a back
burner under the influence of Putin's breach with Tehran. There was a brief
thaw in the tense relations between Washington and Moscow and signs of a new
willingness for compromise on both sides on such matters as the US plan to
deploy anti-missile systems in East Europe.
The month-long détente was abruptly curtailed Friday, Nov. 16, with
Moscow's decision to let Iran have the uranium to fuel its Bushehr reactor six
months before its scheduled start-up. The step was gladly welcomed in Tehran -
of course!” (The Lekarev Report, Nov. 18, 2007).
“Putin Rejects Tough Stand on Iran” “At the Russian-EU summit in Portugal
Friday, Oct. 26, Russian president Vladimir Putin compared the US proposal to
build a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe to the Cuban missile crisis of
the 1960s. "Such a threat is being set up on our borders," he said,
but then admitted that tension was much lower now than then and that the US was
listening to Moscow's concerns. On
arrival in Portugal, Putin compared the supporters of tough policies against
Iran to "mad people wielding razor blades." On Kosovo's
future, he questioned the wisdom of "encouraging separatism in
Europe." Earlier, US defense secretary Robert Gates said the US
has done as much as it can "to appease Russia" on its missile plans.
"We've leaned about as far forward as we can." This week, the defense
secretary offered to open the proposed sites in Poland and the Czech Republic
to Russian observers and delay switching on the interceptors until the
Washington and Moscow agreed on proof of a threat from Iran. "We are not satisfied with any of their
proposals," Russian defense minister Anatoly Serdyukov commented
Thursday. Regarding his future, Putin
said he would not assume presidential powers if he became prime minister after
finishing his term in the spring. "There will be no infringement on the
powers of the president of the Russian Federation, at least while it depends on
me," he declared. (Lekarev Report, Oct. 28, 2007).
“Iranian Opposition: Nuclear Race
Continues” “An Iranian
opposition group in exile acknowledged that Teheran halted its nuclear weapons
development program in 2003, but vehemently insisted that the bomb-making
program resumed the following year and said that the NIE Report published last
week was therefore misleading in ignoring the evidence of the resumption of the
program. "We announce vehemently that the clerical regime is
currently continuing its drive to obtain nuclear weapons," said Mohammad
Mohaddessin, a spokesman for the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of
Iran, or NCRI.
Speaking at a news conference,
Mohaddessin said that Iran appeared to have duped US intelligence. "The
clerical regime leaks false information and intelligence to Western
intelligence services, through double agents," he said. Mohaddessin acknowledged that Iran shut down
the Lavizan-Shian weapons center in Teheran sometime in 2003 under
international pressure. However, he claimed that the Iranian authorities merely
shifted their weapons development efforts to other sites around the country,
and that work had resumed by 2004. Israeli officials, citing their own sources,
have confirmed this scenario. The NCRI
is described as the political wing of the People's Mujahedeen of Iran, an
opposition group advocating the overthrow of the government in Teheran. The
Mujahedeen are considered a terrorist group by the United States and the
European Union as well as Iran. There was no independent verification of the
NCRI claims, which Mohaddessin attributed to sources within Iran, including
staff at covert nuclear plants. He said the group had checked with its sources
in the past week and discovered that the centers were still working. (The Lekarev
Report, Dec 13. 2007).
“Iranian
Submarines Can Hit Tel Aviv” “The Iranian Navy is presently deploying two submarine
fleets - mini-subs in Persian Gulf waters for attacks on US shipping and Gulf
oil facilities, and the long-range Kilo class sub of Russian, Chinese and
Iranian manufacture, for long-range targets in the Mediterranean, such as the
US Sixth Fleet and Israel coastal towns, primarily Tel Aviv.
Iran's defense minister Mostafa Najiar
announced today, Nov. 27, that a new Iranian-built submarine would be delivered
to the navy Wednesday. He offered no details of the new item. However, two days
earlier, Iran's navy chief. Adm. Habibollah Sayyari disclosed that the new
submarine would operate in Persian Gulf waters in the Strait of Hormuz area. He
also declared that Tehran has no intention of blocking the Strait in a flare-up
with the US military.
DEBKAfile's military
sources note that Iran's strategic thinking has undergone a change. Up til now,
the rulers of Tehran viewed the blockage of the narrow waterway to shipping
that carries one-third of the world's oil needs, as its most effective reprisal
for a military attack. They have revised their thinking for two reasons: First,
Iran has made great strides in expanding its influence in Gulf oil states and
an assault on their sole source of revenue would win more enemies than friends.
Second, Tehran has developed a new
capability to deploy in the Mediterranean Kilo class submarines armed with the
Russian-made "Sizzler" Klub-S (3M54) missile. This missile can be
shot from underwater at a range of 300 kilometers and has a powerful
450-kilogram warhead. This possibility
was outlined by an authoritative Iranian security figure, the
spokesman-cum-commentator at Iran's defense ministry, Gen. Reza Naghdi, on Nov.
12. He said that if Iran were attacked, its navy - and its submarine fleet in
particular - could come close enough to "reach an Israeli coastal
target" from the sea.
If conditions are 'right', a strategic
decision could be taken in Tehran to send a sub or two to the Mediterranean to
hit American or Israeli naval shipping or the Israeli coast. The Revolutionary
Guards Corps is known to have built a large fleet of mini-subs and special
marine units equipped with fast boats for deployment in the Persian Gulf.
Don't forget that Iran's first
intervention in the Israel-Hizbullah war in South Lebanon last year was by sea.
On July 14, 2006, Iranian naval officers helped Hizballah shoot a shore-to-ship
C-802 missile from a Lebanese army base, crippling the Israeli Hanit
missile ship. The incident is still considered the most damaging suffered by
Israel in that war. A month later, Iran began experimenting with firing the
Sizzler missiles from its Kilo-class submarines. The Kilo class submarine is 74 meters long,
has a maximum speed of up to 30 knots surfaced, diving depth of 300 meters and
range of more than 12,100 km. The Kilo carries a crew of 52 sailors and,
depending on the type, is armed with six to eight 533 mm torpedo tubes, 24
mines and air defense missiles. The Kilo submarines' quiet engines enable them
to appear and disappear like wraiths, winning them the name of "Black
Hole" from the US Navy.” (The Lekarev Report , Nov 28, 2007).
“Ahmadinejad: End of Israel is
Imminent” “Speaking in the
southwestern town of Bushehr near the site of Iran's planned first nuclear
power plant, being built with Russian help, Iranian President Ahmadinejad said
today that "Israel's days are numbered." He declared, "It
is time to end the puppet theatre of the fake regime," referring to the
Jewish state. He insisted that Iran will not yield to western pressure and that
it is reaching the "peak" of its nuclear program. "If you
(Western powers) imagine that the Iranian nation will back down, you are making
a mistake," he said in the televised speech. "On the nuclear
path we are moving towards the peak."
Regarding Israel, Ahmadinejad said,
"The religious Palestinian people will bring down the last screen with its
powerful hand on the Zionists' puppet theater. It's time to end the puppet
theater of this fake regime."
Turning to the Western powers
supporting Israel, he said, "Those who remain silent in light of this
regime's crimes and support it should know that they are taking part in the
bloodshed of the Palestinian people and will be tried in the future. Defying international pressure, Iran has been
working on producing its own nuclear fuel, technology the West fears will be
used to make atomic bombs. Tehran says its work is peaceful and has refused to
stop. Ahmadinejad delivered this speech
two days after taking delivery of the Iran the eighth and final consignment of
nuclear fuel from Russia for the Bushehr plant. (LR, Feb, 1, 2008).
“UNBELIEVABLE!” “In his
most provocative anti-US speech to date, Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
brazenly questioned whether al Qaeda's Sept. 11, 2001 attack on New York
actually took place in an address marking Iran's Nuclear Technology
day, April 8. He went on to ask why the US had never released the names
of the thousands of dead in the Trade Center attacks and how the most advanced
security, intelligence and tracking devices in the world had failed to detect
the hijackers' planes before they struck the two New York towers.
[Apparently Ahmadinejad didn't read the papers on that memorable day when the
names of all the victims were printed and beamed around the world.] Ahmadinejad is famous also for denying the
Nazi Holocaust.
Announcing earlier that Iran had begun
installing 6,000 new advanced (P2) centrifuges for uranium enrichment at
Natanz, the Iranian president claimed his country's nuclear program had passed
the point of no-return technologically and politically. According to
Ahmadinejad, America is disintegrating politically, militarily and
economincally and therefore, Iran's nuclear achievement will change the
international order of power that has been in place since World War II. By
going full steam ahead with uranium enrichment, Iran is flouting three UN
Security Council resolutions and standing fast against threats, sanctions and
incentives offered by the West to halt a process capable of producing nuclear
weapons. Instead, Tehran is installing a
new generation of advanced P2 centrifuges to replace the older P-1 machines and
accelerate enrichment. He claims they are five times cheaper than the
commercial machines.” (The Lekarev Report,
April 10, 2008)
“Iran's New Missile” “According to
Israeli News Channel 10, Iran tested a new missile during the Annapolis
summit.
The Ashoura missile has a range
of 2,000 kilometers and is capable of reaching Israel, US Army bases in the
Middle East and eastern European cities.
According to the report, the new missile is an improvement on the
existing Shihab-3 missile. The Ashoura uses solid fuel instead of the Shihab's
liquid fuel, giving it a significantly faster launch sequence which is harder
to detect. Iranian Defense Minister Gen.
Mostafa Muhammad-Najjar had announced the development of the new missile on the
day of the summit, but had not specified whether it had actually been
tested. He also called it one of "Iran's greatest
achievements." (The Lekarev Report,
Dec. 13, 2007)
“The NIE and the 12th Imam (the
Islamic 'Messianic' figure)”
“On August 8, 2006 Professor Bernard Lewis, the doyen of Islam studies
in the West, wrote in the Wall Street Journal: "There is a radical
difference between the Islamic Republic of Iran and other governments with
nuclear weapons. This difference is expressed in what can only be described as
the apocalyptic worldview of Iran's present rulers." And "In this
context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during
the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general
destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead
-- hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this
mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement." I did a quick
search of the National Intelligence Estimate document "Iran: Nuclear
Intentions and Capabilities" for the words "imam" or
"12th" or "Mehdi". No hits. So I can judge with "high
confidence" that NIE conclusions have not much to do with WHY Iran
wants to do what it wants to do. As long as that has not changed, nothing has
changed. In other words, it is
irrelevant whether this is disinformation by Iran or not. The consequences of
making a mistake in estimating the threat from Iran are so high, that the worst
case scenario estimates should be the ones on which decisions should be made.
The mistakes done in Iraq where Saddam's WMD were moved to Syria, apparently
by the Russians, and the whole affair hushed up by both Democrats and Republicans
since the truth would have embarrassed them both, must not be repeated. There
is no room for petty partisan politics if the result is a nuclear war. (Mladen
Andrijasevic, www.israelinsider.com).
“Egypt
to Sign Nuclear Pact with Russia” “Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak heads for Russia today where he is expected to get
assurances of Russian assistance to build a nuclear facility. A bilateral
nuclear power deal was outlined last week and is expected
to be signed during the visit. Egypt's
Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu Al-Gheit said the pact would enable Egypt to tap
into Russia's extensive experience in the field of nuclear energy. The deal could allow Russia to participate in
a tender to build nuclear reactors in Egypt.
The pact coincides with international efforts to pressure Iran into
abandoning its nuclear program. Iran insists its program is for civilian
purposes of manufacturing energy, but Western countries are concerned Teheran
is covertly making an atomic bomb. The
technologies for creating nuclear energy and nuclear bombs are similar and
involve many dual-usage elements and substances. Egypt is one of
several Middle Eastern countries seeking a nuclear program. Cairo wants to
revive its atomic energy program, which was aborted in the wake of the
Chernobyl disaster in 1986, when the dangers of such a program became
apparent.” (The Lekarev Report, March 25, 2008).
“Hizbollah
Preparing for Upcoming War” “Naim Kassem,
Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah's deputy, described a training exercise the
group conducted at the beginning of this week as preparation for the next war
with Israel.
In an interview with the Arab-Israeli
paper Sawt el-Balad published Thursday, Kassem said that the Shiite
organization's weapons arsenal can hit all parts of Israel. He described the
maneuvers as "enormous and important and they were carried out as part of
our deployment so that we won't be caught by surprise. "Our exercise was unrestricted and was
meant to cover all of the territory of the Israeli entity and not simply to
strengthen our companies," he stated.
Kassem added that UNIFIL forces detected the increased Hizbullah
activity but, since no militants were carrying weapons, he claimed they were
acting in accordance with UN Security Resolution 1701.
The drill was part of our obligation to
make our presence and readiness known and (to show) that we act how we deem
necessary," Hizbullah's number two said. (Lekarev Report, Nov. 11,2007).
“Syria Arming Itself 'Furiously'”
“Jordan and Israeli security officials speaking to Aaron
Klein, Jerusalem Bureau Chief for World Net Daily, have said that
Syria, aided by Russia and Iran, in recent months has been furiously acquiring
rockets and missiles, including projectiles capable of hitting the entire state
of Israel. A Jordanian security official said one of the main reasons Damascus did
not retaliate after Israel carried out its Sept. 6 airstrike inside Syria
allegedly targeting a nascent nuclear facility was because Syria's rocket
infrastructure was not yet complete. Syria picked up the pace of acquiring
rockets and missiles, largely from Russia with Iranian backing, with the goal
of completing its missile and rocket arsenal by the end of the year, after the
Israeli attack. The Jordanian official said Syria is aiming to possess enough
projectiles to fire over 100 rockets into Israel per hour for a sustained
period of time.
According to Israeli and Jordanian
officials, Syria recently quietly struck a deal with Russia that allows Moscow
to station submarines and warboats off Syrian ports. In exchange, Russia is
supplying Syria with weaponry at lower costs, with some of the missiles and
rockets being financed by Iran.
"The Iranians opened an extended credit line with Russia for Syria
with the purpose of arming Syria," said one Jordanian security
official. "Russia's involvement and
strategic positioning is almost like a return to its Cold War stance," the
official said.
Both the Israeli and Jordanian
officials told WND large quantities of Syrian rockets and missiles are being
stockpiled at Latakia, Syria's main port on the Mediterranean Sea, as well as
at Syria's Tartus port, another major port area south of Latakia and north of
Damascus.
Syria's new acquisitions include
Russia's S-300 surface-to-air missile defense shield, which is similar to the
U.S.-funded, Israeli engineered Arrow antimissile system currently deployed in
Israel. The S-300 system is being run not by Syria but by Russian naval
technicians who work from Syria's ports, security officials said. New ballistic missiles and rockets include
Alexander rockets and a massive quantity of various Scud surface-to-surface
missiles, including Scud B and D Scud missiles.
The Wise Man Sees
In Proverbs 22:3 we read, "The
wise man sees evil coming and prepares, while the naive goes on and is
punished." My friends, the mass of evidence growing daily that the
enemies of Israel are seriously and systematically preparing for war against
the state of Israel - a war they openly call the war to destroy the Jewish
state - cannot be ignored. As we are exhorted by the verse quoted above,
the wise see evil coming and prepare. Those who proverbially hide their heads
in the sand will suffer. Top security
and defense officials are saying this is not a question of "IF" but
"WHEN". So when the rockets begin falling (G-d forbid)
in other parts of Israel like they have been falling on Sderot and the Negev,
it will be too late to prepare. It will be too late then to get bottled
water, non-perishable food and other necessities for survival. It will be
too late then to get help to IDF soldiers on the frontline, like we did during
the Second Lebanon war, thanks to your generous assistance. Last night, we had a call from the Sergeant
Major of the IDF unit for whom you bought shoes in August 2006. His
concern was evident in the phone call; there are preparations that must be made
now. We cannot wait. (The Lekarev Report, February 7,2008).
“Israel Will Defend Its Own” “As the UN
Security Council debated a resolution to condemn Israel (again!!) for the
situation in Gaza, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni declared forcefully in her
speech to the Herzliya Conference that Israel will defend its own, regardless
of UN condemnations or resolutions.
"I believe that Israel should not have to apologize for its
existence and it will continue to defend the lives of its citizens, even at the
price of condemnation," she said, adding that "it is inconceivable
for Palestinians to fire rockets on Israel and then ask for our
help." Livni dedicated an extensive
part of her speech to the negotiation process and the divisive core issues:
"I am not here to peddle dreams nor am I here to strengthen the hands of
those who have given up. . . "Even
if the Palestinians fail to implement it, this document will be of worth if in
it there are Israeli interests set in writing and ratified by the international
community. There will be no further claims beyond this document and it will
offer a lasting solution to the conflict, one which will take the place of
United Nations resolutions and proposals like the Arab Initiative," the
foreign minister added. (The Lekarev Report, Jan. 23, 2008).
“UN Fails to Condemn
Jerusalem Massacre” “The United States accused Libya on Thursday of preventing
the Security Council from condemning as a "terrorist attack" the deadly
massacre at the Mercaz Ha Rav Yeshiva. The United States had drafted a
statement that was discussed at an emergency UN Security Council session called
to debate an attack by a Palestinian gunman who killed at least eight people
and wounded at least 10 more at an Israeli religious school. "The members of the Security Council
condemn in the strongest terms the terrorist attack that took place in
Jerusalem March 6, 2008 which resulted in the death and injury of dozens of
Israeli civilians," said the draft statement. The US delegation
hoped the 15 member council would unanimously support the condemnation but Libya,
along with several other council members, voted it down. (The Lekarev
Report, March 7, 2008).
“Can Israel Rely on America?”
“Thanks
to Naomi Ragen for forwarding this article by Gerald M. Steinberg (Institute
for Contemporary Affairs/Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs). The December "surprise" resulting from the publication
of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate disrupted fifteen years of Israeli
policy based on working with the international coalition to pressure Iran to
drop its nuclear weapons program through sanctions and the threat of military
action, and has reminded Israelis of the limits of American security guarantees
and strategic cooperation.
* Within two weeks following publication of the NIE report [that Iran is no longer pursuing nuclear
weapons. Ed], China signed a major contract on energy development and
supply with Iran, and Russia quickly dispatched two shipments of nuclear fuel
for the Bushehr nuclear reactor. Egypt moved to improve relations with Iran,
and Saudi Arabia welcomed Iranian President Ahmadinejad to Mecca for the Haj.
* Prime Minister Olmert had explained the logic of the
"Annapolis process" in terms of the coalition to stop Iran, but two
weeks after Annapolis, with the release of the NIE report this rationale has
lost much of its relevance.
* Another source of stress comes from differences over
renewed U.S. efforts to forge a quick agreement with the Palestinian Authority
at a time of continued terrorism, the violent conflict between Fatah and Hamas,
the failure to develop functioning Palestinian institutions, and the PA's
ongoing incitement and rejection of the legitimacy of a Jewish state.
* In addition, the overall decline of U.S. influence, as
reflected in Iraq, the return of Russia as a world power, the chaos in
Pakistan, and other developments, has highlighted the limits of Israeli
reliance on American assistance, and the need for Israel to maintain an
independent capability to act when necessary.” (The Lekarev Report, Jan. 8, 2008).
The media and political commentators all over the world
have been saying that it is not a matter of if, but of when, Israel, or
America, or both, will attack Iran.
However, a widespread devastation of Iran by those nations is not in
biblical prophecy. Instead, as we saw,
the Bible says the opposite, that it is Iran, in an alliance with Russia and a
host of other countries that will attack Israel. God will magnify Himself before the world by destroying such a mighty
coalition that is led by the bastion of atheism. The good news is that immediately afterwards
Jesus Christ will return to set up the Millennium Kingdom – a new world order
of true peace, holiness and prosperity, in which wicked people will have no
place.
Where God Was During the
Holocaust
The Jews never tyre asking the questions:
Where was God during the Holocaust? Why did He not intervene to prevent it or
put an end to it after it became obvious what was going on?
The answer is
rather clear and straightforward. God
was on His throne; He did not prevent it or stop it sooner was because He
prophesied it, He foresaw it, and He implemented it. Simple as that, and proven by the Scriptures,
yet they would never accept it, always claiming innocence and victim hood.
Amo 3:6 If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the
people be afraid? If there is calamity in a city, will not the LORD have done it?
Why then do the
Jews keep on asking those questions, and never finding the answer to them? Because their spiritual leaders are as
self-centred and ignorant of the Scriptures now, as they were at the time of
Jesus Christ. And as dangerous for
Israel as they were then. They led the
nation to catastrophe then, and are about to do it again. Not because they are not making peace with
their intractable duplicitous enemies, for as sixty years of history have
proven, that is an impossible task, but because they continue to refuse to bend
their knees before the Almighty, and acknowledge their sins and wrongdoings,
and the evil they have inflicted upon the world with their anti-God, anti-life,
atheistic philosophy of communism.
In order to be
forgiven, all sins must be atoned for, and the Jews have a lot of atoning to
do. Only then can they be at peace with God, and especially with His Son, whom
they have so ingloriously crucified, and benefit once again of God’s protection
and blessings. Ezekiel makes the
following statement in one of his prophecies:
Eze
38:8 After many days you will be
visited. In the latter years you will come into the land of those brought back
from the sword and gathered from many people on the mountains of Israel,
which had long been desolate; they were brought out of the nations, and now all
of them dwell safely.
There can be no
doubt that this verse, in particular the expression, “brought back from the
sword”, refers to the Holocaust. No
other comparable catastrophe can fall upon the Jews “in the latter years”,
other than the Great Tribulation which will fall upon the whole world. This means that this event was prophesied and
implemented under the eyes of God. Such
being the case, how is it that the Jews keep asking the question of where was
God in the days of the Holocaust and why He did not intervene to prevent it or
cut it short? Even Pope John Paul II
asked these questions when he visited Auschwitz.
The role of
spiritual leaders is to inform people of the will of God, of His laws, statutes
and judgments, of His prophecies and warnings, in order to keep them on the
straight and narrow path. As Jesus
Christ said:
Mat 7:13 "Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is
the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are
many who go in by it.
Mat
7:14 Because narrow is the gate
and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find
it.
Now notice
carefully what Jesus Christ said in the very next breath.
Mat
7:15 "Beware of false prophets, who
come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.
Mat
7:16 You will know them by their fruits.
Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?
Mat
7:17 Even so, every good tree bears good
fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.
Mat
7:18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit,
nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.
Mat
7:19 Every tree that does not bear good
fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
Mat
7:20 Therefore by their fruits you will
know them.
Mat
7:21 "Not everyone who says to Me,
'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My
Father in heaven.
Mat
7:22 Many will say to Me in that day,
'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name,
and done many wonders in Your name?'
Mat
7:23 And then I will declare to them, 'I
never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'
False prophets,
ravenous wolves, thornbushes, thistles – strong words and extraordinary
comparisons for those who would be spiritual leaders. Since Jesus Christ knew that His religion
will be universal, these words apply to the spiritual leaders of Judaism, of
Christianity, and of the whole world.
Any wonder that the world is in such a mess, and on the brink of a
universal catastrophe.
The question
therefore that should be asked is not where God was in those days, or why He
did not intervene to stop it, but why He implemented such a grievous prophecy
to the full. The answer, like the
prophecy itself, is in the Bible.
Eze 5:5 "Thus says the Lord
GOD: 'This is Jerusalem; I have set her in the midst of the nations and
the countries all around her.
Eze 5:6 She
has rebelled against My judgments by doing wickedness more than the nations,
and against My statutes more than the countries that are all around her;
for they have refused My judgments, and they have not walked in My statutes.'
Eze 5:7 Therefore thus says the
Lord GOD: 'Because you have multiplied disobedience
more than the nations that are all around you, have not walked in My
statutes nor kept My judgments, nor even done according to the judgments of the
nations that are all
Eze 5:8 around you'—therefore
thus says the Lord GOD: 'Indeed I, even I, am
against you and will execute judgments in your midst in
Eze 5:9 the sight of the
nations. And I will do among you what I
have never done, and the like of which I will never do again, because of all
your abominations.
Eze 5:10 Therefore fathers shall
eat their sons in your midst, and sons shall eat their fathers; and I
will execute judgments among you, and all of you who remain I will scatter to
all the winds.
Eze 5:11 'Therefore, as I
live,' says the Lord GOD, 'surely, because you have defiled My sanctuary with
all your detestable things and with all your abominations, therefore I will
also diminish you; My eye will not spare, nor will I have any pity.
Eze 5:12 One-third of you shall
die of the pestilence, and be consumed with famine in your midst; and one-third
shall fall by the sword all around you; and I will scatter another third to all
the winds, and I will draw out a sword after them.
Eze 5:13 'Thus shall My anger be
spent, and I will cause My fury to rest upon them, and I will be avenged; and
they shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken it in My zeal, when I have
spent My fury upon them.
Eze 5:14 Moreover I will make you
a waste and a reproach among the nations that are all around you, in the
sight of all who pass by.
Eze 5:15 'So it shall be a
reproach, a taunt, a lesson, and an astonishment to the nations that are
all around you, when I execute judgments among you in anger and in fury and in
furious rebukes. I, the LORD, have spoken.
Eze 5:16 When I send against them
the terrible arrows of famine which shall be for destruction, which I will send
to destroy you, I will
Eze 5:17 increase the famine upon
you and cut off your supply of bread. So
I will send against you famine and wild beasts, and they will bereave you.
Pestilence and blood shall pass through you, and I will bring the sword against
you. I, the LORD, have spoken.' "
Does anyone still
wonder where God was, or why He did not intervene to stop the Holocaust? The answer is clear for all to see: they did
not obey God, they did worse than their fathers, and even worse than the
nations that God removed to make room for them.
Yet even after the Holocaust, still they would not obey God, repent and
acknowledge their sins. They are in mortal danger again, for without repentance,
God does not hear their prayers, and they cannot be saved, for this time truly
it is no longer a question of survival, but one of salvation.
Those who think
that they have reasons to hate the Jews, or that they are any better, should
beware of the fact that after they are refined through the fire, the Jews will
be leading the world back to God in the very near future.
Eze 36:16 Moreover the word of
the LORD came to me, saying:
Eze 36:17 "Son of man, when
the house of Israel dwelt in their own land, they defiled it by their own ways
and deeds; to Me their way was like the uncleanness of a woman in her customary
impurity.
Eze 36:18 Therefore I poured out
My fury on them for the blood they had shed on the land, and for their idols with
which they had
Eze 36:19 defiled it. So I scattered them among the nations, and
they were dispersed throughout the countries; I judged them
Eze 36:20 according to their ways
and their deeds. When they came to the
nations, wherever they went, they profaned My holy name—when they said of them,
'These are the people of the LORD, and yet they have gone out of
His land.'
Eze 36:21 But I had concern for
My holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations wherever
they went.
Eze 36:22
"Therefore say to the house of Israel, 'Thus says the Lord GOD:
"I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for My holy
name's sake, which you have profaned among the nations wherever you went.
Eze 36:23 And I will sanctify My great
name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in
their midst; and the nations shall know that I am the LORD," says
the Lord GOD, "when I am hallowed in you before their eyes.
Eze 36:24 For I will take you
from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into
your own land.
Eze 36:25 Then I will sprinkle
clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your
filthiness and from all your
Eze 36:26 idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new
spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give
you a heart of flesh.
Eze 36:27 I will put My Spirit
within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments
and do them.
Eze 36:28 Then you shall dwell in
the land that I gave to your fathers; you shall be My people, and I will be
your God.
Eze 36:29 I will deliver you from
all your uncleannesses. I will call for the grain and multiply it, and bring no
famine upon you.
Eze 36:30 And I will multiply the
fruit of your trees and the increase of your fields, so that you need never
again bear the reproach of famine among the nations. Then you will remember
your evil ways and your deeds that were not good;
Eze 36:31 and you will loathe
yourselves in your own sight, for your iniquities and your abominations. Not for your sake do I do this,"
Eze 36:32 says the Lord GOD,
"let it be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your own ways, O
house of Israel!"
Eze 36:33 'Thus says the Lord
GOD: "On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will also
enable you to dwell in the cities,
Eze 36:34 and the ruins shall be
rebuilt. The desolate land shall be
tilled instead of lying desolate in the sight of all who pass by.
Eze 36:35 So they will say, 'This
land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden; and the wasted,
desolate, and ruined
Eze 36:36 cities are now
fortified and inhabited.' Then
the nations which are left all around you shall know that I, the LORD, have
rebuilt the ruined places and planted what was desolate. I, the LORD,
have spoken it, and I will do it."
Zec 8:13 And it shall come to
pass That just as you were a curse among the nations, O house of Judah and
house of Israel, So I will save you, and you shall be a blessing. Do not fear,
Let your hands be strong.'
Zec 8:14 "For thus says the
LORD of hosts: 'Just as I determined to punish you When your fathers provoked
Me to wrath,' Says the
Zec 8:15 LORD of hosts, 'And I
would not relent, So again in these days I am determined to do good To
Jerusalem and to the house of
Zec 8:16 Judah. Do not fear. These are the things you shall do:
Speak each man the truth to his neighbor; Give judgment in your
Zec 8:17 gates for truth,
justice, and peace; Let none of you think evil in your heart against your
neighbor; And do not love a false oath.
Zec 8:18 For all these are
things that I hate,' Says the LORD."
Then the word of the LORD of hosts came to me, saying,
Zec 8:19 "Thus says the LORD
of hosts: 'The fast of the fourth month, The fast of the fifth, The fast
of the seventh, And the fast of the tenth, Shall be joy and gladness and
cheerful feasts For the house of Judah. Therefore love truth and peace.'
Zec 8:20 "Thus says the LORD
of hosts: 'Peoples shall yet come, Inhabitants of many cities;
Zec 8:21 The inhabitants of one city
shall go to another, saying, "Let us continue to go and pray before the
LORD, And seek the LORD of hosts. I myself will go also."
Zec 8:22 Yes, many peoples and
strong nations Shall come to seek the LORD of hosts in Jerusalem, And to pray
before the LORD.'
Zec 8:23 "Thus
says the LORD of hosts: 'In those days ten men from every language of the
nations shall grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man, saying, "Let us go with
you, for we have heard that God is with you." ' "
Amen,
indeed!
Why the
prophets of God have never
been welcomed by this world
In the beginning
of the nation of Israel, God spoke to His people through anointed priests. They had the priviledge of communicating with
God whenever they went into the Temple’s Holy of Holies adorned with the Urim and the Thummim – a special
breastplate that contained twelve
precious stones inscribed with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel.
Exo 28:29 "So Aaron shall
bear the names of the sons of Israel on the breastplate of judgment over his
heart, when he goes into the holy place, as a memorial before the LORD
continually.
Exo 28:30 And you
shall put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the Thummim, and they
shall be over Aaron's heart when he goes in before the LORD. So Aaron shall
bear the judgment of the children of Israel over his heart before the LORD
continually.
In
the course of time, however, the priests failed to perform their duties before
God, forcing Him to choose a new set of servants, called prophets, to convey
His messages to the people. Not
surprisingly, the priests did not take kindly to the new arrangement. They have been hostile towards the prophets
throughout the history of Israel, a hostility that continues to this day in
both Judaism and Christendom. Take a
careful look at the following passages from the book of Nehemiah, and see the
disastrous consequences this hostility has had on the prophets and on the
nation of Israel.
Over and over again, God
kept forgiving His backsliding “chosen people”, until there was no further
remedy, and He gave them over into the hands of their enemies. Did you notice the main reason for this
disastrous outcome? Let us assemble the emphasised words together.
“Neither our kings nor our
princes, Our priests nor our fathers, Have kept Your law, Nor heeded Your
commandments and Your testimonies, With which You testified against them. Yet for many years You had patience with
them, And testified against them by Your Spirit in Your prophets, That You might bring them back to Your law. Yet they would not listen, [but they] Cast
Your law behind their backs And
killed Your prophets.”
In the early days of Israel,
the priests, being custodians of God’s laws, also served as judges of the
people. However, when they ignored the
law and became self-indulgent and perverters of justice, the people, instead of
calling an assembly of the elders and praying to God for guidance and more
righteous holy priests, demanded instead a king in order to be like their
surrounding pagan neighbours.
Now notice what God told them when they
made that request.
The king would take their sons and daughters and make them his servants. He
would also take the best of their fields, plus ten percent of their produce
every year. Now is that what has
transpired since that time?
Tell me a country where people pay only ten percent tax, and I will tell
you a hapy people. I will migrate to
that country in no time at all. Rather,
what we have in the world is a ruinous regime of taxation that far exceeds that
amount. Worst of all appear to be the
countries in which the priests and ministers of religion hold sway over the
people, for they demand tithes and offerings on top of the taxes people have to
give to their governments. Religious leaders forget that ten per cent plus Holy
Day offerings were to be the whole tax people paid to the governing
authorities. Except for the Levites, who
had a full time job serving in the Temple in Jerusalem, other religious leaders
were to supplement people’s offerings by working with their own hands, as was
the case with the Apostles of Jesus Christ.
After the appointment of kings over Israel, the priests did their best to
obscure the messages of the prophets and create a wedge between them and the
king. Here is one such example.
Amo 7:10 Then Amaziah the priest
of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, "Amos has conspired
against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear
all his words.
Amo 7:11 For thus Amos has said:
'Jeroboam shall die by the sword, And Israel shall surely be led away captive
From their own land.'
Amo 7:12 Then Amaziah said to
Amos: "Go, you seer! Flee to the land of Judah. There eat bread, And there
prophesy.
Amo 7:13 But never again prophesy
at Bethel, For it is the king's sanctuary, And it is the royal
residence."
Amo 7:14 Then Amos answered, and
said to Amaziah: "I was no prophet, Nor was I a son of a
prophet, But I was a sheep breeder and a tender of sycamore fruit.
Amo 7:15 Then the LORD took me as
I followed the flock, and the LORD said to me, 'Go, prophesy to My people
Israel.' Therefore,
Amo 7:16 hear the word of the
LORD: You say, 'Do not prophesy against Israel, And do not spout against the
house of Isaac.'
Amo 7:17
"Therefore thus says the LORD: 'Your wife shall be a harlot in the
city; Your sons and daughters shall fall by the sword; Your land shall be
divided by survey line; You shall die in a defiled land; And Israel
shall surely be led away captive from his own land.'
While
there are some examples of prophets who arose from the priestly line, on the
whole the prophets were drawn from simple people who had no expectation of
exalted positions. In fact, becoming a
prophet of God not only did not confer one any special priviledges with the
leaders and the people, but was a sure way of landing him into many personal
and family problems. An interesting example is that of David, who was a prophet
before he became a king. Had he failed
to overcome his trials and difficulties during his testing period and spiritual
growth, we would not have the Psalms – some of the most wonderful writings ever
put on paper.
When he
began to write his prayers and songs of praise to God, he could hardly have
imagined that he was writing for posterity.
In the course of time however, he became aware that something wonderful
was happening in his life and in the life of the world. He understood that he was an instrument in
the hands of a higher power.
Although
anointed King over Israel, David endured some of the most horrific trials that
could befall a human being. Was he aware
that he was a forerunner for Someone who would endure even more horrendous
trials and become the Saviour of the world?
Many of the Psalms are about Jesus Christ, who acknowledged David as His
forerunner.
Mat 22:41 While the Pharisees
were gathered together, Jesus asked them,
Mat 22:42 saying, "What do
you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?" They said to Him, "The
Son of David."
Mat 22:43 He said to them,
"How then does David in the Spirit call Him 'LORD,' saying:
Mat 22:44 'THE LORD SAID TO MY
LORD, "SIT AT MY RIGHT HAND, TILL I MAKE YOUR ENEMIES YOUR FOOTSTOOL"
'?
Mat 22:45 If David then calls Him
'LORD,' how is He his Son?"
Mat 22:46 And no one
was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question
Him anymore.
It is general
knowledge that Jesus Christ came into the world in order to make the Holy
Spirit available to all human beings.
Joh 14:15 "If you love Me,
keep My commandments.
Joh 14:16 And I will
pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with
you forever—
Joh 14:17 the Spirit of truth,
whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but
you know Him, for He
Joh 14:18 dwells with you and
will be in you. I will not leave you
orphans; I will come to you.
Joh 16:7
Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go
away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I
depart, I will send Him to you.
The
prerequisite for salvation is receiving the Holy Spirit, and the prerequisite
for receiving the Holy Spirit is keeping the Commandments of God. Salvation
means eternal life, and eternal life means knowing the true God and loving Him
with all of one’s heart, soul, mind and strength.
Joh 17:1 Jesus spoke these words,
lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: "Father, the hour has come.
Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You,
Joh 17:2 as You have given Him
authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You
have given Him.
Joh 17:3 And this is eternal life, that they may know
You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
Mar 12:28 Then one of the scribes
came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that He had answered
them well, asked Him, "Which is the first commandment of all?"
Mar 12:29 Jesus answered him,
"The first of all the commandments is: 'HEAR, O ISRAEL, THE LORD
OUR GOD, THE LORD IS ONE.
Mar 12:30 AND YOU
SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, WITH ALL
YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.' This is the first
commandment. And the second, like it,
is this:
Mar 12:31 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR
NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' There is no other commandment greater than these."
Mar 12:32 So the scribe said to
Him, "Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth, for there is
one God, and there is no other but He.
Mar 12:33 And to love Him with
all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the
strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole
burnt offerings and sacrifices."
Mar 12:34 Now when Jesus saw that
he answered wisely, He said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of
God." But after that no one dared question Him.
In order to make
the Holy Spirit available to all, Jesus Christ had to die and rise again, then
create a New Covenant.
What is not so
well known is that the Holy Spirit was available to select individuals since
the beginning of time, such as the prophets who wrote the Old Testament. Indeed, the term “Holy Spirit” was used for
the first time by King David.
It is interesting
to note that David wrote this prayer and Psalm in connection with two grievous sins:
adultery and murder. Adultery with
Bathsheba and murder of her husband in order to cover his adultery. Some people may wonder how God could forgive
such grievous sins. The remedy, of
course, is repentance. What is
repentance? Macquarie dictionary: 1. compunction
or contrition for wrongdoing or sin. 2. regret for any past action. What is even more interesting is that David’s
sin occurred after God said that he was a man after His own heart (1 Sam.
13:14), a fact acknowledged in the New Testament too.
Act 13:21 And afterward they
asked for a king; so God gave them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of
Benjamin, for forty years.
Act 13:22 And when He had removed
him, He raised up for them David as king, to whom also He gave testimony and
said, 'I HAVE FOUND DAVID THE SON OF JESSE, A MAN AFTER MY OWN HEART, WHO WILL
DO ALL MY WILL.'
Act 13:23 From this man's seed,
according to the promise, God raised up for Israel a Savior—Jesus—
Act 13:24 after John had first
preached, before His coming, the baptism of repentance to all the people of
Israel.
David’s
forgiveness is an important lesson for those who think that their sins are so
heinous that God cannot forgive.
Repentance, a broken heart, and a contrite spirit are what God loves in
human beings.
When people
repent of their sins, their past life does not matter anymore. They become new creations in God.
Human
beings are constantly under the influence of their carnal nature, and prone to
fall, but as long as they repent and come before God with a broken heart and
contrite spirit, they are forgiven and given the chance of reconciliation.
David’s example clearly shows that even people who have the Holy Spirit can be
overtaken by sin. God used him, one of the greatest personalities of the Bible,
to pass on this important message to us.
Willing, persistent sins, however, are a different matter.
Now
although David was the first to speak of the Holy Spirit, he was not the first
to have the Holy Spirit. Since the
beginning of the world, the Holy Spirit was available to select individuals;
people who were set apart for important transcendental roles: Abel, Noah, Job,
Abraham, the Patriarchs, Moses, are but a few such examples.
You
may have noticed references to the Spirit in some of our earlier
references. Here they are again.
All people who
had the Holy Spirit in Old Testament times became role models for us.
Jesus Christ
connected the sufferings of the prophets that came before Him, with those who
would come after Him.
Mat 23:34 Therefore, indeed, I
send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and
crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and
persecute from city to city,
Mat 23:35 that on you
may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous
Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the
temple and the altar.
Mat 23:36 Assuredly, I say to
you, all these things will come upon this generation.
The
question is, do these words apply only to the Pharisees of old, as modern day
preachers would have it, or are they valid for all times? If they applied only
to the Pharisees of old, Christians would have had an easy time after the Jews
were dispersed by the Romans among other nations. The truth is painfully different. For more than a millennium true Christians,
and others of different opinions and beliefs, were persecuted, imprisoned and
even burned at stake, by none other than people who thought that they do God a
service. But then what did Jesus Christ
tell His disciples?
Joh 16:2 They will
put you out of the synagogues; yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you
will think that he offers God service.
The
Devil has always had servants ready and willing to do his work in the world.
During Middle Ages, it was Catholic Church’s Inquisition; nowadays,
fundamentalist Islamists have replaced them.
Those
who murdered the elect of God in the past are about to do it again to His last
two prophets. You are going to see it with
your own eyes, in real life or on the television screens. More than that: you will see a miracle the
likes of which the world has not seen since the time of Jesus Christ. Here is the story of God’s last two
witnesses.
Things however
are not going to be as simple as that.
For just as it happened in the past, Satan will turn things up side down
once again, presenting his servants as ministers of righteousness, and the prophets
of God as anti-Christs, or “allege preachers”.
As Jesus Christ
would have said: whoever reads let him understand!
What
Exactly Is A “Real Church”?
In July 2007, Pope Benedict made a statement that
stunned the Christian world. He told
them that only the Catholic and Orthodox are “real” Churches, and that all the
others are mere “ecclesial communities”.
“You are not real churches, Pope says to Protestants” “Pope Benedict … backing
traditional practices”
PROTESTANT churches have reacted with dismay to a new declaration
approved by the Pope insisting they were mere "ecclesial communities"
and their ministers in effect phonies with no right to give communion. Coming just days after the reinstatement of
the Latin Mass, Tuesday's document left no doubt about the Pope's eagerness to
back traditional Catholic practices and attitudes, even at the expense of
causing offence. The view that
Protestants cannot have churches was first set out by Pope Benedict seven years
ago when, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he headed the Vatican ministry for
doctrine. A commentary attached to the latest text acknowledged that his 2000
document, Dominus Iesus, had caused "no little distress". But it added: "It is nevertheless
difficult to see how the title of 'Church' could possibly be attributed to
[Protestant communities], given that they do not accept the theological notion
of the Church in the Catholic sense and that they lack elements considered
essential to the Catholic Church."
The Pope's old department, which issued the document, said its aim was
to correct "erroneous or ambiguous" interpretations of the Second
Vatican Council, which ended in 1965. Quoting a text approved by the council,
it said Protestant churches, "because of the absence of the sacramental
priesthood", had not "preserved the genuine and integral substance of
the Eucharistic Mystery". However,
other Christians saw the latest document as another retreat from the spirit of
openness generated by the council, which laid the basis for talks on Christian
unity. Bishop Wolfgang Huber, head of the Protestant umbrella group Evangelical
Church in Germany, said: "The hope for a change in the ecumenical
situation has been pushed further away by the document published
today." He said the new
pronouncement repeated "offensive statements" in the 2000 document
and was a "missed opportunity" to improve relations with Protestants.
The president of the Federation of Evangelical Churches in Italy, Pastor
Domenico Maselli, called it a "huge step backwards in relations between
the Roman Catholic church and other Christian communities".
The Church of
England reacted cautiously. A spokesman for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan
Williams, said: "This is a serious document, teaching on important
ecclesiological matters and of significance to the churches' commitment to the
full, visible unity to the one church of Jesus Christ." The Vatican's statement had fewer misgivings
about the Orthodox Church, which had "true sacraments" and a genuine
priesthood. But its failure to acknowledge the Pope's authority meant it suffered
from a "defectus", politely translated from Latin as "a
wound". Last Saturday the Pope
freed Catholics to ask for Masses to be celebrated according to the Latin rite
abolished by the Second Vatican Council. This meant the reinstatement of a Good
Friday prayer describing Jews as blind to the Christian truth. (John Hooper in Rome and Stephen Bates in
London, Sydney Morning Herald, July
12, 2007).
Now although we
are not enamoured with the papacy, we agree that this time the Pope did the
right thing in raising the question of what a “real” church is and what is
not. The first thing we wanted to know
is what he understood by the term "ecclesial communities" which he
applied to Protestant congregations which he says are not real churhces. In four decades of rather intensive Bible and
religious studies, we have never come across that kind of distinction between
“church” and “ecclesial communities”. So
we looked in an English Dictionary. This
is what Macquarie says:
Ecclesia = /uh'kleezeeuh/ noun, plural ecclesiae
/uh'kleezeeee/. 1. an assembly, especially the popular assembly
of ancient Athens. 2. a
congregation; a church. [L: assembly of
the people, LL church, from Greek ekklesía]
“Ecclesia” means
“church” according to this dictionary.
But that cannot be; the Pope is a wise man, and if he says that
“ecclesial” does not mean church, it could not mean church. The problem must lay with Macquarie
Dictionary. This is an Australian
Dictionary, and what would the colonials know.
So we looked into Webster’s “school and office” Dictionary, one of the most
popular these days. This is what that
one says.
Ecclesia = a
church, a religious assembly.
Short and to the
point, but basically the same thing.
Could it be that an Aussie had surreptitiously found his way into
Webster’s editorial team and sneacked in that term? We decided to look into an old English
Dictionary, Funk & Wagnalls.
Ecclesia =
1. The popular or legislative assembly
in Athens and other ancient Greek states in wich every free citizen could
vote. 2. A body of Christians organised
for worship and religiouys work; a church; congregation.
Wherever we
looked, ecclesia meant, among other things, church or religious
congregation. There was only one other
thing for us to do – look into the Bible and see what Jesus Christ and His
apostles meant by the trem
“church”.
This term
appears for the first time in the New Testament. Remarkably, it was used by Jesus Christ in
relation to Apostle Peter, whom He designated as head of His congregation of
followers.
Mat
16:18 And I also say to you that you are Peter, and
on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it.
That explains
why the Popes think that only their followers form a “real” church, for they claim
to be the inheritors of Peter’s mantle and “Vicar’s of Christ on Earth”. Well, we had much to say on that; those
interested should read “Why
Apostle Peter Could Never Have Been the First Pope Of Rome” in TCH 16, and the article on the same
topic in this edition.
Now, even if the Popes are wrong in believing that they are
Vicars of Christ on earth by virtue of Peter’s mantle, it is still possible
that the Catholic is a real Church. We
have examples in the Bible in which the apostles of Jesus Christ were excluded
form the very churches that they themselves set up. This is what Apostle John said in his first epistle:
Extraordinary,
isn’t it? The Apostle, whom Jesus loved
the most, was excluded from a Church of God by one who loved to have preeminnce
among the members. And why would he want
to do that? The Bible tells us why.
Those, whose god
is their own belly, who set their minds on eartly things, would do anything to
clamour up to the leadership of churches, because that guarantees them a full
belly for life.
Now consider the
implications of these statements.
Apostle John, could have turnend around and put the onus on Diotrepes and his followers to prove that
they are a “real” church. He could
simply have said that since only the apostles and the true disciples of Jesus
Christ had the authority to baptise and pass on the Holy Spirit, any other
congregation would not be a real Church of God.
He could have empowered Gaius, to whom he wrote that epsitle, to take
out the genuine believers and form a rival but true Church of God. The fact that he did not do that, is quite
extraordinary and speaks volumes.
Instead, Apostle
John let that wretched Diotrepes remain leader, at least until he arrived, at
which time he would “call
to mind his deeds which he does”. He did
not even imply that he would put him out of the church, just to give him a good
verbal chastening. Now what does that
tell you? Undoubtedly, Apostle John had
the ear of Jesus Christ, for he received the book of Revelation in direct communication
with the glorified Christ in heaven.
Therefore, the glorified Christ approved of impostors leading His
Churches. Unless one believes and
understands this fact, he cannot understand the mysteries of the book of
Revelation, which says so much about today’s churches, including the Catholic
Church (See TCH Nos 14 & 15).
Now far be it for us to suggest that
the Pope is an impostor of the like of Diotrepes. Even if he were, if he is leading a “real”
Church of God, no one could complain against him, for he would be approved by
Jesus Christ. What is at stake here, is not
the authority, or otherwise, of the Pope, but the definition of a “real”
church. For that we have no other choice
but to go to the New Testament and see what the apostles understood by this
term, and especially what Jesus Christ called, and expected, of a Church of
God. This may surprise some people, but
this is what Jesus Christ said is a Church of God.
Mat 18:19 "Again I say to
you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it
will be done for them by My Father
Mat 18:20 in
heaven. For where two or three are
gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them."
Two or three
people gathered in the name of Jesus Christ form a church. And not just any curch, but a “real” Church
of God. By this definition, the question
is, are Protestant congregations “real” churches, or are they not? First of all, let us define the term,
“Protestant”. Catholic and Orthodox
Churches define as “Protestant” any church that does not belong to their
camp. That is not correct. This is what Macquarie Dictionary says about
Protestantism.
Reformation = the
religious movement in the 16th century which had for its object the reform of
the Roman Catholic Church, and which led to the establishment of the Protestant
Churches.
There are many churches in the world these days that did not originate
in the Protestant Reformation. They used
to be defined by the term, “fundamentalist”, meaning they sought to go back to
the fundamentals of the Bible. They
pointed out that although the Protestants had revolted against the excesses of
the Popes, and separated from them, they retained almost all of the Catholic
doctrines such as going to heaven or to hell after death, Catholic Holy Days,
sainthood after death, etc.
Lately, since the term “fundamentalist” has been identified more and
more with Islamic extremists, fundamentalist churches have adopted the term,
“evangelical”. Did the Pope have in mind
evangelical churches also when he told the Protestants that their congregations
are not “real” churches? Most likely,
yes. That is just as well, because on a
close analysis, there are enough deviations from the standards of the early
Churches of God among evangelicals, to make them hardly any better than the
Protestant churches.
This brings us back to the definition of a Church of God according to
Jesus Christ and His apostles. As we
saw, Jesus Christ is in the midst of two or three people that are gathered in
His name. You cannot have a clearer
definition of what makes a Church of God than that. Apostle Paul said that Christians are only
those who have the Spirit of Christ.
The Spirit
of Christ is none other than the Holy Spirit.
And how does one get the Holy Spirit?
Act 2:38 Then Peter said to them, "Repent, and
let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission
of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
This creates a
real problem. Apostle Peter was speaking
to adult people here. In asking them to
repent, he was telling them to make a turn around in their life, to change from
a life of sin and dissipation, to one of holiness and righteousness.
The problem comes
from the fact that neither the Catholic, nor the Orthodox Churches, which the
Pope anointed as the only “real” churches, preach and practice adult
baptism. Which means that even if they
are ”real” churches according to the Pope’s definition, they do not have the
Holy Spirit. And if they do not have the Holy Spirit, they are not Christ’s.
And if they are not Christ’s, they go neither to heaven nor to hell, but to
everlasting perdition. The Bible simply
does not preach judgment after death, but judgment after resurrection at the
last day.
Joh 11:23 Jesus said to her,
"Your brother will rise again."
Joh 11:24 Martha said
to Him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last
day."
Joh 11:25 Jesus said to her,
"I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may
die, he shall live.
Joh 11:26 And whoever lives and
believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?"
Joh 11:27 She said to Him,
"Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to
come into the world."
People
who have the Holy Spirit, who believe and die “in Christ”, go neither to heaven
nor to hell when they die, but are “asleep” in their graves until the
resurrection of the last day. This is
true as much of the New, as of the Old Testament.
Clearly, the
Popes, or their predecessors, have added something to the Scriptures which
changes the meaning of salvation. And
what did Jesus Christ say about that?
Now is the Pope
aware that his church does not conform with the standards of Jesus Christ, and
that far from being a “real” church, its doctrines, teachings and practices
make it worse than any of the "ecclesial communitIies”? And if that is not convincing enough, here
are some other major differences between the Catholic Church and the early
Churches of God.
- Sabbath keeping. All Churches of God observed the Sabbath as
the day of rest and worship. Jesus
Christ Himself expects to find His followers observing this day when He returns
to this earth.
Mat 24:20 And pray
that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath. For then there will be
great tribulation,
Mat 24:21 such as has not been
since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be.
Here Jesus Christ was talking about the “Great
Tribulation” that marks the end of this age and heralds His return to set up
the Millennium Kingdom. His followers
are to pray that their fligt may not be in winter, because it is cold, and not
on the Sabbath, because on that day they are not allowed to carry heavy
burdens.
Now do you know
any Christians that pray for that? Do
you dear reader pray for that? If you
don’t, why don’t you?
People do not
pray for that because the Roman Catholic Church has changed the day of rest and
worship from the seventh day, to the first day of the week; from the Sabath, to
the Day of the Sun. Now does that church
have the people’s wellbeing in mind when it obscures the message of Christ and
prevents them from doing what they need to do in order to escape the horrors of
the Great Tribulation and benefit from God’s protection and salvation? If you still have qualms about what a true
church is, as opposed to a “real” church, perhaps this might convince you. There is a Holy Day without which no church is
“real” or a true Church of God – the Feast of Passover.
Go and ask a
Catholic, an Orthodox, or a Protestant churchgoer, in what day or date he or she
observes the Feast of Passover, the one of which Jesus Christ gave specific
instrunctons on how to be observed. It
is not in their Calendars.
It is not enough
for two, three or more people to gather in the name of Jesus Christ for Him to
come and be in their midst. They must
observe all the requirements that make a true church, and that includes the
Sabbaths, the Holy Days, and all the beliefs that characterised the early
Churches of God. For as Jesus Christ
said:
Mat 7:21 "Not
everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but
he who does the will of My Father in heaven.
Joh 14:15 "If
you love Me, keep My commandments.
Joh 14:16 And I will pray the
Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you
forever—
Joh 14:17 the Spirit of truth,
whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but
you know Him, for He
Joh 14:18 dwells with you and
will be in you. I will not leave you
orphans; I will come to you.
Keeping the
Commandments of God, loving God and Jesus Christ, and not observing “doctrines
of demons”, is what makes a true Church of God. If you do not know, or never
heard of “doctrines of demons”, this is what Apostle Paul said:
By this
standard, neither the Catholic, the Orthodox, the Protestants, the evangelical,
or any other church, makes the grade for a true Church of God. Neither keeps the Holy Days of God and all
have restrictions on food and/or on marriages.
More proofs that Apostle Peter could
not have been the first Pope of
Among the articles that seem to have struck a cord with many people, is the one about the Catholic claim that Apostle Peter was its first Pope. We thought we had exhausted all the reasons why Peter could not have been the first Pope of Rome, but a further study of the Scriptures reveals even more proofs that that is an unfounded claim. First, let us recap briefly what we have exposed so far.
- Apostle Paul ended his epistle to the Romans by mentioning the Christians of that city by name. Apostle Peter was not among them.
- The Jews of Rome knew nothing of this “sect”. Apostle Peter could not have been in Rome without speaking to the Jews of that city, for he was primarily the apostle to the circumcision.
- Rome’s ‘Christians’ were involved in some pretty un-Christian activities, including homosexuality. Someone was complaining about that to Apostle Paul in Jerusalem. Now why would he do that if Apostle Peter was their leader?
- At his moment of trial, all Christians of Rome, fearful no doubt of a similar fate, abandoned Apostle Paul. Could Apostle Peter have done that if he were in Rome at that time?
- The spirit did not allow the apostles to duplicate each other’s work. The fact that Apostle Paul was the one that was brought by God to Rome, tells us that Apostle Peter could not have been there either before or after Paul.
- Apostle Peter signed his epistles from Babylon, a city in opposite direction to
Rome from Jerusalem.
Now here are further proofs that Apostle Peter could not have been the first Pope of Rome.
The Churches of God claimed their legitimacy from the Scriptures and the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Act 17:11 The Bereans “were more
fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all
readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things
were so.
Act 17:12 Therefore many of them
believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men”.
It was “fair minded” to receive the Word of God with readiness, and search the Scriptures daily to find out whether those things were so. No such fair minded readiness these days, and hardly any searching the Scriptures. God is no longer part of the intellectual milieu of our time. People have created themselves through evolution, therefore God has little role to play in their live s anymore. Who says that? The leading religious institution of our time, the Catholic Church!
“The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic
Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some
parts of the Bible are not actually true.
The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their
five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of
scripture, that they should not expect “total accuracy” from the Bible . .
. Some Christians want a literal
interpretation of the story of creation, as told in Genesis, taught alongside
Darwin’s theory of evolution in schools, believing “intelligent design” to be
an equally plausible theory of how the world began. But the first 11 chapters of Genesis, in
which two different and at times conflicting stories of creation are told, are
among those that this country’s Catholic bishops insist cannot be
“historical”. At most, they say, they
may contain “historical traces”.
Similarly, they refute
the apocalyptic prophecies of Revelation, the last book of the Christian Bible,
in which the writer describes the work of the risen Jesus, the death of the
Beast and the wedding feast of Christ the Lamb.
The bishops say: “Such symbolic language must be respected for what it
is, and is not to be interpreted literally. We should not expect to discover in
this book details about the end of the world, about how many will be saved and
about when the end will come.” (The Times, Oct. 2005).
“The Vatican
today warned Catholics that if they do not listen to the contentions of modern
science – regarding the origin of life and other issues – they risk falling
prey to "fundamentalism."
“When asked about the debate raging between evolution and intelligent
design in the United States, a papal representative reaffirmed John Paul II's
1996 assertion that evolution was "more than just a hypothesis." Said Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, director of
the Vatican project STOQ, or Science, Theology and Ontological Quest: "A
hypothesis asks whether something is true or false. (Evolution) is more than a
hypothesis because there is proof." (WorldNetDaily.com,
Nov. 3, 2005).
No, there is no proof, what there is,
is mere speculation. Slowly, but surely,
the scientific world is waking up to the realisation that Darwin’s concoction
was never more than a half baked theory.
Yet while more and more scientists are turrning away from the theory of
evolution, the Catholic Church finds itself more and more attracted by it. It praises that theory while it seeks to
demolish the credibility of the Bible.
What would Jesus Christ say about
those who claim to preach the truth of God yet do not believe in His word, in
His creation, in prophecy, and in the end of this age? We know what He said about hypocrites.
If the Catholic Church is based on
the teachings of Apostle Peter, how is it that it believes so little of his
theology?
Being a disciple of Jesus Christ,
Apostle Peter held the same beliefs as those of his Master. Now we know that Jesus Christ believed that
the entirety of the Bible is true, a fact attested in both the Old and the New
Testaments.
Where then does the Catholic Church
stand when it claims that the Bible is not reliable, throwing aspersion on
Genesis and Redvelation, the first and last books of the Bible? Would an institution founded by Apostle Peter
do such a thing?
Jesus Christ made two very important
statements about the Scriptures: 1) They cannot be broken, meaning they cannot
be changed or contradicted:
2) The Scriptures are letter of the law, literally, and no one is allowed to add or take anything away from them.
How much respect does the Catholic
Church have for Jesus Christ, whose “Vicar of Earth” its leader claims to be,
when it so blatantly disregards His warnings about not tampering with the
Scriptures?
Let us now consider some of Apostle
Peter’s beliefs and see how different they are from those of the Catoilic
Church.
Pe 1:17 And if you call on the
Father, who without partiality judges according to each one's work, conduct
yourselves throughout the
In this short passage, Apostle Peter
touched on the most basic beliefs of Christianity:
1. The impartiality of God. It does not matter who a person may have
been in this world, if he has preached contrary to the Scriptures, he will face
the wrath of God. “It is a fearful thing to
fall into the hands of the living God.” (Heb 10:31).
2. Christ shed His blood for us
that we may be born again, receive the Holy Spirit, and benefit of God’s gift
of eternal life. Being born again means
an adult decision to repent, be baptised, and have hands laid on by the elders
of the church for the receiving of the Holy Spirit. Apostle Peter himself was the originator of
this process.
Act 2:22 "Men of Israel,
hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles,
wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves
also know— Him, being delivered by the determined purpose
Act 2:23 and foreknowledge of
God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death;
Act 2:24 whom God raised up,
having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be
held by it.
Act 2:32 This Jesus God has
raised up, of which we are all witnesses.
Act 2:33 Therefore being exalted
to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of
the Holy Spirit, He poured out this which you now see and hear.
Act 2:37 Now when they heard this,
they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles,
"Men and brethren, what
Act 2:38 shall we do?" Then Peter said to them, "Repent, and
let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission
of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Act 2:39 For the promise is to
you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our
God will call."
Act 2:40 And with many other
words he testified and exhorted them, saying, "Be saved from this perverse
generation."
Act 2:41 Then those who gladly
received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were
added to them.
Act 2:42 And they continued
steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread,
and in prayers.
Few
other passages of the Bible could be as damning of the Catholic Church as this
one. Here is a statement by its supposed
founder who says that Patriarch David “did not ascend into the heavens”. Only a few chapters later, we find the
statement that Patriarch David was a man after God’s own heart.
Act 13:22 And when He
had removed him, He raised up for them David as king, to whom also He gave
testimony and said, 'I HAVE FOUND DAVID THE SON OF JESSE, A MAN AFTER MY OWN
HEART, WHO WILL DO ALL MY WILL.'
Now
if a man after God’s own heart has not ascended into the heavens, who has?
According to the Catholic Church, all of its faithful members go the heaven
after death. Once again, this Church
preaches doctrines that are contrary to the beliefs of its supposed
founder. More than that, it preaches
doctrines that are contrary to the teaching of Jesus Christ too.
Joh 3:13 No one has
ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of
Man who is in heaven.
Joh 3:14 And as Moses lifted up
the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
Joh 3:15 that whoever believes in
Him should not perish but have eternal life.
3. Apostle Peter said that
Jesus Christ was foreordained to shed His blood for us “before the foundation
of the world.”
In
the Bible, the term “foundation of the world” is always associated with the
book of Genesis. It is something Jesus
Christ, His apostles, the prophets, the patriarchs, and members of the Churches
of God, believed in. Yet, the Catholic
Church is telling the world that the theory of evolution has rendered the
account of Genesis obsolete.
A final proof
that Apostle Peter could never have been the founder of this Church is found in
a conversation Jesus Christ had with Apostle Peter before He ascended into
heaven.
Joh 21:17 He said to him the
third time, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?" Peter was
grieved because He said to him the third time, "Do you love Me?" And
he said to Him, "Lord, You know all things; You know that I love
You." Jesus said to him, "Feed My
Joh 21:18 sheep. Most assuredly, I say to you, when you were
younger, you girded yourself and walked where you wished; but when you are old,
you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you
where you do not wish."
Joh 21:19 This He spoke,
signifying by what death he would glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He
said to him, "Follow Me."
Now
how old was Apostle Peter when he died?
He was younger than Jesus Christ.
Masters do not normally choose disciples that are older then themselves. Indications are that although Peter was the
oldest of twelve apostles (he was the only one who was married), we are safe to
assume that he was at least three years younger than Jesus Christ was. Therefore, when Jesus Christ died in the year
33 AD, at the age of thirty-three, Apostle Peter would have been about thirty
years of age.
The
Catholic Church says that he died in the year 65 AD while he was Pope of the
Roman Church. That would have made him
about 62 years old when he died. Now is
it conceivable that Peter would have been so blind and handicapped at that age
that another would gird him and lead him to where he did not wish to go? In addition, would anyone do that to a Pope?
One wonders what he would say in the
resurrection when told that for nearly two millennia, the Catholic Church,
which made all those fraudulent claims, had boasted of having had him as
founder and mentor.
No Second Chance For the Wicked,
Much As They Like To Preach It
Jesus Christ gave His life that we may live eternally. What is required of us in exchange is that we repent of our life of lawlessness and dissipation, and turn to one of righteousness and obedience to the laws of God.
This would appear to be a simple mater of choice for the wise and brave, except that a spanner in the works is being thrown by the false prophets of this world. Have a look at the following statement from The Good News magazine, a publication of the United Church of God, an offshoot of the Worldwide Church of God.
“The
seven-day Feast of Tabernacles (Leviticus 23:33-43) depicts 1,000 years of
peace and prosperity that will envelop the earth and its inhabitants
(Revelation 20:4-5;
“The
Eighth Day (Lev. 23:36,39), signifies the time when all who didn’t know the
true God will be resurrected to learn His truth and receive their opportunity
for salvation (Revelation 20:11-12:
This doctrine, which used to be the mainstay of the Worldwide Church of God, is now common in virtually all the siblings that ensued from the disintegration of the church. It is a popular notion with the ministers of those churches because it serves them well: it keeps in tow their members who are completely isolated from their unconverted family members. They are told that they must have no regrets for that, because upon resurrection from the dead of their family members, they would be there to help them in their second chance at repentance and salvation. Leaving that church would loose them that privilege.
One could hardly think of a more devilish doctrine. On the one hand it keeps in bondage those who are already in the church, and on the other, it encourages those in the world to indulge in whatever sins they wish in the belief that they would have a second chance at repentance and salvation.
This is what
they preach in the so-called Churches of God and their host of
publications. The Good News magazine, used to be the elite publication of the
Worldwide Church of God; elite in the sense that it used to be available only
to the ministers of the church. Ordinary
members were to be satisfied with The
Plain Truth, a magazine that hardly knows what truth is. These days, the Worldwide Church of God is a
mere relic of its former self, and the Good
News magazine has transmigrated to the United Church of God. The theme of second chance for the wicked who
have not repented in their “first life”, is so absurd it is astonishing that
anyone could possibly believe in it when it is so easy to prove that it is
false. Let us look at the two references
they give for its veracity. First
Do you see anything in the passage that would suggest sinful human beings “who didn’t know the true God will be resurrected to learn His truth and receive their opportunity for salvation”? Rather, what this passage describes is the time of the last judgment, when all human being will be judged “according to their works”. Nothing here that would even remotely suggest that human beings would have a second chance at repentance.
Perhaps
Eze 37:1 The hand of
the LORD came upon me and brought me out in the Spirit of the LORD, and set me
down in the midst of the valley; and it was full of bones.
Eze 37:2 Then He caused me to
pass by them all around, and behold, there were very many in the open
valley; and indeed they were very dry.
Eze 37:3 And He said to me,
"Son of man, can these bones live?" So I answered, "O Lord GOD,
You know."
Eze 37:4 Again He said to me,
"Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, 'O dry bones, hear the word of
the LORD!
Eze 37:5 Thus says the Lord GOD
to these bones: "Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you
shall live.
Eze 37:6 I will put sinews on you
and bring flesh upon you, cover you with skin and put breath in you; and you
shall live. Then you shall know that I am the LORD." ' "
Eze 37:7 So I prophesied as I was
commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and suddenly a rattling; and
the
Eze 37:8 bones came together,
bone to bone. Indeed, as I looked, the
sinews and the flesh came upon them, and the skin covered them over; but there
was no breath in them.
Eze 37:9 Also He said to me,
"Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath,
'Thus says the Lord GOD: "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe
on these slain, that they may live." ' "
Eze 37:10 So I prophesied as He
commanded me, and breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their
feet,
Eze 37:11 an exceedingly great
army. Then He said to me, "Son of
man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They indeed say, 'Our bones are
dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off!'
Eze 37:12 Therefore prophesy and
say to them, 'Thus says the Lord GOD: "Behold, O My people, I will open
your graves and cause you to come up from your graves, and bring you into the
land of Israel. Then you shall know that
I am
Eze 37:13 the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O My people,
and brought you up from your graves.
Eze 37:14 I will put My Spirit in
you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know
that I, the LORD, have spoken it and performed it," says the
LORD.' "
Eze 37:15 Again the word of the
LORD came to me, saying,
Eze 37:16 "As for you, son
of man, take a stick for yourself and write on it: 'For Judah and for the
children of Israel, his companions.' Then take another stick and write on it,
'For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel, his
companions.'
Eze 37:17 Then join them one to
another for yourself into one stick, and they will become one in your hand.
Eze 37:18 "And when the
children of your people speak to you, saying, 'Will you not show us what you mean
by these?'
Eze 37:19 —say to them, 'Thus
says the Lord GOD: "Surely I will take the stick of Joseph, which is
in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel, his companions; and I will
join them with it, with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they
will be one in My hand." '
Eze 37:20 And the sticks on which
you write will be in your hand before their eyes.
Eze 37:21 "Then say to them,
'Thus says the Lord GOD: "Surely I will take the children of Israel from
among the nations, wherever they have gone, and will gather them from every
side and bring them into their own land;
Eze 37:22 and I will make them
one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king
over them all; they shall no longer be two nations, nor shall they ever be
divided into two kingdoms again.
Eze 37:23 They shall not defile
themselves anymore with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with
any of their transgressions; but I will deliver them from all their dwelling
places in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them. Then they shall be My
people, and I will be their God.
Eze 37:24 "David My servant shall
be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd; they shall also
walk in My judgments and observe My statutes, and do them. Then they shall
dwell in the land that I have given to Jacob,
Eze 37:25 My servant, where your fathers dwelt; and they shall dwell
there, they, their children, and their children's children, forever; and My
servant David shall be their prince forever.
Eze 37:26 Moreover I will make a
covenant of peace with them, and it shall be an everlasting covenant with them;
I will establish them and multiply them, and I will set My sanctuary in their
midst forevermore.
Eze 37:27 My tabernacle also
shall be with them; indeed I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
Eze
37:28 The nations also will know that I,
the LORD, sanctify Israel, when My sanctuary is in their midst
forevermore." '
We have to ask
the same question: do you see any indication of second chace for the wicked
here? None whatsoever!
A close look at
these Scriptures indicates that they refer basically to the same event as
Those people are
not resurrected to a normal earthly life again, but to a heavenly eternal life
under king David. Well, in actual fact,
David here stands for Jesus Christ, but that is another topic.
The extraordinary
thing is that we have brought this error to the attention of those apostate
ministers years ago, yet they continue to preach it.
Now let us look at their justification for insisting with this gross misrepresentation of the Scriptures. They say that there are people who “didn’t know the true God”, therefore they need to be resurrected to a new life, and given their opportunity for repentance and salvation. There is one big problem with that statement: people are not judged on the basis of whether they knew the true God, but on account of their works. Here are the very words of the glorified Christ:
This would have been the place for Jesus Christ to tell us
that there is still hope for those who have not availed themselves of their
chance of repentance during this life.
But what do we find instead? “He who is unjust, let him be unjust still; he
who is filthy, let him be filthy still; he who is righteous, let him be
righteous still; he who is holy, let him be holy still.”
Jesus Christ went
on to say that everyone will be judged, “according
to his work”, just as apostle Paul preached:
So, the Gentiles,
who do not have the law, “who have never heard of the ‘true God’”, “by nature
do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to
themselves, because the law was written in their hearts. Therefore, “as many as sinned without Law
will also perish without Law. And as many as have sinned within Law shall be
judged through Law.”
Second chance for
the wicked? Not on your life! No, because men only live once and die once,
then the judgment.
Can you see now
why people in the far away corners of the earth do not need to hear the Gospel
of the Worldwide Church of God and its siblings in order to be saved? It is because God has put in their heart and
conscience the laws by which they must conduct their lives. This is why Jesus Christ will judge all human
being according to their works, because wherever they have lived on this earth,
they have known the difference between right and wrong, and true or false. This is why people should make the best of
this life, and not listen to fables that will bring them nothing but
perdition.
Those who give assurance to the wicked, that they have a second chance at salvation, even if they do not repent in this life, preach against Jesus Christ, against the apostles, against the prophets, and against the entire Bible.
and
flattering speech deceive the hearts of
the simple.”
These ministers
will not only miss out on their own salvation, but incur the very wrath of God
for adding to the Scriptures what God had not intended.
Consider now what Apostle Paul said in the following passage.
Why did he have great sorrow and continual grief in his heart for his unconverted countrymen if he believed that they would have another chance at salvation? He went on to say that, “they are not all Israel who are of Israel”, that only those who are of faith are the true children of Abraham, not those who are of flesh. In other words, the Jews of Israel are not true children of Abraham because they are not of faith but of flesh. The children of Abraham according to the flesh, seek to re-establish the kingdom of Israel in the Middle East, whereas the children of Abraham according to faith are waiting in hope for the Kingdom of God and of Jesus Christ that will be set up in another world and on another earth.
Joh 18:36 Jesus
answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this
world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews;
but now My kingdom is not from here."
Nowhere in the Scriptures is there support for the idea that those who have not heard of Christ in this life and have not repented of their evil deeds now, would be given the chance of doing so in another life. The problem comes from the notion that people cannot be saved if they have never heard of Christ. Herbert W Armstrong used to continually make the point that people in the far away countries could not be condemned to perdition simply because they had never heard of Christ, a point that continues to be preached by his disciples.
But, as we’ve seen, Jesus Christ, said that He will judge people not on the basis of whether they have heard of Him or not, but on their works. The question is, could people lead a righteous life outside Christianity? Fundamentalist churches say they cannot, a belief that I myself held at one time when I was under the influence of the Worldwide Church of God. It is extremely difficult to find the right path when your mind has been infested with such negative influences. This is why so few people who had been brainwashed in that manner manage to extricate themselves from their masters.
Scriptures and real life give us examples that prove there have been many people in the world who had never heard of Christ, yet who, to the best of their abilities and understanding, led righteous lives. To begin with, the men and women of the Old Testament have never heard of Christ, yet many of them were righteous and close to God. Here are just a few examples: Abel, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Job, and Daniel, all of which had the testimony from God that they would be raised to eternal life in due time. Similarly, the Gentiles who did not have the law, yet by nature kept the law of God, will be in the Kingdom of God no les than the Israelites who had and kept the law. Here is such example:
Act 10:1 There was a
certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the
Italian Regiment, a devout man
Act 10:2 and one who feared God
with all his household, who gave alms generously to the people, and prayed to
God always.
Act 10:3 About the ninth hour of
the day he saw clearly in a vision an angel of God coming in and saying to him,
Act 10:4
"Cornelius!" And when
he observed him, he was afraid, and said, "What is it, lord?" So he
said to him, "Your prayers and your
Act 10:5 alms have come up for a
memorial before God. Now send men to Joppa, and send for Simon whose surname is
Peter.
Act 10:6 He is lodging with Simon,
a tanner, whose house is by the sea. He will tell you what you must do."
Act 10:34 Then Peter opened his
mouth and said: "In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality.
Act 10:35 But in every nation
whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him.
Act 10:36 The word which God
sent to the children of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ—He is Lord
of all—
Act 10:37 that word you know,
which was proclaimed throughout all Judea, and began from Galilee after the
baptism which John
Act 10:38 preached: how God
anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about
doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with
Him.
Act 10:39 And we are witnesses of
all things which He did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem, whom
they
Act 10:40 killed by hanging on a
tree. Him God raised up on the third
day, and showed Him openly,
Act 10:41 not to all the people,
but to witnesses chosen before by God, even to us who ate and drank with
Him after He
Act 10:42 arose from the
dead. And He commanded us to preach to
the people, and to testify that it is He who was ordained by God to be
Judge of the living and the dead.
Act 10:43 To Him all the prophets
witness that, through His name, whoever believes in Him will receive remission
of
Act 10:44 sins." While Peter was still speaking these words,
the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word.
Act 10:45 And those of the
circumcision who believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because
the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also.
Act 10:46 For they heard them
speak with tongues and magnify God. Then Peter answered, "Can anyone
forbid
Act 10:47 water, that these should not be baptized who have received the
Holy Spirit just as we have?"
Act 10:48 And he commanded them
to be baptized in the name of the Lord. Then they asked him to stay a few days.
Isn’t that
wonderful? “Peter opened his
mouth and said: "In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality. But in
every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him. Clearly, there are people in every nation who
work righteousness and are accepted by God, who shows no partiality.
People do not need a second chance in order to be righteous and keep the law of God. Gentile people in the furthest corners of the earth know the meaning of righteousness, regardless of religion, ideology, education, or status in life. This is why people will be judged and saved according to their works, and not on any other criteria.
If one does not know what works lead to salvation, here is Jesus Christ again.
Mat 25:31 "When the Son of
Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the
throne of His glory.
Mat 25:32 All the nations will be
gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd
divides his sheep
Mat 25:33 from the goats. And He will set the sheep on His right hand,
but the goats on the left.
Mat 25:34 Then the King will say
to those on His right hand, 'Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the
kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and
you gave Me food;
Mat 25:35 I was thirsty and you
gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in;
Mat 25:36 I was naked and
you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to
Me.'
Mat 25:37 "Then the
righteous will answer Him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You,
or thirsty and
Mat 25:38 give You
drink? When did we see You a stranger
and take You in, or naked and clothe You?
Mat 25:39 Or when did we see You
sick, or in prison, and come to You?'
And the King will answer and say to them,
Mat 25:40 'Assuredly, I say to
you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren,
you did it to Me.'
Mat 25:41 "Then He will also
say to those on the left hand, 'Depart from Me, you cursed, into the
everlasting fire prepared for the devil
Mat 25:42 and his angels: for I
was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink;
Mat 25:43 I was a stranger and
you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and
you did
Mat 25:44 not visit Me.' "Then they also will answer Him, saying,
'Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a
Mat 25:45 stranger or naked or
sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?' Then He will answer them, saying, 'Assuredly,
I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of
these, you did not do it to Me.'
Mat 25:46 And these will go away
into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
It is interesting to note that Worldwide Church of God, which invented (as far as we can ascertain) the satanic doctrine of second chance, also used to preach that the Devil could never be destroyed because he is a spirit being. Well, Jesus Christ said otherwise. The wicked shall be cast into the lake of fire “prepared for the Devil and his angels”. You do not prepare a lake of fire and brimstone for someone who is going to live forever.
Other Scriptures tell us that the Devil himself will become ashes under the feet of the righteous.
Eze 28:12 "Son of man, take
up a lamentation for the king of Tyre, and say to him, 'Thus says the Lord GOD:
"You were the seal of perfection, Full of wisdom and perfect in
beauty.
Eze 28:13 You were in Eden, the
garden of God; Every precious stone was your covering: The sardius,
topaz, and diamond, Beryl, onyx, and jasper, Sapphire, turquoise, and emerald
with gold. The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes Was prepared for you
Eze 28:14 on the day you were
created. "You were the
anointed cherub who covers; I established you; You were on the holy mountain of
God; You walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones.
Eze 28:15 You were perfect
in your ways from the day you were created, Till iniquity was found in you.
Eze 28:16 "By the abundance
of your trading You became filled with violence within, And you sinned;
Therefore I cast you as a profane thing Out of the mountain of God; And I
destroyed you, O covering cherub, From the midst of the
Eze 28:17 fiery stones. "Your heart was lifted up because of your
beauty; You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor; I cast you to
the ground, I laid you before kings, That they might gaze at you.
Eze 28:18 "You defiled your
sanctuaries By the multitude of your iniquities, By the iniquity of your trading;
Therefore I brought fire from your midst; It devoured you, And I turned you to
ashes upon the earth In the sight of all who saw you.
Eze 28:19 All who knew you among
the peoples are astonished at you; You have become a horror, And shall be
no more forever." ' "
Wherever one is around the world, he must turn to God now, in this life and in this world, and not hope for a second chance in a never never world, for if he hasn’t been righteous and not used this life for good works, he will just as surely waste a thousand lives if given to him.
And isn’t it the height of hypocrisy that those who preach the demonic doctrine of second chance also make a big deal of the fact that they keep the Sabbath, one of the signs that identify the people of God?! Which proves that keeping the Holy Days and the Sabbaths, means nothing without being righteous in all things, and keeping all the laws of God.
What you never knew about the
Devil
In the book of Revelation, we find a statement
that encapsulates much of what is happening in the world at present:
Two questions need to be answered in connection with this event: 1)
When was the Devil thrown out of heaven to come down to earth? And 2) What exactly does that mean for human
beings?
At one time, Jesus Christ told His disciples: "I saw Satan fall like lightning from
heaven.” (Luke 10:18). That obviously must have happened before He
came into the world, therefore the account of Revelation refers to a different
event.
Clearly, Satan
was cast out of heaven more than once.
The first time must have occurred when he rebelled against God, when he
transformed himself from Lucifer the shining star into Satan the Devil, the
king of darkness.
The question is,
how could Jesus Christ have seen the ousting of Satan from heaven when He was
born into this world thousands of years later? Well, He came into this world as
a human being, but He existed as a spirit being long before that.
Joh 1:1 In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Joh 1:2 He was in the beginning
with God.
Joh 1:3 All things were made through
Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
Joh 8:57 Then the Jews said to
Him, "You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?"
Joh 8:58 Jesus said
to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM."
After being cast
out of heaven, Satan was allowed to come back under close supervision in order
to perform the role assigned him – that of Adversary to God and accuser of His
people.
Having fulfilled
and finished the role assigned him, Satan was cast out of heaven for good, at
the conclusion of this age.
It should be
obvious then that Satan has played an important role during the time of God’s
creation. He has been the instrument by
which God had chastened and corrected His people, the elect that needed trials
and tribulations in order to develop the right character for the Kingdom of
God.
This brings us to
the second question: What exactly does it mean that Satan has been cast down to earth?
Most people have no idea how Satan works. They do not know that he could take control
of their mental faculties and
they become his servants, without them being aware of it. There are many examples of satanic possession
in the Bible. The most obvious one comes from the time of Jesus Christ.
Luk 8:26 “Then they sailed to the
country of the Gadarenes, which is opposite Galilee.
Luk 8:27 And when He
stepped out on the land, there met Him a certain man from the city who had
demons for a long time. And he wore no clothes, nor did he live in a house but
in the tombs.
Luk 8:28 When he saw Jesus, he
cried out, fell down before Him, and with a loud voice said, "What have I
to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg You, do not torment
me!"
Luk 8:29 For He had commanded the
unclean spirit to come out of the man. For it had often seized him, and he was
kept under guard, bound with chains and shackles; and he broke the bonds and was
driven by the demon into the wilderness.”
This is an
extreme case that involved a number of demons, the fallen angels through whom
Satan does his work. It is unfortunate
that this kind of behaviour has come to be most commonly associated with the
Devil, most people not realising that he works through “normal” human beings
just as easily as he does through those whose minds he has completely taken
over. The book of Job, gives us the best
example of how the Devil manipulates “normal” human beings.
Notice how,
like the angels of God, Satan and his demons are considered sons of God.
Satan does
nothing but what God allows him. Do you
understand now why God said that He created the Wicked for the day of doom?
“The LORD has made all for Himself, Yes, even the wicked for the day of doom” (Pro 16:4).
Back to Job:
In
this example, Satan took control of the Sabeans and the Chaldeans, who most
certainly would have thought that they were normal people, to fulfil his
job. Few people realise that aggression,
and especially murder, are works of the Devil.
Satan
is allowed to control people and the forces of nature, such as fire, wind, cold
and heat, up to a point. Therefore, when
you see disasters in the world, it is Satan who does them, but God who approves
of them. And why would He approve of them?
For the same reason that He allowed them to happen to Job: to turn
people back from sin and self-righteousness.
Until God showed him his true nature, Job maintained that he was
innocent before God. However, notice
what happened then.
When
things happen to you, do you say, “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away;
Blessed be the name of the LORD", and “repent in dust and ashes”, or do
you ask, “why me?” “Why do these things
happen to me and my family?”
What
these examples show is that the Devil manipulates human beings as if they are
mere toys. How does he do that? Through human nature! It may surprise people to know this, but
carnal human beings just naturally belong to the Devil.
Only when one
repents and receives the Holy Spirit can he or she escape the wiles of the
Devil. Notice what Jesus Christ told His
disciples about themselves and about human beings in general.
Luk 13:1 There were present at
that season some who told Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had
mingled with their
Luk 13:2 sacrifices. And Jesus answered and said to them, "Do
you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other
Galileans, because they suffered such things?
Luk 13:3 I tell you, no; but
unless you repent you will all likewise perish.
Luk 13:4 Or those
eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that
they were worse sinners than all other
Luk 13:5 men who dwelt in
Jerusalem? I tell you, no; but unless
you repent you will all likewise perish."
Until
repentance, human beings simply belong to the Devil. Why then does he not destroy them at every
opportunity? Because without human
beings his reign would end. Satan does
not want destroy people altogether. He
merely wants to control them, to make them worship him instead of God. He dominates them from birth to death, unless
they respond to God’s call and they repent, are baptised, and receive the Holy
Spirit through the laying on of hands of someone who already has the Holy
Spirit. David, the famous King and
Psalmist of Israel, said this of himself when he discovered how week he was in
the face of sin: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother
conceived me.” (Psa 51:5). This was not
a mere rhetorical statement; it was the unadulterated truth, for he indeed
committed horrendous sins (See
Clearly, each one
of us was born in sin with a little devil inside us. The purpose of life then is to wrest control
of the body from the Devil and present it a living sacrifice to God.
How does one do
that? There is only one way – the way shown
by Jesus Christ and His apostles.
Mat 4:17 From that
time Jesus began to preach and to say, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand."
Act 2:38 Then Peter
said to them, "Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of
Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the
Holy Spirit.
Act 2:39 For the promise is to
you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our
God will call."
Act 2:40 And with many other
words he testified and exhorted them, saying, "Be saved from this perverse
generation."
Act 2:41 Then those who gladly
received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were
added
Act 2:42 to them. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles'
doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.
These are some of
the most important statements of the Bible.
Only after mature conversion and receiving of the Holy Spirit can one
begin to take control of his human nature.
And that comes only after turning to Jesus Christ.
Joh 16:7
Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go
away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I
depart, I will send Him to you. However,
when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth;
Joh 16:13 for He will not speak
on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will
tell you things to come.
So although the
Devil has come down to us, and is wrecking havoc with the world, we can escape
his clutches, because He who is in us, is greater than he who is in the world.
Joh 16:33 These
things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you
will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."
Jesus Christ warned His followers to beware of false prophets, who do the
work of the Devil, by trying to deceive even the elect if that were
possible.
Mat 24:24 For false
christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to
deceive, if possible, even the elect.
Mat 24:25 See, I have told you
beforehand.
They do not just preach false gospels, but show great signs and wonders:
healings, weeping statues, apparitions, etc.
Remember, even the Pharaoh’s magicians, worshipers of the god of the
underworld, of the Devil in other words, were able to perform miracles up to a
point. If you have the Holy Spirit and are peace with God, no one will ever
deceive you.
It is not multiculturalism that is undermining
the
Western world, but multi-religionism
Like the communist experiment, multiculturalism,
on whose model it was conceived, suffered from the same deadly disease,
atheism. To its proponents, it did not
matter that newcomers held strongly to their religions, they felt that by
exposing them to the “enlightened” atheism of the West, and its secular
irreligious education, they would discard their beliefs in favour of the
Western culture of indulgence and free spirit, and thus create a universal
multicultural family of nations.
Well, it did not quite work out that
way. Subjected to the crime ridden atheistic society of the West, newcomers
felt an even stronger bond to their ancestral religions. That gave rise to
pockets of religious fanaticism by people of second and third generation of
migrants from former colonial countries that otherwise would have blended in,
and embraced, those cultures.
The leaders of the Western world have not
understood that religion is not merely the opium of the people, as Marx would
have it, or figments of uncultured imaginations as the “illuminati” of modern
world would tell you, but a powerful inborn feeling, the lifeblood of the soul,
sustained by powerful spirit beings – angels of God, or demons of the
Devil.
Multiculturalism, the way the West
has understood and applied it, has become a license to unrestrained libertine
freedoms, to ethnic ghettoes of fundamentalist extremists, and to sin and
blasphemies against God.
“With The Accent , A New Emphasis”
“What a startling headline it was on the front page of the Herald on Thursday: “Words of hate – with an Aussie accent.” Hate? From an Australian mouth? That’s not
cricket. The man, now suspected to be a former Australian soldier, dressed in balaclava,
scarf, and combat jacket and bearing an AK-47, spat out thick rage on Arab
television: “The honourable sons of Islam will not just let you kill our
families in Palestine, Afghanistan, Kashmir and the Balkans, Indonesia, the
Caucasus and elsewhere. It is time for us to be equals. As you kill us, you’ll
be killed. As you bomb us, you will be bombed.” The rhetoric of terror, hate and aggression
is utterly at odds with the way we think of Australia. Especially Islamic fundamentalist hate. .
. Opponents of the war in Iraq – of
which I was one – are rightfully suspicious of patriotism, aware that all
religions can be welded into violence by the sharp heat of vengeance, and that
when we fight wars we are fighting other human beings, usually disastrously. But al-Qaeda still must force us to eschew
passive avoidance for an active engagement, and make clear what we stand for
rather than against. Peter Beinart, the
editor of the New Republic, argued in December that liberal democrats should
reassert themselves against those who refuse to recognize tyranny is a real
threat, in keeping with the 20th-century liberal democratic
tradition of fighting totalitarianism: “Today, the war on terrorism is
partially obscured by the war in Iraq, which has made liberals cynical about
the purposes of US power. But, even if
Iraq is Vietnam, it no more obviates the war on terrorism than Vietnam obviated
the battle against communism.
Global Jihad will be with us long
after American troops stop dying in Falluja and Mosul. And thus, liberalism will rise or fall on
whether it can become, again, what [Arthur] Schlesinger [jnr] called ‘a
fighting faith’. . . “If the struggle
for gay marriage and universal health care lay rightful claim to liberal idealism,
so does the struggle to protect the United States by spreading freedom in the
Muslim world. It, too, can provide the
moral purpose for which a new generation of liberals yearn.” (Julia Baird, Sydney Morning Herald, 13-14 August
2005).
“Why Britannia’s got a real identity crisis” “Britain
wants to discover its “Britishness” as unlike Australia, it becomes
increasingly fractured by migration.”
“British MP David Davies was living in Sydney and learning to surf at
Bondi Beach in the early 1990’s when he experienced his first Australia Day.
The then backpacking future prominent
Tory MP could not believe the party atmosphere and celebration with the streets
festooned with flags and singing the national day. He later moved to Surfers Paradise, worked as
a nightclub tour guide and at a hostel and saw a culture, particularly in the
surfing fraternity, that was identifyingly Australian, rich in mateship and
national identity.
“Every day was a bloody Australia
Day,” he said of his one year in the country.
But last week it was a very different Mr Davies, who was leading the
condemnation of a plan by the British government to introduce an Austrakia
Day-style national day as part of a raft of measures to recapture the nation’s
“Britishness”. Since late last year, the
UK has been plunged into a deep and divisive debate as to what it means to be
British, following the release of a report by the Commission for Racial
Equality which concluded multiculturalism
had segregated and fractures society, leaving the country in danger of
“breaking up”.
Ask anyone on the street and they
will readily tell, only half in jest, that there is nothing united about the
United Kingdom or great about Great Britain and hasn’t been since 1966 (when
England won the football World Cup).
In a rallying call following the
bleak assessment, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, announced a national search for
a motto in a speech that included the term Britishness of Britain 71
times. “There is no weakness in Britain
today that cannot be overcome by strength of the British people,” he
declared. He then tasked former attorney
general Lord Goldsmith to come up with review into UK citizenship.
That 138-page review was released
last week, reigniting the debate and again stirring racism disguised as
patriotism, which spilled over into the wider issue of Briton’e distrust and
dislike of the European Union.
Lord Goldsmith played down notions of
a divided nation but said a US-style oath of allegiance and Australian-style
national day could bring back pride. “Certainly there’s not a crisis of
national identity,” he said. “I’m sure
we’d all see it if there were. But
certainly the research does tend to show there has been a diminution in
national pride in the sense of belonging, and it’s particularly a generational
thing.”
Mr Davies has been leading the chorus
of opposition and told The Sunday Telegraph Australia Day was good for
Australia but its equivalent would not resolve the society crisis that was
Britain. “It’s not Australia Day that
makes Australia Australian,” he said. “Far from it. It’s a good excuse to party
and a good reason to feel good about yourself.
I’m not against it or saying we shouldn’t have it in Britain, but it
doesn’t address the fundamental problem in Britain.
“Australians have a wonderful culture
and a wonderful sense of national identity that’s been forged through difficult
times. “You can’t suddenly pick a day and impose that on Britain and think
everything’s rosy.” Mr Davies said the deep-seated problem in Britain began
about 30 years ago when millions of pounds were being spent on projects that
effectively ensured the incoming migrants would remain segregated. Indeed, in Britain, as in Australia, small
things like driving tests can be taken in languages other than English for
migrants who can’t read or write the tongue of their adopted country – or don’t want to speak the language.
In the UK, all government documents
are also translated into other languages and a blind eye turned to cultural
traditions such as arranged marriages, particularly among the country’s Indian
and Pakistani communities.
There is no encouragement to learn
the English language or British customs and ways. “We are actually creating cities where a
significant number of minorities don’t consider themselves British,” Mr Davies
said. “Multiculturalism has been basically about allowing people not to feel
British, but to feel that they can continue and maintain the identity of the
country they or their parents came from, which has been a mistake. “What the government should be saying is:
‘If you want to come into this country you’re going to have to learn the
language and abide by the customs and traditions and understand it’s up to you
to change a little to live here and not up to the host country to change to
accommodate you and your beliefs’.” Matters in the Uk are made worse by
people in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland wanting more independence and
flatly refusing to swear allegiance to a united nation.
Under former British Labour Prime
Minister Tony Blair, the three were given unprecedented autonomy with
decentralisation of power and regional parliaments. With Gordon Brown, it is a desperate attempt
to recapture a glory and unity that no longer exists or can exist, and the
Britishness theme of his first year as Prime Minister is having the opposite
effect. “Given devolution, it’s very
hard to identify any real sense of Britishness,” said Anand Menon, the director
of Birmingham University’s European Research Institute. “As people look into this, they may realise
there is no such thing. I think this country is very, very fractured.” Human rights and Equality Commission chief
Trevor Phillips suggested correcting this by rewriting history, such as
recording how the Muslims and Turks saved the nation by holding up the Spanish
Armada at the behest of Queen Elizabeth I.
He said rewriting the story could make it “truly conclusive we have an
identity which brings us together”.
Meanwhile, a record number of people, as many as 500 a day, are fleeing
the UK to begin new lives in other countries, including Australia where
“I think there is a danger that the
government are going to use these gimmicks as a means to pretend they are doing
something when the fundamental problems remain.” (Charles Miranda, The Sunday Telegraph, March 23, 2008).
In its true form, multiculturalism
would not be a bad idea, except that what our leaders have understood by that
term seems to be not a community of various cultures complementing each other
for the good of all, but a multiplicity of segregated cultures and religions
without any bond of nationhood or common purpose. In most cases, they have confused religion
with culture, and that is what has led to the problems of today. One may accept an unflattering remark about
his culture, aware that not everyone has the same test in food, fashion, social
customs, etc., but woe betides him who offends his religion.
The fact that the Christian world no
longer punishes blasphemers as Muslims do is because non-believers, who have
been in ascendancy for some two centuries now, have wrested control of their
societies. Far from punishing those who
offend the Christian faith, they honour and promote them. The so-called Civil Liberties Organisations
are nothing but a smokescreen for the protection of the un-godly.
Then they are surprised that other
people have not acquired a similarly lax attitude towards their religion.
Neither Islam nor Christianity are
cultures as such, for they encompass vast territories that comprise peoples of
different social customs, music, fashion, food and other aspects that define a
culture. The Arabs, for example, have a
culture that has little similarities to the Muslim people of sub-Sahara, of
Indonesia, of Turkmenistan, and others.
By their nature, cultures enhance
life by complementing each other. They have no reason to fight against each
other the way religions do. The greatest
problems for the world have arisen where people have identified their culture
with their religion: the Middle East, the Balkans, Northern Ireland, are but
some of the most striking examples.
Religions not only stir up powerful
passions and feelings, but are easily manipulated by ill meaning people with a
different agenda than the common good.
Muslim imams are on record as saying that their followers have a duty
first to Islam and then to Australia, as if the two are in competition with
each other. I do not know whether Islam
condemns those who cause divisions, but Christianity clearly does.
Rom 16:17 Now I urge you, brethren, note those who
cause divisions and offences, contrary to the doctrine which you learned,
When European countries embarked upon
colonial expansion, they did not use their culture as the main reason for
expansion, but their religion – a convoluted form of Christianity that often
did more harm than good to those it conquered.
Even so, as long as they spread
literacy in the name of Christ, and the Bible was made available in the native
languages, it was a venture approved in heaven.
People could fulfil the primary purpose of their life – seeking out the
divine truth for themselves.
Things went well until the “wise” men
of the West entered the picture with their atheistic philosophy. Denying a creator God lost the West its
legitimacy for colonial expansion.
Atheism did not go well with the people of the new world. The best example of what atheism can do to
people can be seen in that bastion of anti-God philosophy, Russia. The social problems of that country are so
great – alcoholism, AIDS, drugs, lawlessness, suicides, etc. – that our
problems in the West, grave as they are, pale by comparison. Yet instead of spending that country’s income
from its vast resources on its people, its leaders have embarked again upon a
frantic program of rearmament. President
Putin is on record as saying that Russia now has a new generation of missiles
and nuclear technology that are far superior to those of the West. How did he achieve that? By acquiring the technology from the West
after the abysmal failure of the Soviet technology!
Western media, intelligentsia and
political leaders have been so mesmerised by Putin’s furtive smiles and
occasional friendly gestures towards the West that they have quickly forgotten
the gross human rights violations and multiple murders of his critics and
political opponents.
Putin described the disintegration of
the Soviet Union as the greatest catastrophe of the 20th
century. Now he is doing his best to
restore what he can of that “evil empire”.
He is still the undisputed leader of Russia, even though he stepped down
from the position of President to that of Prime Minister. With the FSB (former KGB), behind him,
clearly he is manipulating the political system of Russia towards one in which
the President is a non-political figurehead, and the Prime Minister the real
holder of power.
A strong Russian leader without the
fear of God, with the finger on the nuclear button, is the West’s worst
nightmare.
Putin is not merely trying to raise
Russia to new greatness for the sake of it; the gigantic Secret Service
apparatus inherited from communist times is baying for revenge against the
West, which it blames for the fall of their former atheist empire – the Soviet
Union.
Western politicians think they can
escape that by appeasing Putin as they did with Hitler. They could never be more wrong. Bible prophecy tells us that the man is
destined to become the scourge of the West.
Humanity is blindly heading
towards catastrophe because it does not believe the Scriptures. The Great Tribulation, which will produce
destructiveness the likes of which this world has never seen, and threaten the
very life of this planet, is now menacing like a dark cloud over the horizon.
Out of that fiasco, a new world order will emerge – the Millennium Kingdom of
Jesus Christ, which will have one King, one religion, and as many cultures as
there are peoples, tribes, tongues and nations on this earth. Only a few elect from each one will survive
into that Kingdom.
Yes, it is all right
to donate blood and body organs
Apostle Paul made an important statement that gives us some light in regard to donating blood and body organs.
When we were still sinners Christ died for us. In so doing, He saved us from eternal damnation and made the Holy Spirit available to us that we may also inherit eternal life.
Now if Jesus Christ gave His life that we may live, is it much of a sacrifice for us to donate a bit of us – whether blood or body organs – that others may live, especially when such an act has no bearing on our own life?
I suffer from a modern disease – kidney stones, I am told from not drinking enough water and drinking to much juice – so when I went to the hospital to have one removed, I was asked whether I had any objection to blood transfusion. I said I do, and explained that I am very happy to give my blood to other people, but I would under no circumstance accept other people’s blood. Even if my life was in danger? Yes, even if my life was in danger.
That created a conundrum which needed further explanation. You see, I have lived my life, I have achieved the purpose for which I was created, now I am at peace with God and with myself, and I am ready to face my Creator any time. Any unnecessary prolongation of my life, could endanger my achievements. This is why I would be happier to depart and be with God and with my Saviour than be in this world. As Apostle Paul said:
Bear in mind also what the Scriptures say about the saints of God.
Of course, the
saints of God are different from the saints of traditional churches, but that
is a different story.
The question is,
why would God be happy with the death of His saints? The answer is simple: because
having achieved the purpose of their life, there is no chance of falling into
sin again. Now that is worth dying for.
No one knows,
except God and the respective person, when they have achieved that state.
Before His sacrifice,
Jesus Christ said this:
Luk 13:32 And He said
to them, "Go, tell that fox, 'Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures
today and tomorrow, and the third day
I shall be perfected.’ Nevertheless I must journey today,
Luk 13:33 tomorrow, and the day
following; for it cannot be that a prophet should perish outside of Jerusalem.
Luk 13:34 "O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!
How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers
her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!
Luk 13:35 See! Your house is left
to you desolate; and assuredly, I say to you, you shall not see Me until the
time comes when you say, 'BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!'
"
Jesus Christ
believed that He would be perfected through death, and He was not wrong. As long as He was in this world, He was no
different from us. He suffered pain,
hunger, and thirst, had emotions and disappoints like all of us, but after
resurrection, He put all of these behind Him.
While in the world, He made clear to His disciples what eternal life is
all about.
Joh 17:1 Jesus spoke
these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: "Father, the hour has
come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son
Joh 17:2 also may glorify You, as
You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life
to as many as You have
Joh 17:3 given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know
You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
So, the primary
purpose of one’s life is to know God and Jesus Christ. However, knowing God and Jesus Christ is not
possible without the Holy Spirit, and He comes only to those who keep the
Commandments of God.
Joh 14:15 "If
you love Me, keep My commandments.
Joh 14:16 And I will pray the
Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you
forever— the Spirit of truth,
Joh 14:17 whom the world cannot
receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He
dwells with you and will be in you.
And where
does one find the Commandments? This is
one place:
Exo 20:1 And God
spoke all these words, saying:
Exo 20:2 "I am the
LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
bondage.
Exo 20:3 "You shall have no
other gods before Me.
Exo 20:4 "You shall not make
for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in
heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the
water under the earth;
Exo 20:5 you shall not bow down
to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations
of those who hate Me,
Exo 20:6 but showing mercy to
thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
Exo 20:7 "You shall not take
the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him
guiltless who takes His name in vain.
Exo 20:8 "Remember the
Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Exo 20:9 Six days you shall labor
and do all your work,
Exo 20:10 but the seventh day is
the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor
your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant,
nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates.
Exo 20:11 For in six days
the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in
them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day
and hallowed it.
Exo 20:12 "Honor your father
and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your
God is giving you.
Exo 20:13 "You shall not
murder.
Exo 20:14 "You shall not
commit adultery.
Exo 20:15 "You shall not
steal.
Exo 20:16 "You shall not
bear false witness against your neighbor.
Exo 20:17 "You shall not
covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his
male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything
that is your neighbor's."
And this is
another one:
Mar 10:17 Now as He was going out
on the road, one came running, knelt before Him, and asked Him, "Good
Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?"
Mar 10:18 So Jesus
said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that
is, God.
Mar 10:19 You know the
commandments: 'DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY,' 'DO NOT MURDER,' 'DO NOT STEAL,' 'DO
NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS,' 'Do not defraud,' 'HONOR YOUR FATHER AND YOUR
MOTHER.'"
Mar 10:20 And he answered and
said to Him, "Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth."
Mar 10:21 Then Jesus, looking at
him, loved him, and said to him, "One thing you lack: Go your way, sell
whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven;
and come, take up the cross, and follow Me."
Mar 10:22 But he was sad at this
word, and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
Mar 10:23 Then Jesus looked
around and said to His disciples, "How hard it is for those who have
riches to enter the kingdom of God!"
Mar 10:24 And the disciples were
astonished at His words. But Jesus answered again and said to them,
"Children, how hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter the
kingdom of God!
Mar 10:25 It is easier for a
camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the
kingdom of God."
Mar 10:26 And they were greatly
astonished, saying among themselves, "Who then can be saved?"
Mar 10:27 But Jesus looked at
them and said, "With men it is impossible, but not with God; for
with God all things are possible."
In this passage,
Jesus Christ did not list all the Commandments, but left no doubt which once He
was referring to. He knew that His
enquirer being a Jew had no problems with the first four Commandments, which
regulate man’s relationship with God, and went straight to the last six, which
deal with man’s relationship with man.
Now did you
notice what Jesus Christ said of Himself?
“Why do you call Me good?” To
which He gave the answer: “No one is
good but One, that is, God.” Now if
there ever was a Man who deserved to be called good by virtue of the fact that
He had never sinned, surely it was Jesus Christ. Yet, He knew that “goodness” or perfection
are not possible in a carnal body, and that it can only be achieved in a body
that comes after resurrection from the dead for those who are found
righteous. Such righteousness can be
achieved only through the Holy Spirit.
Joh 16:7
Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go
away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I
depart, I will send Him to you.
Joh 16:13 However, when He, the
Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not
speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He
will tell you things to come.
Joh 16:14 He will glorify Me, for
He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.
Joh 16:15 All things that the
Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it
to you.
Why can we not
achieve righteousness without the Holy Spirit? Because the law of sin reigns in
our bodies, and keeps us slaves to sin!
Now why do we
need to be reminded about these things in a discussion about donors? This is why:
Most Christians would
have no idea what Apostle Paul was talking about here. That is because He was talking about the
Passover, the most important Holy Day in the Christian calendar, yet one that
very few Christians observe. And yet,
what are the consequences of not observing this Feast in the appropriate manner
at the appropriate time? Sickness and
death!
People wonder why
the world is full of illness, diseases, plagues, famine, wars, social unrest,
and the like, and ask why? The answer is simple: because they ignore the
Scriptures, the Commandments of God, and the will of Jesus Christ.
They desperately
seek to prolong life in this miserable world by all sorts of ungodly means,
rather than make peace with God and with Jesus Christ, and seek eternal life in
the Kingdom of God where there is no more pain and suffering but pleasures
forevermore
Yes, the Alpha
and the Omega is revealing these things to us.
This is why I fear no death, and why, like Jesus Christ, I look forward
to the time of my “perfection”.
Not all people
have this faith, however, and many feel they are not quite ready to face God
and would rather receive blood or a body organ in order to prolong their life
and give themselves a better chance to make peace with God.
From the
Scriptural point of view, it is perfectly all right to do that. For if Jesus Christ gave His life that we may
live, is it much of a sacrifice if we donate blood or a body organ, a kidney
for example, that others may live? Certainly
not! You loose nothing, but you may gain
merit in heaven which may stand you well with God at the time of judgment. This, however, comes with a caveat:
donations should occur only among people of the same character. This requires an explanation.
There are two
kids of spirits in the world: the spirit of the world, and the spirit of God,
the Holy Spirit.
When
you receive other people’s blood or body parts, you may inherit not only hidden
diseases that the donor may have had, but emotions and character traits that
you may not like or may harm you. That
is because you inherit part of his spirit too.
Television documentaries have shown that people who received body parts
from dead people, have acquired or developed character traits of the dead
person. This raises the question of a
live donor versus a dead one. An elect
of God should never accept body parts from dead people, even if he was an elect
of God in life. Because when a person
dies, a different spirit takes over his body, and you do not want to have
anything to do with that spirit.
Jud 1:8 Likewise also these
dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries.
Jud 1:9 Yet Michael the
archangel, in contending with the devil, when he disputed about the body of
Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said, "The
Lord rebuke you!"
Moses
was one of the greatest men of God, and yet, when he died his body was taken
over by the wicked One. This is why, in
the Old Testament, when a person touched the carcass of a dead person, he
became unclean until sun set. After that,
a certain cleansing ritual was needed in order to restore that person to the
community.
At
that time, the Israelites were the “chosen people of God”, yet that made no
difference when they died. Notice what
Jesus Christ told one of His disciples who wanted to go home to bury his father
Mat 8:21 Then another of His
disciples said to Him, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father."
Mat 8:22 But Jesus said to him,
"Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead."
Transposed
to our case, that would be, let the living dead donate to their own, and the
people of God to their own.
You
do not expose yourself to dangers if you receive blood or body parts from an
elect of God, and may even receive a little of the Holy Spirit. The reverse is not true: an elect of God
would have no advantage whatsoever by receiving blood or a body part from a
person of the world. Having left behind
the spirit of the world when one repented, was baptised and received the Holy
Spirit, he can only harm himself by contaminating himself again with the spirit
of the world.
It
is not advisable that an elect of God subject himself or herself to such
procedures even from another elect. However, this is a matter of personal
choice. But remember this: having
repented of your old life and began a new one, your past has been wiped clean. You should therefore no longer fear death,
like the people of the world, and be ready to face God any time.
Therefore,
while others may benefit from our donations, there is little an elect of God
may benefit from them. The problem we
are having is that more often than not medical practitioners do not understand
or agree with our position. There is not
much we can do about that, other than praying, but we must stand firm and make
a forceful point that while we agree to donate our blood and body parts, we
ourselves cannot be subjected to just any medical procedure in order to prolong
our life a little bit longer, particularly in cases of loss of
consciousness.
I
once witnessed the case of a man who went into hospital with a knee
injury. The medical practitioners
dressed his wound and gave him the usual antibiotic course of drugs. Yet instead of getting better, he got worse
and quickly fell into a comma. He was
immediately placed in intensive care where they inserted tubes through his neck
and back to help his breathing and other body functions. It was a shuddering and sobering experience
for me, and felt very uncomfortable just by looking at that sight.
I
have a good opinion of the medical profession, unlike the law practitioners of
whom I find few redeeming qualities, but I think that sometimes even doctors go
a bit too far. It is a pity that their
Hippocratic Oath has no provision for people of strong faith and beliefs, who
while accepting moderate surgical procedures, do not wish to have their life
prolonged by any means, at any cost, and for just any length.
(Not
long after finishing this article, Sydney
Morning Herald had a cartoon about Doctors. The Wizard of Id asked one,
“What do you want to be when you grow up? A Doctor! What are you doing to prepare yourself? Golf lessons!” I thought I would throw that one in too. (S.M.H., June 4, 2008)).
Lawyers
have no equivalent “Hippocratic Oath’, which frees them to act as mercenaries
for hire, defending any cause that pays, with little regard for justice. Their ethos is strongly condemned in the
Bible. Having abandoned the Law of God
and devised their own justice systems, they have created a toxic environment in
which it is impossible for one to practice Law and retain a clear conscience
and a righteous attitude before God.
When one defends the guilty and condemns the
innocent, he has crossed a line and embarked upon the road to perdition. Have
you ever heard a lawyer say that his client is guilty of anything?
As opposed to that,
the work of “physicians” is approved in the sight of God.
Mar 2:16 And when the scribes and
Pharisees saw Him eating with the tax collectors and sinners, they said to His
disciples, "How is it that He eats and drinks with tax collectors
and sinners?"
Mar 2:17 When Jesus
heard it, He said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a
physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous,
but sinners, to repentance."
Interestingly
enough, Physicians will have a role to play in the Kingdom of God too.
While people will
still be injured – in work, sport and other activities – and need healing, they
will not need law adjudicators, because the law will be written in their hearts
and no one will transgress wilfully anymore.
Hence no lawyers.
Clearly
then, our attitude to life in this world in general, and to donating and
receiving blood and body parts in particular, could have an effect on our
salvation and eternal life. It is wrong,
a sin in fact, to deny someone the chance to life if that depends on receiving
a little blood. Similarly, it is wrong to force someone to accept blood or body
parts if he feels he is at peace with God and has no need of such procedures.
Now
back to our man in intensive care. After
a few days, when it became obvious, to me at least, that there was little
chance of him recovering, I suggested that he should not be subjected to that torment
anymore and be left to die naturally. It was the worst thing I could possibly
have said. He was my father in law, and
it infuriated just about everyone and made them suspicious of my motives. When he still died a few days later, they had
me investigated for possibly having done something to hasten his death. No one could understand why a man, who
appeared to be healthy, would die so quickly of a knee injury. That was until they performed an autopsy on
his corpse and discovered that some of his internal organs were putrid because
of alcoholism. His body was no longer
able to heal itself and the slightest infection brought him down. Somehow, he managed to keep from his family
that he was a chronic alcoholic. He
drank at work, or after work, and not so much at home. He was barely in his sixties, and by looking
at him you would have thought that he was a healthy man and upon death suitable
for organ donor. But who would accept a
body organ from such a corpse? I suppose a desperate person, in danger of
immediate dying, might, if only for a few more days. Such however, should never
be the case with the people of God.
It
is not only a great honour to be called to join the elect of God, but a great
responsibility.
The
last two verses would have sufficed for our point, but as it is often the case,
we take pleasure in giving people the whole context so that even those who do
not have a Bible or may not be bothered opening it, may get the full picture of
the wonders of the Scriptures.
Here
now is
Joh 17:4 I have glorified You on
the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do.
Joh 17:5 And now, O Father,
glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before
the world was.
Joh 17:6 "I have manifested
Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours,
You gave them to Me,
Joh 17:7 and they have kept Your
word. Now they have known that all
things which You have given Me are from You.
Joh 17:8 For I have given to them
the words which You have given Me; and they have received them, and have
known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that You sent
Me.
Joh 17:9 "I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom
You have given Me, for they are Yours.
Joh 17:10 And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them.
Joh 17:11 Now I am no longer in
the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep
through Your name those
Joh 17:12 whom You have given Me,
that they may be one as We are. While
I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave Me
I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the
Scripture might be fulfilled.
Joh 17:13 But now I come to You,
and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in
themselves.
Joh 17:14 I have given them Your
word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I
am not of the world.
Joh 17:15 I do not pray that You
should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil
one.
Joh 17:16 They are not of the
world, just as I am not of the world.
Joh 17:17 Sanctify them by Your
truth. Your word is truth.
Joh 17:18 As You sent Me into the
world, I also have sent them into the world.
Joh 17:19 And for their sakes I
sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth.
Joh 17:20 "I do not pray for
these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word;
Joh 17:21 that they all may be
one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one
in Us, that the world may believe
Joh 17:22 that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given
them, that they may be one just as We are one:
Joh 17:23 I in them, and You in
Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You
have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.
Joh 17:24 "Father, I desire
that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold
My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the
world.
Joh 17:25 O righteous Father! The
world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You
sent Me.
Joh 17:26 And I have declared to
them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved
Me may be in them, and I in them."
Pure poetry, and
healing for the heart, mind and soul.
In conclusion, it
is one thing to exchange blood and body parts with the people of God, and quite
another with the people of the world.
The two spirits shall never mix, and neither should their carriers.
State
of the World (2008)
“The New Plagues” “Why 'superbugs,' TB, leprosy and other
pestilences are invading U.S.” Americans have long taken the wonders of medical
science for granted, watching as disease after disease has been conquered with
antibiotics, vaccines, better nutrition and pharmaceutical "miracle
drugs." But today, the magic isn't working … and something scary is happening. Thanks to self-destructive "alternative
lifestyles," out-of-control immigration, the overuse of antibiotics and
other causes, long-"vanquished" illnesses are once again ravaging the
U.S., puzzling scientists and terrifying millions of victims and their loved
ones. That's the explosive subject of the February edition of WND's elite
monthly Whistleblower magazine, titled "THE NEW PLAGUES." Consider this:
- The once-"conquered" scourge of
tuberculosis has made a terrifying comeback, especially in America's inner
cities (the American Lung Association has called TB "out of
control"), and drug-resistant TB accounts for more and more new cases. The
reason? Record legal and illegal immigration levels. Indeed, the highest
numbers of multi-drug-resistant TB cases are in New York, California, Texas and
Florida – states with the highest populations of new immigrants.
- Leprosy, the contagious skin disease
evoking thoughts of biblical and medieval times, is now making its mark in the
United States, and many believe the influx of illegal aliens is the main
factor.
- A new study reveals that homosexuals
are much more likely to become infected with the dreaded "superbug"
MRSA – methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus – than are heterosexuals.
Some are even calling MRSA the "new HIV." Although previous MRSA
contagion has been confined primarily to hospitals, it is now being spread in
major cities through homosexual contact. But since staph is also transmissible
through non-sexual contact, the University of California researcher who headed
up the study warns: "Once this reaches the general population, it will be
truly unstoppable."
- Avian influenza – or "bird
flu" – has caused such concern at the highest level of the U.S. government
that in 2005, the Congressional Budget Office reported that a severe pandemic
of avian flu hitting the U.S. would kill 2 million Americans and throw the
country into a major recession.
- Other
diseases once virtually unknown in America, like Chagas disease and Dengue
fever, are cropping up in southern border areas, while old and much-feared
plagues like polio and malaria are also on the upswing. Compounding all of this, the astronomical
number of illegal aliens swarming into the United States is forcing the closure
of dozens of hospitals, spreading previously vanquished diseases and
threatening to destroy America's prized health-care system.” (WorldNetDaily, February 4, 2008).
“Bed-sharing good for mum, baby”
“MOTHERS should take their babies into their beds and allow older children to
share their room indefinitely, an American sleep expert advised yesterday.
Anthropologist James McKenna told a parenting conference in
Adelaide bed-sharing was natural and beneficial for babies and parents -- a
view not endorsed by NSW Health because of safety concerns. Professor McKenna, director of a mother-baby
sleep lab at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, also said there was no
cut-off point at which children should sleep in a separate room. "If you have healthy relationships
during the day, there's no damage to children." Tresillian Family Care Centres chairperson
Professor Catherine Fowler was against the idea of baby-parent bed sharing.
"Lots of parents take their children into their beds to feed them but once
that is done, the babies should sleep elsewhere." (The Daily Telegraph, May 26, 2006).
“Nicotine trap for children”
“CHILDREN who
try a single cigarette by the age of 11 then don't smoke for three years are
twice as likely to take up the habit in their mid-teens, a study found. The Cancer Research UK study, published in
the journal Tobacco Control, tracked the smoking habits of more than 2000
schoolchildren. Of the 260 who, by age
11, said they had tried smoking just once, 18 per cent became smokers at 14.
This compared with only 7 per cent of those who had not had a cigarette by 11.
Those who took up smoking had at least a three-year break between their first
and second cigarettes.” (The Daily Telegraph, May 26, 2006).
“The Great Myth Of
Singledom” ”Being
on your own is no fun. Believe me, Bridget Jones realises this better than
anyone, says Amanda Platell. With Bridget
Jones’s big bottom back on movie screens again, we’ll laugh with her and at her,
we will cry, and we will all hope she ends up with Mark Darcy rather than the
cheating Daniel Cleaver. But for however
much people mistakenly portray Bridget author Helen Fielding’s modern
masterpiece as a celebration of “singledom” – it is in fact the reverse. It is an hilarious, but chilling warning to
every woman of the horrors of being single.
And they are horrors. Being
permanently on your own is no fun and, believe me, a life without a partner is
an empty one, however successful you are.
Bridget Jones’s Diary was one of the defining social portraits of
a generation – of my generation. But it
could equally have been called Bridget Bible Of Loneliness. Because beneath the gags was a more tragic
truth: my generation is increasingly single – not by choice but because we are
too infatuated with our careers, too protective of our independence and too
unrealistic in our demands of relationships.
Being single at 30 can be funny, but try it for laughs at 40 or 50.
The Bridget Jones phenomenon has been
almost wilfully misunderstood to serve the agenda of the Left, the people who
believe marriage is outmoded and who consider traditional family values to be
but chains around a woman’s neck. It
infuriates me when I read that Bridget Jones has become a key player in the
housing market, with the number of singletons buying their first home alone
doubling in the last 20 years. This
speaks the fashionable liberal elite, those who would sound the death knell for
marriage. But such an attitude is akin
to encouraging young women to take out a pre-nuptial agreement before they’ve
even started dating, as if to say it won’t work so be prepared to be
disappointed and alone. Is it any wonder
that women are increasingly particular about whom they will marry and quicker
to leave a marriage if they’re unhappy, when this is the kind of message they
are hearing? Has such thinking made
expectations of love and lifetime together totally unrealistic? Many of us are indeed disappointed in our
relationship – just as we disappointed others.
But is that a reason to give up on hope?
The time I spent alone in my house with my huge mortgage, was among the
saddest I have ever had. Having just
broken up from a six year relationship, walking around empty rooms at night,
all I could think was this was a house for a family, not a lonely career
woman. I didn’t feel proud of my
achievements, jut empty that I didn’t have things I wanted most. Combine a generation of in dependent career
women with a generation of commitment-phobic men and what you end up with is a
potent recipe for loneliness. Because between us, that is exactly what we are
creating – millions of lonely people.
What on earth have we done to each other? The flip side of loneliness is
selfishness. Nothing makes a person more
self-centred than living alone, without partner or family to make allowances or
to compromise for. WE are not meant to
be alone, we’re social creatures.
Bridget’s search is not for a successful life as a single, ort even the
more fashionable child-free existence now sought by a staggering one in five
women, nor for the highly dubious solution to partnership of sharing a life but
never sharing a home. There is no
compromise, no ambiguity here. She wants
to get married, she wants to walk down the aisle in a big white frock and she
wants to grow old with Mark Darcy, hopefully having a pile of little Bridgets
and Marks along the way.
There is nothing more remotely modern
or post feminist about Bridget’s desires.
She is the ultimate traditionalist. And if we women are honest with ourselves,
however successful we become, there’s a big bit of Bridgets in all of us. Helen Fielding made single women realise we
weren’t alone. That was Bridget
Jones’s Diary – funny, but hardly a eulogy of the single life. Which is not to say being single is all
bad. But being single is – or should be
– just a phase when we’re searching for love.
And for anyone doubting the horrors of singledom – beware, Christmas is
approaching, the loneliest date in the single’s calendar. I spent one Yuletide alone, not seeing anyone
for three days except a group of friends at church on Christmas morning. When they asked me to join them for lunch, I
pretended I had somewhere to go, a new man on the scene. In fact, I had
none. I had nothing. But now I have all
that – and with apologies to singles everywhere – I wouldn’t change it for the
world. (The Daily Telegraph, Nov.
22, 2004).
“Campus considering birth control for 11-yr
old girls” “Contraceptives
could be dispensed without knowledge of parents” (NaturalNews) A middle school in Portland, Maine is
considering a proposal to provide birth control pills and patches to students
as young as 11 years old. King Middle School launched a reproductive health
program after five of the 135 students who visited the school's health center
in 2006 reported being sexually active. The program already provides condoms to
students, but the new proposal would expand this to include prescriptions for
birth control pills and patches (which would then have to be purchased at a
pharmacy). The contraceptives could be
dispensed without the knowledge of parents, although
written permission would be required for children to receive (unspecified)
services from the health center. The proposed program has attracted
controversy, with some people accusing the schools of taking away parental
power and encouraging children to have sex too early. But school officials
dispute these claims. "We do
certainly sit down and speak with them about why [being sexually active] is not
a good choice," said Amanda Rowe, the school's nurse coordinator.
"But there are some who persist... and they need to be
protected." Logan Levkoff, a
sexologist and relationship expert, said that while the school may be stepping
into a role that would better be filled by parents, many parents do not feel comfortable
enough to do so. "Parents should be the sex educator for their
children," Levkoff said. "The problem is not every parent feels
empowered [to do so]." Parents
interviewed by ABC News were split on their feelings about the proposal. "I don't think I would want my child in
middle school to be getting birth control
pills unless I had something to do with it," one woman said. But another woman, a mother, disagreed:
"I think that education at that age is appropriate because our culture is
saturated with messages about sex," she said. (NaturalNews.com;
WorldNetDaily.com, April 7, 2008)
“Youth
lead crime spree” “A quarter of all violent home invasions are carried
out by teens and children”.
“NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research data
reveals 24.4 per cent of people linked by police to home invasions last year
were aged between 10 and 17. The figures
come as Youth Off The Streets founder Father Chris Riley revealed one of his
south-west Sydney refuges was targeted by a teen home invader last Saturday
night. “Those statistics don’t surprise
me, but then nothing surprises me anymore,” a dejected Father Riley said. “The law and punishment have really hardened
people. These kids get to the point
where they just don’t care anymore.” An
age breakdown of males and females connected by police to home invasions was
even more disturbing, according to the data. Nearly 32 per cent of the female
suspects were aged between 10 and 17, up from 14.3 per cent in 2001. Twenty five per-cent of male suspects were
aged 10 to 17, compared with 18.4 per cent in 2001. The data was compiled for The Sunday
Telegraph by the NSW Bureau of Crime
Statistics and Research. Since there is
no category for home invasions, statisticians used figures for robberies on
residential premises where the victims were at home. Youth Off The Streets city cluster manager
Kervin Ko said the prime suspect in their robbery was a drug-addicted former
client. “Often, they will choose people
they know, or premises where they are familiar with the layout,” Mr Ko
said. “And, these kids are on ice or
other drugs.”(The Sunday Telegraph,
June 11, 2006).
“Adult
world must let girls be girls” “To be "hot, hot,
hot" is not a fitting encouragement for five- and six-year-olds, writes
Emma Rush.” BRAS for eight-year-olds. Lip gloss for six-year-olds. Fashion and gossip
magazines for girls from age five. The sexualisation of children is changing
the experience of childhood, yet there has been little public discussion of its
implications.
Children, particularly girls, are under increasing
pressure from advertisers and marketers to adopt a "sexy" persona
from very young ages. Those who apply the pressure claim they are simply
responding to little girls' interest in looking "pretty". However,
the forms "prettiness" now takes, which include "bralettes"
for girls as young as three, as well as the language used to describe
appearance in girls' magazines directed at readers from five up ("hot,
hot, hot"), give the game away. This sexualising pressure places children
at risk in a number of ways.
The emphasis on "ideal" appearances brings some of the agonies of adolescence forward many years. In one recent study, about one-third of seven-year-old Australian girls wanted to be thinner, despite the fact that they were all within a normal healthy weight range. The pressure to have a "perfect" appearance places children at greater risk of developing eating disorders at an age when nutrition is crucial - while they are still growing. The focus on sexual couplings found in girls' magazines, pitched at readers aged five to 13, may have dangerous implications for children who are approached by predatory adults. These magazines encourage girls to have "crushes" on men older than themselves, with heavy coverage of adult female celebrities and their boyfriends, as well as articles on and posters of adult male actors and singers. In a cultural context where sex is heavily glamourised and represented as highly desirable, is it wise to actively encourage girls of primary-school age to have romantic fantasies about older men? How do we then expect them to behave if an older man approaches apparently offering romance? To sexualise children in the way that advertisers do - by dressing, posing, and making up child models in the same ways that sexy adults would be presented - also implicitly suggests to adults that children are interested in and ready for sex. This is profoundly irresponsible, particularly given that it is known that pedophiles use not only child pornography but also more innocent photos of children. One less obvious risk to children as a result of an excessive focus on "sexy" appearance and behaviour is that other important aspects of their lives can suffer. The developmental period known as "middle childhood" (about six to 11 years old) is critical to children developing a sense of self and self-esteem. (SMH, Oct, 10, 2006)
“Ben Stein to battle Darwin
in major film” “Actor-commentator stars in 'Expelled: No Intelligence
Allowed' Ben Stein, the lovable, monotone
teacher from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "The Wonder
Years" is back in the classroom in a major motion picture release slated
for February 2008. But this time, the
actor will be on the big screen asking one of life's biggest questions:
"Were we designed, or are we simply the end result of an ancient mud
puddle struck by lightning?" That's
right. Evolution – and the explosive debate over its virtual monopoly on
America's public school classrooms – is the focus of the film "Expelled:
No Intelligence Allowed."
In the movie, Stein, who is also a
lawyer, economist, former presidential speechwriter, author and social
commentator, is stunned by what he discovers – an elitist scientific
establishment that has traded in its scepticism for dogma. Even worse, say
publicists for the feature film, "along the way, Stein uncovers a long
line of biologists, astronomers, chemists and philosophers who have had their
reputations destroyed and their careers ruined by a scientific establishment
that allows absolutely no dissent from Charles Darwin's theory of random
mutation and natural selection."
"Big Science in this area of biology has lost its way," says
Stein. "Scientists are supposed to be allowed to follow the evidence
wherever it may lead, no matter what the implications are. Freedom of inquiry
has been greatly compromised, and this is not only anti-American, it's
anti-science. It's anti-the whole concept of learning." As "Expelled's" official website
asks: "What freedom-loving student wouldn't be outraged to discover that
his high school science teacher is teaching a theory as indisputable fact, and
that university professors unmercifully crush any fellow scientists who dare
question the prevailing system of belief? This isn't the latest Hollywood
comedy; it's a disturbing new documentary that will shock anyone who thinks all
scientists are free to follow the evidence wherever it may lead."
"Expelled" documents how
teachers and scientists alike are being ridiculed daily, denied tenure and even
fired believing there is evidence of "design" in nature and
challenging the current orthodoxy that life is entirely a result of random
chance. For example, Stein meets Richard Sternberg, a double Ph.D. biologist
who allowed a peer-reviewed research paper describing the evidence for
intelligence in the universe to be published in the scientific journal
Proceedings. Shortly after publication, officials from the National Center for
Science Education and the Smithsonian Institution, where Sternberg was a
research fellow, began a coordinated smear-and-intimidation campaign to get the
promising young scientist fired. The attack on scientific freedom was so
egregious that it prompted a congressional investigation. In the film, Stein meets other scientists
like astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez, who was denied tenure at Iowa State
University in spite of an extraordinary record of achievement. Gonzalez made
the mistake of documenting the design he has observed in the universe. And
there are others, like Caroline Crocker, a brilliant biology teacher at George
Mason University who was forced out of the university for briefly discussing
problems with Darwinian theory and for telling the students that some
scientists believe there is evidence of design in the universe.
Unlike other popular documentary films, "Expelled" isn't
one-sided – it confronts scientists like Oxford evolutionist Richard Dawkins,
author of "The God Delusion," influential biologist and atheist
blogger P. Z. Myers, and Eugenie Scott, head of the National Center for Science
Education. In fact, the creators of "Expelled" spent two years travelling
the world and interviewing scores of scientists, doctors, philosophers and
public leaders for the film. . . The production delivers to viewers "a
startling revelation that freedom of thought and freedom of inquiry have been
expelled from publicly funded high schools, universities and research
institutions” . . . "People will be stunned to actually find out what
elitist scientists proclaim, which is that a large majority of Americans are
simpletons who believe in a fairy tale. . . We believe the greatest asset of
humanity is our freedom to explore and discover truth."
(WorldNetDaily.com, Sept. 27, 2007)
“Food Prices
Are Out of Control” “Now, a Massive
Pesticide-Resistant Fungus is Threatening Worldwide Wheat
Crops and About to Send Prices to Record Highs A massive pesticide-resistant fungus known
as “wheat rust Ug99,” is threatening billions of dollars of wheat crops in
Asia. This fungus, which is named for the place and date of its first discovery
(Uganda in 1999), has spread across East Africa and the Middle East and is now
threatening wheat crops in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India with chilling
implications so far NO cure has been found to kill this fungus! The last
outbreak of stem rust in North America in 1954 wiped out 40% of the region’s
wheat crop, sending food prices through the roof. The fungus is destroying wheat harvests at a
time when the world’s supply of wheat is already stressed to the breaking
point. The consumption of wheat has outstripped the available supply
during six of the past seven years. The increased demand for crop-based
fuels is forcing prices of wheat, corn and other grains higher as well. This
latest need for these types of alternative energy sources is putting pressure
on food prices throughout the world and unleashing a unique source of
inflationary pressure. Global grain
supplies are at their lowest level in more than three decades and some experts
fear the situation could get worse if more crops are set aside to make ethanol
or other forms of alternative energy. A
major crisis is about to unfold. The warning signs are everywhere:
·
On August 31 wheat futures in Chicago hit a
record high on track for the biggest monthly gain in 34 years!
·
Skyrocketing demand from South Korea and India
reduced inventories to dangerously low levels.
·
Prices for the grain have doubled in the past
year as poor weather in Australia, parts of Canada, and Europe, damaged crops;
·
According to the U.S, Department of
Agriculture, global stockpiles of wheat have fallen to the lowest level in 26
years.
Furthermore, China’s growing demand for food
products has quadrupled over the past five years, and continues to rise
today. In fact China and India are coming dangerously close to a situation
where nothing short of a miracle harvest will be enough to meet their needs and
prevent additional increases in already surging food prices.
Fuelled by rapid economic growth, China and India,
as well as scores of other emerging economies, expect to see food prices soar
even higher in the coming year. And like the current housing crisis in America,
the news will get worse before it gets better.
The good news for investors
is that most crises also create opportunities to make big profits”. (News
Max Media, Jan 17, 2008)
[And
that was before the worst winter on record caused widespread damage to China’s
agriculture and urban infrastructure, and before a massive earthquake killed
tens of thousands of people and caused yet more damage].
“Food
crisis needs action: UN chief” New York: UN chief Ban Ki-moon appealed
yesterday for emergency and long-term action to tackle the growing food crisis,
warning that it could trigger political upheavals and security risks. “The rapidly escalating crisis of food
availability around the world has reached emergency proportions,” he told a
joint meeting of key UN financial, economic and trade institutions. Food security has become a major concern in
recent weeks as supplies of basic commodities have dwindled in the face of soaring
demand, triggering riots and outbursts of violence from Haiti to
Indonesia. Mr Ban’s appeal echoed World
Bank president Robert Zoellick’s warning the day before that a doubling of food
prices over the past three years could push 100 million people in developing
countries further into poverty and called on governments to tackle the
issue. “We need not only short-term
emergency measures to meet urgent needs and avert starvation in many regions
across the world, but also a significant increase in long-term productivity in
food production,” Mr Ban told the meeting.
The gathering brought together the UN Economic and Social Council, the
World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and the
UN Conference on Trade and Development. “The international community will also
need to take urgent and concerted action in order to avert the larger political
and security implications of this growing crisis,” the
secretary-general said. (The Canberra Times, April 16, 2008)
“Poor
left in lurch if world overheats” “THE world's richest countries,
which have contributed by far the most to the atmospheric changes linked to
global warming, are spending billions of dollars to limit their own risks from
its worst consequences, such as drought and rising seas. But despite long-standing treaty commitments
to help poor countries deal with warming, these industrial powers are spending
just tens of millions of dollars to limit climate and coastal hazards in the
world's most vulnerable regions - most of them overwhelmingly poor. On Friday, a report from the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that has been
assessing global warming since 1990, will underline this growing divide, say
scientists involved in writing the report. Wealthy nations far from the equator
will not only experience fewer effects, but will withstand them better, they
say.
Climate change will inflict steadily rising costs
that could become astronomical if greenhouse gas emissions rise unabated and
countries delay preparations for the likely impacts, the report will say. Two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions come
in nearly equal proportions from the US and Western European countries. These
and other wealthy nations are investing in windmill-powered desalination
plants, in flood barriers and floatable homes, and in grains and soybeans
genetically altered to flourish even in a drought. By contrast, Africa accounts for less than 3
per cent of the global emissions of carbon dioxide from fuel burning since 1900,
yet its 840 million people face some of the biggest risks from drought and
disrupted water supplies, according to the latest scientific assessments. As
the oceans swell with water from melting ice sheets, it is the crowded deltas
in southern Asia and Egypt, along with small island states, that are most at
risk. "Like the sinking of the
Titanic, catastrophes are not democratic," said Henry Miller, a fellow
with the Hoover Institution. "A much higher fraction of passengers from
the cheaper decks were lost. We'll see the same phenomenon with global
warming." Although rich countries
are hardly immune from drought and flooding, their wealth will largely insulate
them from harm, at least for the next generation or two, many experts say.
Cities in Australia, Texas and California, for example, are already building or
planning desalination plants. "The inequity of this whole situation is
really enormous if you look at who's responsible and who's suffering as a
result," said Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN climate panel. Dr Miller said the world should focus less on
trying to cut greenhouse gases rapidly and more on helping regions at risk
become more resilient. Relief organisations,
including Oxfam and the International Red Cross, foreseeing a world of
worsening climate-driven disasters, are turning their attention towards
projects such as expanding mangrove forests as a buffer against storm surges,
planting trees on slopes to prevent landslides and building shelters on high
ground. Industrialised countries bound
by the Kyoto Protocol, the climate pact rejected by the US and Australian
governments, project that hundreds of millions of dollars will soon flow via
that treaty into a climate adaptation fund.
But for now, the actual spending in adaptation projects in the world's
most vulnerable spots, totalling about $US40 million ($50 million) a year,
"borders on the derisory", said Kevin Watkins, the director of the UN
Human Development Report Office, which tracks factors affecting the quality of
life around the world. (Andrew Revkin in New York, Sydnet Morning Herald, April 2, 2007).
“Window closing on planet's chances” “A
sensitive report offers a sobering assessment of what kind of world to expect if
action on global warming is not taken soon, write Marian Wilkinson and Deborah
Smith. An Indian woman carries drinking water as she walks
on the dried-up Osman Sagar lake on the outskirts of Hyderabad, the capital of
the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, in a file picture. WORLD leaders must urgently deal with the
impact of climate change and stop it accelerating or it will be beyond the
capacity of humans to cope, a new report by a United Nations body of leading
scientific experts warns.
The report by
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose wording was agreed in
Brussels only yesterday after all-night disputes between scientists and
governments and last-minute objections from the US, China and Saudi Arabia over
wording and graphics, bluntly says: "Unmitigated climate change would, in
the long term, be likely to exceed the capacity of natural, managed and human
systems to adapt." The report
challenges world leaders to begin producing and costing plans to handle the
huge changes that will be wrought this century by global warming. It lays out the devastating effect around the
world from Australia to the Americas, Africa to Europe and the Pacific islands
to the polar regions if global temperature rises between 1.5 and 2.5 degrees.
In a sobering
assessment, the report finds this warming would mean "approximately 20 per
cent to 30 per cent of plant and animal species assessed so far are likely to
be at increased risk of extinction".
It also warns of malnutrition, water shortages, disease and injury from predicted increases in heatwaves, droughts, storms and other severe weather events. An author of the report, Kevin Hennessy, of CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, said it details the result of climate change on animals and plants in the oceans and on land. "It clearly shows that human activities are already affecting some natural systems. That's a very new finding." Dr Bryson Bates, director of the CSIRO Climate Program, another lead author, said this generation and the next would be affected by a warming world. "Climate change is real and the time to act is short. Adaptation to climate change is as important as the mitigation of greenhouse gases." The Great Barrier Reef is among the ecosystems likely to be hardest hit by rising sea temperatures and acidic oceans. Professor Terry Hughes, of James Cook University, who contributed to the report, said time was running out for coral reefs. "We have a narrow window of opportunity - no more than 20 years to achieve decisive cuts in greenhouse gases - to protect coral reefs from massive degradation," he said. The report by the panel is designed to help governments understand the effects of climate change and how to adapt to them.
It warns that "hundreds of millions of people
are vulnerable to flooding due to sea level rise", with millions more
facing increases in malnutrition, disease and injury as severe weather affects
farmland, infrastructure and coastal property.
The experts say the cost of climate change will
fall disproportionately on poor and developing nations in Africa and Asia where
governments will be unable to bear the brunt of the effects. Water shortages in Africa, the report says,
will "lead to large increases in the number of people at risk of water
scarcity" and increased risk of hunger.
In Asia, glacier melts in the Himalayas are virtually certain to
increase related flooding, rock avalanches and disruption of water
resources. The coastal areas in the big
Asian river deltas are "likely to be at greatest risk of increased
flooding from rivers and sea", while rises in temperature and changing
rainfall patterns "will increase the risk of hunger in Asia, especially in
developing countries". Small island
states, including those in the Pacific, face the highest relative increase in
risk from sea level rise, which will threaten vital infrastructure that
supports their communities.
Their water supplies "are likely to be
seriously compromised", the report says, and they will face a fall in
income from tourism.
Another of the authors, Professor Colin Woodroffe,
of the University of Wollongong, said coasts were already highly vulnerable to
a range of hazards, including tsunamis and cyclones. "Those hazards will
be exacerbated by climate change," he said.
Developed nations such as Australia and the US also
face severe challenges from drought, fires and inundation caused by sea-level
rises. One likely impact with be withdrawal on private insurance on coastal
properties. Australia faces increased
water security problems, the report finds. Areas of the coast, especially
Cairns and south-east Queensland, face increased risks from sea-level rises and
"increases in the severity and frequency of storms and coastal
flooding". The panel report calls
on the Government to identify how it can reduce the nation's vulnerability to
climate change, especially in "hot spot" regions like the
Murray-Darling Basin, south-east Queensland, Kakadu, the Queensland wet
tropics, the Snowy Mountains and the drought-prone south-west of Western
Australia. The draft summary noted that
many of these hot spots include World Heritage sites, but the Federal
Government had this reference cut during the process where every line of the
report's summary for policy makers is debated.
The report stresses that "more needs to be done" in Australia
to assess its vulnerability to climate change, and calls for priority to be
given to assessing the impact on infrastructure, agriculture, water, fisheries,
coastal communities, tourism and natural ecosystems. It finds the implications for Australia's
immigration and security are poorly understood as climate change begins to
affect the large Asia-Pacific populations.
It advocates a mix of strategies to cope with climate change, including
cutting greenhouse gases and adapting to change through technology,
infrastructure design and land use planning. (SMH, April 7, 2007).
“Migration killing planet”
“LONDON: The rising
number of people migrating from developing countries to over-populated Western
states in search of a better life is seriously damaging the planet, a
think-tank said yesterday. Governments and aid agencies should
encourage people to stay put rather than promoting migration, Optimum
Population Trust, a British group which campaigns for a sustainable population,
said. The think-tank told a British
parliamentary inquiry on population that parts of the planet damaged by climate
change, soil erosion and water shortages merely deteriorated further once their
inhabitants fled. Migrants also
typically increased their ecological footprint – the damage each person
inflicts on the environment – by moving from low-consuming to high-consuming
countries. The number of migrants
worldwide surged from 175 million to 185-192 million between 2000 and 2005,
with 30 million forced from their homes by a variety environmental factors
including floods, famine and over-population.
"The priority must surely be to prevent or cure environmental
damage, and help people to remain in their homes and communities, not abandon
damaged areas of the planet," the group said in a report. "Currently, however, excess immigration
into countries which are already densely populated can cause substantial
environmental damage and economic costs, the effects of which may not be seen
until the pressures on land and natural resources become intense," the
report warned. Britain, for example, is
more densely populated than China. England is the world's fourth most crowded
country behind Bangladesh, South Korea and The Netherlands with migration
accounting for more than 80 per cent of population growth.
OPT patron Professor Aubrey Manning said Britain was morally
obliged to accept some migrants "but we need immigration like we need a
hole in the head". (Deborah Haynes, The
Daily Telegraph, May 31, 2006)
The Energy
Challenge: The Cost of Coal” “HANJING, China — One of China's lesser-known exports
is a dangerous brew of soot, toxic chemicals and climate-changing gases from
the smokestacks of coal-burning power plants.
Previous
Articles in the Series Coal-burning
factories like the Gu Dian steel plant have given Shanxi Province in China a
Dickensian feel. In early April,
a dense cloud of pollutants over Northern China sailed to nearby Seoul,
sweeping along dust and desert sand before wafting across the Pacific. An
American satellite spotted the cloud as it crossed the West Coast. Researchers
in California, Oregon and Washington noticed specks of sulfur compounds, carbon
and other byproducts of coal combustion coating the silvery surfaces of their
mountaintop detectors. These microscopic particles can work their way deep into
the lungs, contributing to respiratory damage, heart disease and cancer.
Filters
near Lake Tahoe in the mountains of eastern California "are the darkest
that we've seen" outside smoggy urban areas, said Steven S. Cliff, an
atmospheric scientist at the University
of California at Davis.
Unless China finds a way to clean up its coal plants and the thousands
of factories that burn coal, pollution will soar both at home and abroad. The
increase in global-warming gases from China's coal use will probably exceed
that for all industrialized countries combined over the next 25 years,
surpassing by five times the reduction in such emissions that the Kyoto
Protocol seeks. The sulfur dioxide
produced in coal combustion poses an immediate threat to the health of China's
citizens, contributing to about 400,000 premature deaths a year. It also causes
acid rain that poisons lakes, rivers, forests and crops.
The
sulfur pollution is so pervasive as to have an extraordinary side effect that
is helping the rest of the world, but only temporarily: It actually slows global
warming. The tiny, airborne particles deflect the sun's hot rays
back into space. But the cooling effect
from sulfur is short-lived. By contrast, the carbon dioxide emanating from
Chinese coal plants will last for decades, with a cumulative warming effect
that will eventually overwhelm the cooling from sulfur and deliver another
large kick to global warming, climate scientists say. A warmer climate could
lead to rising sea levels, the spread of tropical diseases in previously
temperate climes, crop failures in some regions and the extinction of many
plant and animal species, especially those in polar or alpine areas. Coal is indeed China's double-edged sword —
the new economy's black gold and the fragile environment's dark cloud. Already, China uses more coal than the United
States, the European Union
and Japan combined. And it has increased coal consumption 14 percent in each of
the past two years in the broadest industrialization ever. Every week to 10
days, another coal-fired power plant opens somewhere in China that is big
enough to serve all the households in Dallas or San Diego. To make matters
worse, India is right behind China in stepping up its construction of
coal-fired power plants — and has a population expected to outstrip China's by
2030. Aware of the country's growing
reliance on coal and of the dangers from burning so much of it, China's leaders
have vowed to improve the nation's energy efficiency. No one thinks that effort
will be enough. To make a big improvement in emissions of global-warming gases
and other pollutants, the country must install the most modern equipment —
equipment that for the time being must come from other nations. Industrialized countries could help by
providing loans or grants, as the Japanese government and the World Bank
have done, or by sharing technology. But Chinese utilities have in the past
preferred to buy cheap but often-antiquated equipment from well connected
domestic suppliers instead of importing costlier gear from the West.
The
Chinese government has been reluctant to approve the extra spending. Asking
customers to shoulder the bill would set back the government's efforts to
protect consumers from inflation and to create jobs and social stability. But
each year China defers buying advanced technology, older equipment goes into
scores of new coal-fired plants with a lifespan of up to 75 years. "This
is the great challenge they have to face," said David Moskovitz, an energy
consultant who advises the Chinese government. "How can they continue
their rapid growth without plunging the environment into the abyss?"
(Keith Brasher and David Barboza, New
York Times, June 11, 2006)
“Backyard
answer to energy crisis” “A return to 1950s suburbia
may be the answer to our needs in a low-energy future, writes Fran Molloy. With crude oil now more than
$US110 a barrel and the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries
announcing this month that it will not succumb to demands for raised production
quotas, dark predictions of an imminent descent into a global energy crisis
appear to be coming true. But the
permaculture co-founder David Holmgren, who has been warning of such events for
decades, believes the energy crisis heralds the beginning of a low-energy
future - a future that may involve a return to 1950s suburbia. These days Holmgren is a quietly spoken
farmer in his 50s, his ponytail the only hint of the radical visionary behind
the frameless spectacles. Thirty years
ago Holmgren was a university student who came up with the concept of
permaculture, a blindingly simple idea: why not design our living spaces so
that human needs for food, water and shelter imitated natural self-sustaining
ecosystems?
Bill Mollison, a university lecturer who had worked as a wildlife biologist and helped to start the Tasmanian Organic Gardening and Farming Society, was Holmgren's mentor and co-creator of the idea. Leaving as dux of his Fremantle high school in 1973 to hitch-hike around Australia, Holmgren became fascinated by a growing culture of self-sufficiency that he saw; ecological building, alternative technology and organic gardening gathered momentum, spurred on by the oil crisis. He enrolled in the revolutionary Environmental Design School in Tasmania, which he calls the most radical experiment in tertiary education in Australia's history. With no fixed timetable or curriculum, it was the perfect environment in which to devise something as divergent as permaculture, which borrowed from landscape architecture, ecology and agriculture. In 1978 Holmgren and Mollison published Permaculture One, describing their research in detail. Human ecosystems could harvest and recycle water; they could plant food in companion plantings, generating self-renewing food forests, they could use animals to provide food and manage pests and weeds and fertilise gardens. There was a flood of interest from all over the world and Holmgren, an inexperienced 23-year-old, was happy to leave it to Mollison to spread the word. Spread the word he did, travelling to more than 120 countries, publishing further texts and founding the Permaculture Institute, which gave qualifications to thousands of future permaculture teachers. "While I was the co-originator of the concept, I definitely describe Bill Mollison as the founder of the permaculture movement," Holmgren says. Though he and Mollison remain close, their paths have diverged widely.
While Mollison
became the public face of permaculture, Holmgren wanted to ground his
theoretical ideas in practice. He left university without completing his higher
degree, working with a builder friend to learn some self-sufficiency skills.
Holmgren moved to a remote valley in northern Tasmania where he grew food,
learning skills in hunting, forestry, building and agriculture. His mother had moved to Wyndham, on the South
Coast of NSW, aiming to become self-sufficient. Holmgren helped her develop her
property, which became a permaculture case study. Holmgren says he has been influenced by the
ecologist Haikai Tane. He went to New Zealand to work with him in 1979.
"In a way I was putting myself through a permanent training course for
permaculture design consultancy - which has really been my continuous, if
small, livelihood over many years."
Holmgren and his
partner, Su Dennett, now live on a small farm near Daylesford in Victoria,
where they grow most of their own food, selling and swapping the excess with
neighbours. The one-hectare property
supports chickens, geese and goats, a small dam hosts fish and yabbies, and
more than 100 fruit and nut trees supply produce. While permaculture in the 1970s focused on
the suburbs, with edible front-yard landscapes, chooks in the backyard and food
trees on the streets, by the mid-1980s most advocates had moved to rural
properties, with a global return to cheap energy and strong conservative
politics making "hippy" a four-letter word. But the modern consumer-driven lifestyle is
driving families mad, with moves back to sustainable living, where Holmgren
believes suburbs may hold the key.
"It's technically possible that the traditional older suburbs could
actually produce all of the food needed to sustain the people living
there," he says. "The amount
of open space - both public and private space in backyards - means that you've
got a population density not that much greater than some of the densest
traditional agricultural landscapes in the world." It is a return to the 1950s, Holmgren adds.
Traditionally, broad-scale agriculture provided basic grains and staples, but
in most countries gardening provided a huge part of the perishable food
supply. "The suburbs offer an
opportunity for people to gain more food security and social insurance at home
and in their neighbourhood than in systems where everything is dependent on the
government and corporations managing to keep the supply lines of everything
running smoothly." Rebuilding the
structure of the community is an important part of retrofitting the
suburbs. "Without saying anything,
we can create a revolution in society; I can exchange some food with you and we
can direct the roof run-off from your shed into our water tank and then you can
have some of that water back." In 2006 Holmgren joined the US peak oil
commentator Richard Heinberg on a speaking tour around Australian cities.
"It was like a rock'n'roll road show. I've never done anything like that
before," he reflects. Holmgren
joins many other luminaries in the permaculture world, including Mollison and
Professor Tane, over the Easter weekend at a conference celebrating the
movement's 30th anniversary. (Fran Molloy, Sydney
Morning Herald, March 19, 2008).
“School pupils
all pumped up to do their bit” “THE children at Lapstone Public School have no use
for watering cans and buckets - they use pedal power to water their organic
vegetable gardens. Every week students
take turns atop a rusty red exercise bike, pedalling to pump water from the
school's rainwater tank to the garden beds a few metres away. Until last year an electric pump did the job,
but a local garden co-ordinator, Kristin Wohlers, knew there had to be a
greener way. One evening she spotted an
old bike on a pile of junk left out for a council collection. With the help of
a retired engineer and a couple of year 6 boys, Ms Wohlers installed the
innovative new pump. "In the end
the bike pump cost less than $30, and the kids climb over each other to have a
go every time we garden," she says. "We've killed two birds with one
stone - it's environmentally friendly and it just burns through the kids'
excess energy."
Parents set up
an organic permaculture garden at Lapstone in 2003. Now every class has a plot,
and gardening generates almost as much excitement as lunchtime. However, it is not being outside or getting
their hands dirty that the children really enjoy.
"The best
part about gardening is eating," says Anna Thieben, 6. "I like to eat
the peas and the lettuce the most because they're really yummy." Twice a year the children harvest their crop
of tomatoes, capsicums, celery, lettuce, basil, parsley, carrots, peas, corn
and potatoes, and parents cook a sumptuous organic feast for the students to share. A parent volunteer, Gina Cirillo, a doctor,
says this is the biggest benefit of the garden.
"A lot of kids haven't even seen some of these vegetables
before," she says.
"The garden
shows them that food doesn't always have to come processed and packaged.
Healthy, fresh food is available, and they can grow it themselves." Cirillo says growing their own veggies was a
good way for children to overcome their fear of "green things".
"Kids that
wouldn't normally touch anything green are happy to eat raw spinach, parsley
and even bitter cos lettuce at school," she says. "As a doctor I try to foster healthy
eating, and this is a great way to teach kids to enjoy healthy food."
The garden has
also made the children more environmentally aware. "Gardening has brought up environmental
issues that the kids probably wouldn't have even thought of otherwise,"
Wohlers says. "They've learnt to
reuse scraps from morning tea and lunch to make compost, that littering is
wrong and the importance of not wasting water and electricity." And they are taking these lessons home.
Benjamin Green, 11, shares everything he learns in the garden with his
family. "We're really careful not
to waste water and power at home now. I think all schools should have gardens
so all kids get the chance to learn how to look after the environment, because
it's the only one we've got."
“Has your school gone green?” (Kerry Coleman, Sydney Morning Herald, March 19, 2008).
“Russians
Suspected in Shooting of Kremlin Critic Near D.C.” “One year ago, Kremlin critic Paul Joyal
was gunned down in the driveway of his suburban Maryland home. The case remains
unsolved — but some see the hand of Russia in the shooting. Joyal, 53, is the former chief of security
for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a former business partner
of retired Soviet KGB Gen. Oleg Kalugin.
In February 2007, Joyal appeared on NBC’s “Dateline” and accused the
Kremlin of seeking to silence its critics abroad. Joyal said he suspected the regime of Russian
President Vladimir Putin was involved in the assassination of dissident former
Russian intelligence agent Alexander Litvinenko, who died from a dose of the
rare radioactive Isotope polonium-210 in London in 2006. On March 1, 2007, four days after his
“Dateline” appearance, Joyal was returning to his home in Adelphi, Md., after
meeting with Kalugin in Washington, D.C. As he stepped out of his car in his
driveway, two men jumped out of nearby bushes. One grabbed him from behind, and
Joyal was shot in the abdomen. He spent
the next 20 days in an induced coma and underwent five operations to repair the
damage to his intestines, Congressional Quarterly reports. Prince George County police considered the
shooting a random street crime. But Karl
Milligan, a retired Prince George County police detective who knows Joyal,
thinks otherwise. For one thing, Milligan noted that Joyal’s home is located in
a remote subdivision with no drive-through traffic. “It’s so secluded you’d hardly know anybody
lived there,” Milligan, who spent decades in homicide before becoming chief of
the intelligence unit, told CQ. “Crime
was very low there and still is. There were no [violent] incidents prior” to
the attack and none since. What’s more,
Joyal’s assailants ran off after the shooting without taking his wallet,
computer, briefcase or car.
Kalugin told CG: “Why were they
waiting for him? That’s not how robbers act. There are dozens of houses in the
neighborhood. Why would they pick his? And why would they wait for him in the
bushes at the house?”
The day after Joyal was shot, Russian
journalist Ivan Safronov fell to his death from his 5th-story window in Moscow.
“A military correspondent for the
daily Kommersant, Safronov was working on a story about the Kremlin’s furtive
sale of anti-aircraft missiles to Iran and jet fighters to Syria,” said
journalist Alex Shoumatoff. The FBI was
briefly involved in the Joyal case, but did not pursue it for long. Paul Goble, a U.S. government specialist on
Soviet and post-Soviet states, told CG:
“If the Russians were behind the
attack on Paul Joyal, then they crossed a line that they had not [crossed]
earlier even in Soviet times — attacking a native-born American citizen on
American territory.” (News
Max Media, Feb. 26, 2008).
“Retire the term ‘Old Testament’” “A few weeks ago I attended the annual dinner of
the National Bible Association, which admirably seeks to promote the reading of
the Bible across the United States. I was seated at a table with other Orthodox
rabbis, one of whom had kindly invited me. Things did not go smoothly. One
of the honorees was a Jewish-born Christian chaplain from the armed forces who
spoke of his conversion away from Judaism and how he had chosen Jesus as his
personal Messiah. Fair enough. People
are free to believe what they want and, sadly, there are Jews who, sometimes
out of ignorance of their own faith, find their spiritual home in Christianity.
But what bothered me more was how one Christian clergyman after another got up
and spoke of their admiration for "the Old Testament." It had a bad
ring to it. "New" connotes vibrant, alive and fresh. "Old"
brings to mind stodgy, musty and out-of-date.
I am a rabbi who enjoys an extremely warm relationship with the
Christian community and has the highest admiration for my Christian brothers
and sisters. And I had, of course, heard and read the phrase "Old
Testament" on countless occasions. But that night something about the
phrase grated. To be sure, Christians
have used the expression for millennia to portray the Jews, in whose stubbornness
Jesus was rejected, as God's old, forsaken people; while Christians, who
embrace the savior, are the "new" Israel. But this organization's
mandate was to promote a love for the Bible and instill within the American
breast an appreciation of its wisdom and values. Would they be successful if
they referred to 70 percent of it as something turgid and dreary? WERE THE speakers who lauded the wondrous
values contained in the "Old Testament" not aware of how they
contradicted themselves by referring to the Hebrew Bible as obsolete? The time
has come for our Christian brothers and sisters to finally retire the "Old
Testament" pejorative and begin referring to Jewish scripture as "the
Hebrew Bible," in contradistinction to the "The Christian
Bible," which is what the New Testament is.
We live in an age when we
have begun cleaning up the language of so many past slights. We no longer call
twentysomething women "girls" or "gals." We no longer
insultingly refer to Native Americans as Redskins, or to African-Americans as
Negroes. Why, then, would our Christian brothers and sisters unnecessarily
refer to our Bible as "Old?"
Can we really be successful in promoting biblical values in America,
most of which are based on Hebrew Scripture (as opposed to the New Testament),
when we look at those scriptures as having been rejected because of their
irrelevance? You can't have it both ways; insisting, on the one hand, that
America is based on the principles of the "Old Testament," which
suggests an eternal relevance, while describing those same scriptures as
archaic and prehistoric. This follows a
much broader need for Christian reexamination. Christianity is one of the
world's greatest religions, and it has brought the knowledge of God and the
Bible to more people than any other. But it has always suffered from a critical
flaw, namely, its claim to a copyright on all spiritual truth.
NO DOCTRINE has done more
harm to Christianity that its insistence on the uselessness of other religions.
And this doctrine of exclusivity lies in stark contrast to the incredible
humanity one otherwise finds among believing Christians.
In New York City on
December 8, our Jewish Values Network will host a high-powered discussion
featuring leaders in politics, media and the arts debating whether religion is
a blessing or a curse to America. Truth be told, it is both. On the one hand, religion is the source of
America's most cherished values, none more so than religion's emphasis on the
infinite value of human life. The Bible is what inspired a faith-based army to
fight on behalf of a severely mentally-handicapped woman named Terry Schaivo.
The elders of Sparta
would carefully inspect newborn infants and, if they were judged to be weakly,
would cast them into a chiasm off Mount Taygetos. The Romans behaved similarly
with adults of significant mental disability, throwing them from the Tarpeian
Rock.
By contrast, a Godly
America declared on its most famous monument, the Statue of Liberty, that it
embraced the "poor, your huddled masses... the wretched refuse of your
teeming shore." But somehow, in a
rejection of biblical values, Terry Schaivo's life did not even rise to the
level of "wretched refuse," and she was condemned to the monstrosity
of death by starvation in the richest country on earth. Such are the
consequences of rejecting religion and its value-system. ON THE other hand, religion has become the
single most divisive issue in our country, inspiring a culture war of Right and
Left. This was never necessary. People can disagree on abortion and gay rights
without assassinating each other's character.
Religion can use the power of rational argument and win over its
critics, but not when it insists on wholly irrational and immoral doctrines,
such as the conviction that whoever lacks belief is going straight to hell.
That our evangelical brothers and sisters continue to insist that irrespective
of a non-Christian's righteous actions he or she is going to burn forever
because of a wrong belief seems utterly incompatible with the lofty ideal of Christian
love. Jews can be guilty of the same
sin. We sometimes hear religious Jews speak of "goyim," a word that,
while meaning "nation," has also assumed a pejorative connotation and
should therefore likewise be retired. We
even sometimes hear religious Jews speak of the superiority of the Jewish to
the non-Jewish soul, in direct contradiction to the biblical declaration that
all humans are created equally in the image of God. Chosenness has never meant that Jews are better than any
other people. Precisely the opposite is true: The Jews are chosen to bring the
light of God to all nations as a permanent reminder that God loves and values
all his human children, and wishes for them all to share in the bounty and
glory of His light. That is the
cornerstone of all religious belief. It comes from the Hebrew Bible, and there
is nothing old about it. (Lekarev
Report, Nov.27, 2007).
“Stalin's Jews: We mustn't forget
that some of greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish”
“Here's a
particularly forlorn historical date: Almost 90 years ago, between the 19th and
20th of December 1917, in the midst of the Bolshevik revolution and civil war,
Lenin signed a decree calling for the establishment of The All-Russian
Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, also
known as Cheka. Within a short period
of time, Cheka became the largest and cruelest state security organization. Its
organizational structure was changed every few years, as were its names: From
Cheka to GPU, later to NKVD, and later to KGB. We cannot know with certainty
the number of deaths Cheka was responsible for in its various manifestations,
but the number is surely at least 20 million, including victims of the forced
collectivization, the hunger, large purges, expulsions, banishments,
executions, and mass death at Gulags.
Whole population strata were eliminated: Independent farmers, ethnic
minorities, members of the bourgeoisie, senior officers, intellectuals,
artists, labor movement activists, "opposition members" who were
defined completely randomly, and countless members of the Communist party
itself. In his new, highly praised book "The War of the World,
"Historian Niall Ferguson writes that no revolution in the history of
mankind devoured its children with the same unrestrained appetite as did the
Soviet revolution. In his book on the Stalinist purges, Tel Aviv University's
Dr. Igal Halfin writes that Stalinist violence was unique in that it was
directed internally.
Lenin, Stalin,
and their successors could not have carried out their deeds without wide-scale
cooperation of disciplined "terror officials," cruel interrogators,
snitches, executioners, guards, judges, perverts, and many bleeding hearts who
were members of the progressive Western Left and were deceived by the Soviet
regime of horror and even provided it with a kosher certificate.
All these things are well-known to some extent or another, even though the former
Soviet Union's archives have not yet been fully opened to the public. But who
knows about this? Within Russia itself, very few people have been brought to
justice for their crimes in the NKVD's and KGB's service. The Russian public
discourse today completely ignores the question of "How could it have
happened to us?" As opposed to Eastern European nations, the Russians did
not settle the score with their Stalinist past.
And us, the
Jews? An Israeli student finishes high school without ever hearing the name
"Genrikh Yagoda," the greatest Jewish murderer of the 20th Century,
the GPU's deputy commander and the founder and commander of the NKVD. Yagoda
diligently implemented Stalin's collectivization orders and is responsible for
the deaths of at least 10 million people. His Jewish deputies established and
managed the Gulag system. After Stalin no longer viewed him favorably, Yagoda
was demoted and executed, and was replaced as chief hangman in 1936 by Yezhov,
the "bloodthirsty dwarf. "Yezhov was not Jewish but was blessed with
an active Jewish wife. In his Book "Stalin: Court of the Red Star",
Jewish historian Sebag Montefiore writes that during the darkest period of
terror, when the Communist killing machine worked in full force, Stalin was surrounded
by beautiful, young Jewish women.
Stalin's close
associates and loyalists included member of the Central Committee and Politburo
Lazar Kaganovich. Montefiore characterizes him as the "first
Stalinist" and adds that those starving to death in Ukraine, an unparalleled
tragedy in the history of human kind aside from the Nazi horrors and Mao's
terror in China, did not move Kaganovich. Many Jews sold their soul to the
devil of the Communist revolution and have blood on their hands for eternity.
We'll mention just one more: Leonid Reichman, head of the NKVD's special
department and the organization's chief interrogator, who was a particularly
cruel sadist. In 1934, according to
published statistics, 38.5 percent of those holding the most senior posts in
the Soviet security apparatuses were of Jewish origin. They too, of course,
were gradually eliminated in the next purges. In a fascinating lecture at a Tel
Aviv University convention this week, Dr. Halfin described the waves of soviet
terror as a "carnival of mass murder," "fantasy of purges",
and "essianism of evil." Turns out that Jews too, when they become
captivated by messianic ideology, can become great murderers, among the
greatest known by modern history. The
Jews active in official communist terror apparatuses (In the Soviet Union and
abroad) and who at times led them, did not do this, obviously, as Jews, but
rather, as Stalinists, communists, and "Soviet people." Therefore, we
find it easy to ignore their origin and "play dumb": What do we have
to do with them? But let's not forget them. My own view is different. I find it
unacceptable that a person will be considered a member of the Jewish people
when he does great things, but not considered part of our people when he does
amazingly despicable things. Even if we
deny it, we cannot escape the Jewishness of "our hangmen," who served
the Red Terror with loyalty and dedication from its establishment. After all,
others will always remind us of their origin. (Andrei Bădin, Communism, www.badin.ro, Jan 8, 2008).
“The Whole World Hates
You” “From his spacious apartment overlooking the glamorous Dominique Street
in Paris, Boutros Boutros Ghali has leveled an unprecedented offensive
against Israel. It's hard to hear such severe criticism from one of the
architects of Israel's first peace agreement-the 1977 Camp David Accords with
Egypt-but Ghali has no intentions of hiding his anger with Israel behind
diplomatic formalities. "After 30
years, I don't see even a centimeter of progress," Ghali said in an
interview with Yedioth Ahronoth. "It's completely possible to say that
people hate you-not only in Egypt, but throughout the entire Arab world."
The former UN Secretary General says he
cannot think of any reason to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Egyptian
President Anwar Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem - far from it. Ghali's
blame for the failure to promote Arab-Israeli peace falls squarely on one
recipient: Israel. As far as he is concerned, all the problems of the Middle
East are Israel's fault.
He attacks Israel for peace negotiation
failures, defends the Iranian nuclear program and protests that the whole world
complains about suicide bombings but is silent on IDF targeted killings. But
the forner UN Secretary General refuses to distinguish between suicide
bombers who kill and maim innocent civilians and the defensive operations
against known terrorists who seek to kill even more Jews.
Very curiously, The former UN Secretary
General shares his elegant Paris apartment with his Jewish wife, Leah.
The two are the same age. They met in 1956 and married after a whirlwind
romance. Leah is a descendant of a Romanian family that immigrated to
Alexandria, Egypt. She has never been interviewed and has never visited Israel.
"She keeps a low profile," her husband says. When asked if he ever ran into difficulties
for being married to a Jew, Ghali's face hardened as he responded: "I
never had any trouble at all, in my eyes Leah although from a Jewish
background, is more Catholic since she spent more time in Catholic schools then
in Jewish ones."
“Nuclear Bunkers Being Built” “According to a
report this morning, a nuclear bunker is being built in the Prime Minister's
official residence in Jerusalem and another one is being built in another
location in Jerusalem to house government officials in case of nuclear
attack. Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Prime Minister, refused to comment
on the report other than to say, "Obviously all governments have the
responsibility to ensure the ongoing and efficient functioning of the
government in crisis situations." A
bunker under the building where the Prime Minister's office is located has
recently been renovated, prepared for leading government ministers to convene
in case of nuclear attack. According to
this morning's report, the other bunker is being built in the Jerusalem hills
on the edge of the city and will be accessible via tunnels beneath the major
government offices in central Jerusalem. (Lekarev Report, Dec. 20, 2007).
“Sudanese teddy
saga lays bare Islamic inferiority complex” “That the British teacher Gillian
Gibbons required a presidential pardon to avoid 15 days' imprisonment in Sudan
for blasphemy over the naming of a teddy bear surely represents the high
watermark of absurdity in relations between the Muslim and Western worlds. Even
Samuel Huntington, as he theorised of an impending clash of civilisations late
last century, could not have foreseen an odyssey so surreal. The story begins normally enough. Gibbons
introduced her seven-year-old students to a teddy bear they would each take
home throughout the year, in the manner of a class pet. Asked to name it, the
children chose "Muhammad". Gibbons wrote to parents to inform them of
the activity. Of course, none objected. Then one day, the police came to call,
arresting Gibbons for "insulting religion". At this point, flabbergasting mysteries
abound. Why would the alleged blasphemy be Gibbons's when it was the children
who chose the name? And perhaps more fundamentally, what is so offensive about
a teddy bear named Muhammad? Certainly, it is the name of the greatest prophet
in the Islamic tradition, but it is also the most popular name in the world,
and a very common one in Sudan. Indeed, one of Gibbons's students says the bear
was named after him. There is no evidence the children intended the teddy bear
to be some prophetic representation, and even in the bizarre event that it was,
it is scarcely the most offensive representation one could imagine. This is not
remotely akin to the Danish cartoons. Perhaps if the name had been chosen for a
pig … Nonetheless, after Gibbons's
imprisonment last week, protesters shrieked that it was not enough. They
insisted, with unfathomable idiocy, that she be put to death. Some even
specified that it should be by firing squad. "No tolerance -
execution," they chanted as they turned the arrest into a matter of
geopolitics: "Shame, shame on the UK."
And here, it
seems, is the key to this unmitigated farce. Had Gibbons been Sudanese, or just
non-Western, there would be no controversy here. Indeed Muslims have not
generally been averse to naming their toys (and their children) with the names
of prophets. For years, the Islamic Society in Britain sold a soft toy named
"Adam the Prayer Bear", while in the US, a Muslim multimedia
organisation continues to produce children's videos starring a Muppet-like
character also named "Adam" - the name of Islam's first prophet. This
saga ultimately has nothing to do with teddy bears, and everything to do with
anti-Western sentiment - a fact most nakedly revealed by the collective
response of senior Sudanese clerics, who branded Gibbons's conduct "a
calculated action and another ring in the circles of plotting against
Islam". This
discourse is deeply implausible, especially when you consider Gibbons's love
for the Sudanese people and long-term desire to assist with their education.
This kind of response discloses a siege mentality; one that must position the
Muslim world as the victim in a global - but particularly Western - conspiracy
against it. As a corollary, the West must have a singularly oppressive role in
the conspiratorial imagination. It exists to repress Muslims, and makes its
policy decisions only to undermine Islam, as though the West has no independent
interests of its own. There is arrogance
in this assumption that the humiliation of Muslims must be the central goal of
others, but more deeply it is the expression of an inferiority complex. Such
stifling paranoia is not a trait of the confident, but of the humiliated. The
result is a disposition that is avid for scandal, a seemingly incurable
desperation to be offended, and to pin the blame on Western civilisation. By
responding violently to such offence, the humiliated feel a sense of
faux-empowerment. They rehabilitate their status by lashing out.
Accordingly, the
evidence on which they do so is usually flimsy. During the Danish cartoons
furore, protesters in Pakistan burnt effigies of George Bush and set fire to a
KFC as they denounced the "American cartoons". Just over a year ago,
we witnessed pseudo-clerics calling for the Pope to be killed for daring to
suggest Islam is inherently violent - indicating that they had utterly failed
to grasp his meaning.
It is, of
course, the tiniest of minorities that engage in this sort of behaviour. Many
Muslim groups have condemned each of these outbursts, just as they called for
Gibbons's release. Even Muslim Facebook groups formed in her cause. But the
problem for the Muslim world is that this splinter faction is so loud it is
defining the Muslim public image.
Ultimately, it is Muslims who have the most to
lose. Perpetual victimhood, though an emotional balm, is disempowering and
self-fulfilling. By clinging to it, and even imagining ourselves victims when
we are not, we are ultimately victimising ourselves.” (Waleed
Aly, Sydney Morning
Herald, Dec. 6, 2007; Waleed Aly is author of People Like Us: How
Arrogance Is Dividing
Islam And The West (Picador)).
“One Brave Woman: Arab Psychologist Blasts Muslims” “An Arab-American psychologist, Wafa Sultan, appeared live on the Al-Jazeera Arab
satellite network, where she confronted an Egyptian Islamic cleric, and declared
that "the clash we are witnessing around the world is a clash between a
mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to
the 21st century." The February TV appearance, which has been widely
circulated around the internet, was made available by the Arabic translation
service MEMRI. "It is a clash
between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive,
between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and
oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human
rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It
is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them
like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations.
Civilizations do not clash, but compete," the psychologist stated.
Responding to the host's question, "Who came up with the concept of a
clash of civilizations? Was it not Samuel Huntington? It was not Bin
Laden," Sultan said: "The Muslims are the ones who began using
this expression. The Muslims are the ones who began the clash of civilizations.
The Prophet of Islam said: 'I was ordered to fight the people until they
believe in Allah and His Messenger.' When the Muslims divided the people into
Muslims and non-Muslims, and called to fight the others until they believe in
what they themselves believe, they started this clash, and began this war. In
order to start this war, they must reexamine their Islamic books and curricula,
which are full of calls for takfir and fighting the infidels." Speaking
about Jewish history, Sultan declared: "The Jews have come from the
tragedy (of the Holocaust), and forced the world to respect them, with their
knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not their crying and
yelling. Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th
centuries to Jewish scientists. 15 million people, scattered throughout the
world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge. We have not seen
a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single
Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people.
The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble." “We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down
a Mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy. Only the Muslims defend their
beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying embassies.
This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they
can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them," she
added. The New York Times has reported
that since appearing on Al-Jazeera, Sultan has been condemned by Islamic
clerics, and been subject to death threats left on her answering phone. The Los
Angeles Times quoted Sultan after the interview as saying: "I am not
against Muslim people, they are my people. I am just trying to change their
mentality and their behavior. (The Lekarev Report, March 13, 2006)
“Charles
takes crusade for Islam to Washington” “London: Prince Charles will try to persuade President George Bush of the
merits of Islam this week because he thinks the US has been intolerant of the religion
since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The Prince, who leaves tomorrow for an
eight-day tour of the US, has said privately that he is concerned about the
US's "confrontational" approach to Muslim countries and its failure
to appreciate Islam's strengths. Charles
raised his concerns when he met senior Muslims in London in November 2001, two
months after the attacks.
"I find the
language and rhetoric coming from America too confrontational," a leader
at the meeting quoted him as saying.
Khalid Mahmood,
a Labour MP who was also at the meeting at St James's Palace, said: "His
criticism of America was a general one - of the Americans not having the
appreciation we have for Islam and its culture."
Other Muslims
present stressed that Prince Charles did not criticise the US-led invasion of
Afghanistan in October 2001, Mr Mahmoud said.
More recently, Charles has been careful not to express his views on
Iraq. The Prince also spoke of his sympathy for the US after the 2001 terrorist
attacks, which killed nearly 3000 people. He said he wanted to promote better
relations between the different religions of the world. Those present at the meeting in 2001 included
Sir Iqbal Sacrani, the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, and
Hashir Faruqi, the chief editor of Impact International, a respected
Islamic affairs magazine. Charles wants
Americans - including Mr Bush - to share his fondness for Islam. He has agreed
to attend a seminar on religions at Georgetown University, Washington, on Thursday.
"The
seminar will look at how faith groups can alleviate social problems in their
community," an aide said. Charles
and his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, will attend functions with the Bushes at
the White House on Wednesday.” (The
Telegraph, London, October 31, 2005).
“Bible-store
owner riddled with bullets” “Islamic terrorist pegged for
allegedly torturing, killing Christians”
JERUSALEM – A senior Hamas militant is suspected of
torturing and killing the manager of a Christian bookstore in the Gaza Strip
who was found dead last month, according to Palestinian security
officials. The body of Rami Ayyad, who
managed the only Christian bookstore in Gaza, was discovered last month riddled
with gunshot and stab wounds. Ayyad, a Baptist, was accused by Gaza-based
Islamic groups of engaging in missionary activities. His bookstore, owned by
the Palestinian Bible Society, was firebombed in April after which he told
relatives he received numerous death threats from Islamists. The day of his
abduction, Ayyad reportedly said he was being followed by a car that had no
license plates. Security officials associated with Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization told WND yesterday there is
information Ashraf Abu Layla, the central Gaza chief of Hamas' so-called
military wing, the Izz al-Din Al Qassam Brigades, was behind the murder which
is widely viewed as an anti-Christian attack. The security officials said Hamas
forces closed the investigation into the death of Ayyad in spite of what they
said was evidence of Layla's involvement.
A Hamas spokesman denied the accusation while a top member of Hamas'
"military wing," contacted by WND and speaking on condition of
anonymity, would neither confirm nor deny his group was behind the Ayyad killing. Hamas and Fatah have been at odds since last
June, when Hamas took complete control of the Gaza Strip, seizing all
U.S.-backed Fatah security compounds. Last month, WND quoted
witnesses stating Ayyad was publicly tortured a few blocks from his
store before he was shot to death. The
witnesses said they saw three armed men, two of whom were wearing masks, beat
Ayyad repeatedly with clubs and the butts of their guns while they accused him
of attempting to spread Christianity in Gaza. The witnesses said that after
sustaining the beating, Ayyad was shot by all three men. Ayyad left behind a pregnant wife and two
young children. No group has taken responsibility for the attack.
“Christians warned: Accept Islamic law” “Sheik Abu Saqer, leader of Jihadia
Salafiya, an Islamic outreach movement that recently announced the opening of a
"military wing" to enforce Muslim law in Gaza, told WND in a recent
interview all Christians in Gaza engaged in missionary activity will be
"dealt with harshly." Jihadia
Salafiya, allied with Hamas, is suspected of a slew of Islamist attacks,
including firebombing Internet cafes and one in May against a United Nations
school in Gaza after it allowed boys and girls to participate in the same
sporting event. One person was killed in that attack. When Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip
in June, there were widespread fears it would impose hardline Islamic rule in
the territory, and that life for Christians might deteriorate. About 3,000 Christians live in the Gaza
Strip, which has a population of over 1 million. Immediately after Hamas' Gaza coup, Abu Saqer
told WND in an exclusive interview Christians could continue living safely in
the Gaza Strip only if they accepted Islamic law, including a ban on alcohol
and on women roaming publicly without proper head coverings. "[Now that Hamas is in power,] the
situation has changed 180 degrees in Gaza," said Abu Saqer, speaking from
Gaza. "Jihadia Salafiya and other
Islamic movements will ensure Christian schools and institutions show publicly
what they are teaching to be sure they are not carrying out missionary
activity," he said. Abu Saqer
accused the leadership of the Gaza Christian community of "proselytizing
and trying to convert Muslims with funding from American
evangelicals." "This
missionary activity is endangering the entire Christian community in
Gaza," he said. Abu Saqer claimed
there was "no need" for the thousands of Christians in Gaza to
maintain a large number of institutions in the territory. He said Hamas "must work to impose an
Islamic rule or it will lose the authority it has and the will of the
people." (Aaron Klein, WorldNetDaily.com,
Nov. 12, 2007).
And to think that
Gaza survives only because of generous donations of Christian nations. They
don’t want Christians in their land; they just want Christian money. These are
the people with whom Israel is expected to make peace.
Does anyone still
doubts why the anger of the Lord is raised against those people, and why Gaza
will become a land without inhabitants?
No less than four warnings of doom has the Almighty given against that
land of ingratitude, terror, bloodshed, and blasphemy.
Amo 1:6 Thus says
the LORD: "For three transgressions of
Gaza, and for four, I will not turn away its punishment,
Because they took captive the whole captivity To deliver them up to Edom.
But I will send a fire upon the wall of Gaza,
Amo 1:7 Which shall devour its palaces. I will cut off the inhabitant from Ashdod,
And the one who holds the scepter from Ashkelon;
Amo 1:8
I will turn My hand against Ekron, And the remnant of the Philistines shall
perish," Says the Lord GOD.
Zep 2:4 For
Gaza shall be forsaken, And
Ashkelon desolate; They shall drive out Ashdod at noonday, And Ekron shall be
uprooted.
Zep 2:5 Woe to the inhabitants of the seacoast, The
nation of the Cherethites! The word of the LORD is
against you, O Canaan, land of the Philistines: "I will destroy you; So
there shall be no inhabitant."
Zep 2:6 The seacoast shall be pastures, With shelters
for shepherds and folds for flocks.
Zep 2:7 The coast shall be for the remnant of the
house of Judah; They shall feed their
flocks there; In the houses of Ashkelon they shall lie down at evening. For the
LORD their God will intervene for them, And return their captives.
Zec 9:5 Ashkelon
shall see it and fear; Gaza also shall
be very sorrowful; And Ekron, for He dried up her expectation. The king shall
perish from Gaza, And Ashkelon shall not be inhabited.
Zec 9:6 "A mixed race shall settle in Ashdod,
And I will cut off the pride of the Philistines.
Zec 9:7 I will take away the blood from his mouth,
And the abominations from between his teeth. But he who remains, even he shall be for our God, And shall be like a leader
in Judah, And Ekron like a Jebusite.
Zec 9:8 I will camp around My house Because of the
army, Because of him who passes by and him who returns. No more shall an
oppressor pass through them, For now I have seen with My eyes.”
“Palestinian Children’s
‘Heaven’” “After a three year absence, Palestinian television
re- aired a clip featuring Palestinian child Mohammed a- Dura, calling to other
children to join him in a shaheed heaven for children. The dramatic heart-
wrenching footage of a-Dura, shot dead in crossfire in a clash between Israeli
and Palestinian forces in the Gaza Strip in the beginning of the intifada in
September 2000, was broadcast around the world.
The clip, which caused much controversy when it first aired, was taken
off the air in the fall of 2003, after Palestinian Media Watch director Itamar
Marcus, presented the clip at a U.S. Senate hearing. Following the hearing,
senators slammed the clip and criticized it as "horrifying abuse of
children." In the clip, a child portraying a-Dura is peacefully playing in
heaven, and calls to other children, "follow me." The popular singer
Aida performs the song in the clip, which describes how the earth longs for the
deaths of children, saying, "How pleasant is the smell of the earth whose
thirst is quenched by blood pouring out of young bodies." Another clip
that aired this week after a long absence depicts a young girl witnessing her
mother's murder and then singing about how she misses her mother. She sings,
"If you can't come to me, I can come to you." Palestinian Media Watch reported that the 2000-
2003 Palestinian television campaign to recruit young children was so
effective, that 70 to 80 percent of Palestinian children during that time
wanted to die as shaheeds, according to three separate polls. (The Lekarev
Report, July 3, 2006).
“Children
Taught to Prefer Death to Life” “In the latest bulletin released by the Palestinian
Media Watch organization, we read a chilling account about the "death
culture" in Gaza. A Palestinian reporter wrote the article focusing on
Hamas but don't think this "culture" is limited to Hamas. Abbas'
Fatah organization holds to the same convictions, as do other terror groups.
Ghassan Zaqtan, a Palestinian journalist, wrote the article which appeared n
the June 18 edition of the PA's Al-Ayyam newspaper. I quote just part of the
article - it's more than enough to disturb anyone with basic human values!
Speaking of the Hamas takeover of Gaza, he wrote: "We knew that they would do it,
especially in Gaza, where a mother brushes her young son's hair at 7:00, so
that he will be killed at 7:30, and where the children learn that death is
preferable to life! We knew that they would do this, it was clear to us: with
language overflowing with the rhetoric of death and the norms of killing, in
the religious rulings [fatwas] and in Friday and holiday sermons." And, "The concept of shahada for him
[the child] means belonging to the homeland, from a religious point of view.
Sacrifice for his homeland. Achieving shahada in order to reach Paradise and to
meet his God. This is the best. We also teach our children to protect the
homeland, belonging and to reach shahada."
"The result
of such virulent PA indoctrination is apparent," Marcus and Crook
conclude, "when listening to the interview on PA TV with two 11-year-old
Palestinian girls talking about shahada and describing it as a primary ideal
and personal goal. They explain that 'all Palestinian children' view shahada as
more worthwhile than living, because of its promised grand
Afterlife." (The Lekarev Report –
June 27, 2007).
“Activist 'banned for life' from
criticizing homosexuality” “Offending
pamphlets quoted ad: 'Man seeking boys … age not so relevant'. A lifetime ban on public criticism of
homosexuality was upheld against a Catholic activist in Canada by his
province's superior court. Bill Whatcott
was fined 17,500 Canadian dollars by the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission
in a complaint by four homosexuals who charged he "injured" their
"feelings" and "self respect" in pamphlets denouncing the
"gay lifestyle" as immoral and dangerous. Saskatchewan's Court of
Queens Bench, which hears criminal and civil cases, upheld a 2006 decision
Tuesday by the provincial Human Rights Commission. "This fine is for
telling the truth [that] homosexual sodomites can change their behavior and be
set free from their sin and depravity through the forgiveness of sins and shed
blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," Whatcott said. A licensed practical nurse, Whatcott
regularly campaigns against the political movement that is rapidly advancing homosexual
rights in the Canadian legal system, LifeSiteNews said. "Shame on the Saskatchewan Court of
Queens Bench for pandering to homosexual activism and ignoring the truth,"
he said. The provincial Human Rights
Commission noted Whatcott was "ordered to discontinue distributing any
materials that promote hatred against people because of their sexual
orientation." The tribunal held
that "preventing the distribution of such materials was a reasonable limit
on Whatcott's right to freedom of religion and expression as guaranteed by
Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms." Whatcott says his pamphlets used
"verbatim" a text from a classified personal advertisement in a local
homosexual publication that said, "Man seeking boys … age not so relevant." LifeSiteNews noted Ottawa Citizen columnist
David Warren criticized the tribunals as "kangaroo courts" and
"star chambers" with "quasi-legal powers that should be
offensive to the citizens of any free country ... in which the defendant's
right to due process is withdrawn."
A petition to Prime Minister Stephen Harper is being circulated calling
for abolishment, or at least curtailment, of the powers of the
commissions. Last month, a Canadian political party leader's
posting of a WND article on homosexuality brought him before the
country's Human Rights Commission to face
accusations he was motivated by "hate and defamation." Ron Gray of the Christian Heritage Party
said he was told directly by an employee of the Human Rights Commission that
the Canadian Human Rights Act, under which he is being accused, is "about
censorship." Two of the three complaints filed by Edmonton man Rob Wells
relate to the posting of an April 2002 WND story titled "Report: Pedophilia more common among
'gays.'" The third
complaint against Gray is for several commentaries he wrote and distributed to
party members. One, titled "Sitcom prophet," compared the current
climate of debate about homosexuality in Canada to the "Cone of
Silence" in the 1960s-era television comedy "Get Smart." I(WorldNetDaily, Dec. 15, 2007).
“They
don’t allow religion in schools, but they allow homosexuality” “BRAVE NEW SCHOOLS. Homosexodus! Students flee forced 'gay' agenda. California parents start reacting to new
'education' requirements. Parents in California have started reacting to the
state's newly mandated homosexual indoctrination program by pulling their
children out of classes, and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack
O'Connell is warning districts they'll lose money if that happens. A spokeswoman for a ministry called Considering Homeschooling
said she already has seen an overwhelming increase in requests for information about
homeschooling. As a result, spokeswoman Denise Kanter told WND that her group
is sending out 5,000 DVD packages to churches around the state that include
basic "how-to" information to provide parents a direction to turn
when they choose to protect their children from the new school agenda. The new law demands, "No teacher shall
give instruction nor shall any school district sponsor any activity that
promotes a discriminatory bias because of a characteristic [including perceived
gender.]" With the passing of SB
777, a Christian parent cannot, in good conscience, send their child to a
public school where their child will be taught or coerced into a lifestyle or
belief system that is contrary to the faith they hold dear," Kanter told
WND. "Fortunately, SB 777 has
caught the attention of many churches and pastors here in California, and as
they should, they are calling on their congregants to take their children out.
To help in this endeavor, our ministry has sent and will continue to send out
free packages directly to churches containing information on how they can
encourage their congregants to homeschool their children, as well as how to
create in-church parent led schools," she said. "We hope our resources will encourage
Christians to focus on the importance of not leaving Christ out of a child
education,” she said. WND columnist Olivia St. John reported
California's "raging ideological" battle prompted students to pack up
their backpacks and stage a two-day boycott to protest the plan that has the
state "force-feeding children perverse material and videos vile enough to
garner at R-rating in the local miltiplex." "Evidently, some are beginning to wake
up to the fact that their children are no longer receiving true education, but
are being clandestinely recruited into sick social movements threatening to
tear families apart at the seams," she wrote. "When it comes to actively promoting sin
to public school children, the homosexuals are light years ahead of adulterers,
fornicators and substance abusers, who haven't yet implemented student-run
organizations to convince children that such lifestyle choices are
normal," she continued. In California,
parents told the Inland Valley Press Enterprise they were pulling their
children from public school classrooms in protest of the law. Donna Myers, whose three daughters were
attending Norte Vista High in Riverside, said the new law has no application to
reading, writing and arithmetic.
"We have rights, too. Enough is enough," she told the
newspaper. And Betty Voltz also told the
newspaper her son and daughter were boycotting the public district. "They don't allow religion in school but
they're going to allow homosexuality in schools. That makes no sense," she
said. Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families,
said there is reason for alarm. He said the new law effectively requires school
instruction and school activities to portray homosexuality, bisexuality and
transsexuality to the six million children in public schools in a positive
light. He said he's gotten hundreds of
contacts from concerned parents, and is encouraging families to leave the
public school system entirely. All of
this has O'Connell alarmed. "We
must encourage students to stay in school and resist calls for a protest and
walkout over SB 777," he wrote in a notice to all "county and
district superintendents."
"What I find most troubling is that possible student absences may
lead to missed opportunities for them to learn and that this lost time may not
be recaptured," he said.
"Additionally, there may be fiscal consequences to school districts
for funds lost due to student absences," he threatened. His also said the bill "simplifies and
clarifies existing civil rights protections for California students." Meredith Turney, the legislative liaison for Capitol Resource Institute, reacted to
that in a column. "Mr. O'Connell,
the bill's author Sen. Sheila Kuehl and Gov. Schwarzenegger have all maintained
the party line that SB 777 merely 'streamlines' existing anti-discrimination
laws. However, these attempts to discredit the public outcry against SB 777's
policies are disingenuous and misleading. In fact, SB 777 goes far beyond
implementing anti-discrimination and harassment policies for public
schools." Turney said that already
was accomplished by a 2000 plan by the same lawmaker. "The new law states that 'No teacher
shall give instruction nor shall a school district sponsor any activity that
promotes a discriminatory bias because of' … (homosexuality, bisexuality, and
transsexual or transgender status). Including instruction and activities in the
anti-discrimination law goes much further than 'streamlining.' This incremental
and deceitful approach to achieving their goals is a favorite and effective
tactic of liberals. Expanding the law is not 'streamlining' the law,"
Turney wrote. "Mr. O'Connell's
doublespeak reveals his – and his peers' – arrogant attitude toward their
'gullible' constituents. In fact, parents are not stupid and they recognize
that their authority is being undermined by such subversive school policies.
This is nothing less than an attempt to confuse the public about the true
intention of SB 777," she said.
"The terms 'mom and dad' or 'husband and wife' could promote
discrimination against homosexuals if a same-sex couple is not also
featured," said Turney.
"Parents want the assurance that when their children go to school
they will learn the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic – not social
indoctrination regarding alternative sexual lifestyles. Now that SB 777 is law,
schools will in fact become indoctrination centers for sexual
experimentation," she said. (WorldNetDaily,
Dec. 5, 207).
“Movieguide:
Hollywood Continues Attacks on Christian Values” “Ever since the critical and box office success of
movies like Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine” and “Fahrenheit 9/11,” the
atheist, left-wing elitists in the mass media have stepped up their attacks on
the patriotic, traditional and orthodox values of America and Christianity, say
officials of “Movieguide: A Biblical Guide to Movies, Entertainment and Culture
for Families.” Clearly, these people
feel threatened by the success of conservative evangelical Christians and other
traditionalists in the entertainment industry with such hits like “The Passion
of the Christ” and “The Chronicles of Narnia,” not to mention their success in
electing George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, maintains Movieguide. According to the Biblical Guide, not only has
there been an increase in the number of explicitly left-wing, anti-American,
anti-Christian documentaries in the last two years (such as “The Road to
Guantanamo,” “Jesus Camp,” “Jimmy Carter Man from Plains,” and “For the Bible
Tells Me So”), but there has also been an increasing number of anti-American,
anti-Christian, anti-American mainstream movies such as “The Da Vinci Code,”
“Brokeback Mountain,” and the recent box office bombs “In the Valley of Elah”
and “Rendition.”
Two upcoming movies will continue
these attacks, Robert Redford’s already outdated propaganda movie against the
War in Iraq, “Lions for Lambs,” and a new movie, “The Golden Compass,” based on
the first book in secular humanist Philip Pullman’s anti-Christian children’s
trilogy, “His Dark Materials.” Redford’s
new movie, which we have seen already, contains a slew of shallow arguments
against the Republican Party, the War in Iraq, the Vietnam War, and the United States
military, spiced with a vague secular humanist call to political action,
presumably against those “evil” conservatives in the Republican Party and their
supporters, the so-called religious right.
Pullman’s books not only mock and
belittle God, they also attack the Christian Church (labelled “the Church” and
“the Magisterium” in the books). In the trilogy, Pullman rejects the orthodox
view of God and presents a nebulous, personal and demonic-sounding spirituality
with no philosophical roots or ultimate meaning. Pullman’s world is a sad, animalistic
universe. Since this is the only world there is, the trilogy ends in
hopelessness. Love is not selfless giving, because that would be useless in a
materialistic world. Love instead is the lust of pleasuring each other. In Pullman’s world, there’s no hope of
eternal life where the lame and the blind and the deaf and dumb can walk and
see and hear and talk, where the old are made youthful, there’s no heavenly
banquet, there’s no loving God, there’s no order, and there’s no peace.
The logical consequences of Pullman’s
atheism can be found in the lives of the leading atheists of the 20th Century –
Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot – men who killed millions of their own people and had no
respect for justice or love. Ultimately, it is a road that only leads to meaninglessness,
murder and social chaos. Reportedly, the new movie based on Pullman’s book has
toned down some of Pullman’s virulent attacks on the Christian religion.
Whether or not that is true, however, we do urge people of faith and values not
to bother to corrupt their children with this odious atheistic worldview. Of
course, there are other attacks to come next year, including another movie
based on one of “Da Vinci Code” author Dan Brown’s scurrilous attacks against
orthodox Christian teachings and the Bible and perhaps a movie about the
religious right planned by none other than Michael Moore. Every year, however, we present an Annual
Report to the Entertainment Industry, which looks at the content of the Top 250
Movies at the Box office each year. Year in and year out, our statistics show
that movies with very strong anti-biblical, anti-Christian, anti-American
values don’t do well at the box office. For instance, movies with very strong
anti-biblical, anti-Christian content only averaged $23, $22.6 and $21.4
million at the box office in 2004, 2005, and 2006, respectively. Movies with anti-patriotic, anti-American
content did even worse on the whole, averaging only $26.8, 10 and 19.6 million,
respectively – as much as two to six times worse than movies with very strong
biblical, Christian, patriotic, and pro-American content. Thus, movies in 2007 like “In the Valley of
Elah,” “Delta Farce,” “Home of the Brave,” and “Rendition” have made only $6.6
million, $8 million, $40,000, and $7.8 million in North America, but movies
like “World Trade Center,” “Spider-Man 3,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Forrest
Gump,” “Top Gun, “Passion of the Christ,” and “Sergeant York” have made $70
million, $336 million, $302 million, $516 million, $315 million, $393 million,
and $317 million when adjusted for inflation!!!
Of course, the antidote to all of these attacks on America and Jesus
Christ is to teach your neighbors, and your children and grandchildren, to
reject the bad and support the good.
Supporting the Good, the True and the Beautiful is what our upcoming
16th Annual Movieguide Faith & Values Awards Gala and Report to the
Entertainment Industry, set for Feb. 12 in Los Angeles, will be doing. There,
we will reward movies like “Amazing Grace,” Spider-Man 3,” and “The Game Plan,”
movies that inspire, enrich and celebrate our lives, our country and our faith,
and that give glory to God, His Word and His Church. (Dr. Ted Baehr and
Dr. Tom Snyder, NewsMax.com, Nov.
1, 2007).
“Devil’s already got your number” “Be very wary
today. It’s absolutely a case of devil
take the hindmost.” Today’s date is June
6, 2006 – or