Pastoral Bible Institute News
Statement of Net Worth -- April 30, 2000
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PBI Annual Report for 1999-2000 "Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another." These words from the apostle Paul in Romans 14:19 have continued to be the goal of the Pastoral Bible Institute in its ministry to the Bible Student fellowship. The publication of The Herald magazine remains the focal point of our work. During the past twelve months circulation has slowly started to increase and is now about 10% higher than one year ago. The comments we receive from time to time encourage us to keep producing this journal. The Herald is available as a printed magazine, on audio cassette, and electronically on the Bible Students Library CD ROM. We have begun the work to convert all the issues from 1918 to the present into electronic format. When complete next year, we will offer a new CD containing only The Herald. Like the Bible Students Library, this database will be in the popular Adobe Acrobat format and be electronically searchable. Versions will be available for either Macintosh or Windows computers. In the last issue we did what had been done some years ago when we devoted the entire issue to topics providing spiritual guidance for the personal application of biblical principles. We hope to continue doing this once a year. The other issues will continue to be devoted to doctrinal, prophetic, biographic, historic, and Memorial subjects. We continue to select Bible Student literature we think will be of interest to our readers and inform them of its availability through order forms inserted in The Herald. We will continue this practice as well as occasionally include copies of some new booklets that are being printed for the Bible Student community. Since advertised items are available for only a short period of time, we encourage our readers to not delay in making their requests. One ecclesia has requested 500 extra copies of The Herald for display in shopping malls and flea markets. We will watch with interest to see how effective this is in promoting the message of the truth. We would be happy to hear from individuals and/or ecclesias who are interested in using The Herald for similar purposes. This was the first year the PBI has ventured into foreign languages. At the request of brethren from India we paid for the printing of two of our booklets and some articles from The Herald in the Tamil language. These will of course be distributed in India. The Board of Directors and the Editors thank the readership for their loyal support and ask for a continued interest in your prayers that we may both promote peace and edify one another in love. The Directors, Pastoral Bible Institute Temporary Closing of the PBI Office Our California office will be closed for three weeks beginning July 30. Orders received
during this time will be filled after August 20. We regret any inconvenience this may
cause. Around the World Ministers and top officials from around the world met to review efforts to check the global spread of atomic arms. The 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) specified a meeting every five years to review progress. The treaty organization has 188 members, and only four states are not signatories—India and Pakistan, Israel and Cuba. Jayantha Dhanapala, undersecretary-general of the U. N., said there are growing complaints by non-weapons states at the nuclear powers’ failure to cut their arsenals more, suspicion that North Korea and Iraq have cheated on their commitment not to try to acquire nuclear weapons, and Arab anger at Israel’s refusal to join the NPT. —Financial Times, 4/24/2000 Countries as varied as China, Papua New Guinea and Russia adopted an action plan to combat trafficking in women and children, in a first coordinated Asian effort to stamp out what delegates at a conference in Manila called "pernicious modern-day slavery." An estimated one million women and children are bought and sold worldwide every year for various reasons according to officials from the U.S. Ralph Boycke, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, said: "Trafficking is one of the fastest growing and most lucrative criminal enterprises in the world. After drugs and guns it is considered the third largest source of profits for organized crime." Trafficking can end in injury, abuse, and even death. Women from Thailand, tempted to go to Japan as entertainers, end up as prostitutes; Asian children shipped to the U.S. by Chinese and Japanese criminal gangs are used in sweatshops; and Filipino women sent to Europe as mail-order brides find their husbands turning violent. —Financial Times 4/1/2000 Israel The future of Jerusalem was at the center of a cabinet meeting, with Prime Minister Ehud Barak stressing that anyone who as much as hints that the government intends to divide the city is "gravely misleading the public." "The government’s position is clear," Barak said. "Jerusalem will forever remain the undivided capital of Israel." Barak indicated that words spoken by his chief of staff, Danny Yatom, last week to the effect that certain lands in the Jerusalem vicinity would eventually be transferred to the Palestinians as part of a permanent agreement had been misconstrued. He went on to criticize those "both in the opposition and in the coalition" who speak of handing over Jerusalem territory to the Palestinians. "I call on everyone to show a sense of national responsibility and stop putting question marks around the subject of Jerusalem," he said. —Jerusalem Post 3/13/2000 2,300 Israel-allied Southern Lebanese Army soldiers will be seeking asylum of some type or arrangement which will permit them safe haven in Israel, fearing for their future safety in southern Lebanon following an Israeli troop withdrawal scheduled to take place no later than July 2000. Together with their families, the total number of persons expected to be included in the request will reach 10,000. Avi Yehezkel (One Israel), who chairs the Knesset Security Committee, has announced that hundreds of millions of Israeli shekels are being allocated for the "moral responsibility" of protecting the long-term allies in southern Lebanon. The MK stated he does not wish to operate within the framework of the High Court of Justice ruling, which released Israel of legal responsibilities to grant citizenship and/or asylum to SLA soldiers. —Israel Wire, 3/20/2000 Islam Sectarian tensions in Indonesia’s Molucca Islands are escalating according to church leaders who report the details of recent atrocities by radical Muslim groups and Indonesian military troops. About 3,000 people, most of them Christians, have died in the past 14 months in religious violence in the Moluccas, a chain of 17 islands about 250 miles west of New Guinea, news reports say. The islands were once mostly Christian, but the Muslim population has increased inrecent years with a "radical minority" causing unrest, news reports said. Clergy in North Maluku province and the island of Buru claim that `jihad troops‘ determined to expunge Christians from the areas haveslaughtered many believers and burned down churches and homes. —Religion Today, 4/6/2000 King Abdullah II of Jordan made his first official visit to Israel on April 23, since ascending the throne. He met with Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and discussed the ongoing peace initiatives in the region. He told Israel TV that he envisions a political solution for Jerusalem that has "two levels." One is a division of the city into two political domains, and the other a declaration of Jerusalem as an open city to all three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and he declared that Jordan is the guardian of the city’s holy places for Islam. —Israel Wire, 4/24/2000 Christendom Christianity is growing faster in Africa than anywhere else on earth. At current growth rates, in the next decade the number of African Christians will exceed the number of European believers: perhaps 520 million, in contrast to 470 million. This would leave African Christians second only to Christians in Latin America, who number around 700 million. Most of the tremendous growth is coming not in such historic mainstream denominations as Anglican and Roman Catholic but in newer, livelier, indigenous churches. The new churches use local languages and mix traditional African spiritual beliefs with Pentecostal-style worship, including the use of drums, guitars and charismatic preachers. —Time, 4/3/2000 After decades of near obscurity, [hell] has taken on anew image: more of a deep funk than a pit of fire. While the traditional infernal imagery still attracts afollowing, modern visions of eternal perdition as a particularly unpleasant solitary confinement are beginning to emerge, suggesting that hell may not be sohot after all. . . . Pope John Paul II told an audience at the Vatican that "rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God." To describe this Godforsaken condition, the pontiff said, the Bible "uses a symbolical language" that "figuratively portrays in a `pool offire’ those who exclude themselves from the book of life, thus meeting with a `second death.’" . . . The threat of post-mortem punishment of the impenitent in an eternal lake of fire all but disappeared from the religious mainstream by the 1960s. Theological discourse on the subject at the nation’s divinity schools almost evaporated. And while polls showed that the majority of Americans professed to believe in hell’s existence, almost no one thought he would go there. Observing the dearth of fire-and-brimstone rhetoric, a University of Chicago [professor] was moved to remark a few years back that "hell has disappeared and no one noticed." . . . A small but growing number of conservative theologians contend that those who ultimately reject God will simply be put out of existence in the "consuming fire" of hell. —Excerpts from U.S. News & World Report cover story on hell, 1/31/2000 In a landmark public confession, Pope John Paul II begged God’s forgiveness Sunday for sins committed or condoned by Roman Catholics over the last 2,000 years, including sexism, racism, hatred of Jews and violence in defense of the Catholic faith. The pope listed or alluded to a wide range of victims of Catholic hostility, prejudice and indifference as he asked his church to enter its third millennium with apurified conscience. These victims included heretics, Protestants, Jews and other non-Christians, immigrants, ethnic minorities, women, abused children and the unborn. It was the first call by any pope for such a sweeping pardon for past and present wrongs. John Paul faulted no Catholic leader, past or present. He mentioned no sinner by name, explaining that only God can judge individual responsibility. Cardinal Roger Etchegaray [said] John Paul’s sweeping confession must not be read "as a form of spectacular self-flagellation." John Paul is apologizing for sins committed by the church’s "sons and daughters," not by the church itself, which is "holy and immaculate." —Los Angeles Times, 3/13/2000 Economics Nearly half the world’s six billion people live on less than $2 a day and about 1.2 billion, or 22 percent of the world’s population barely survive on $1 a day. Ineffective governance and flawed initiatives have led to negligible progress in efforts to end poverty, a United Nations report says. The report says that both rich and poor countries have failed to live up to their commitments made at the 1995 Social Summit in Copenhagen. "The major problem with most poverty programs is that they are too narrow, confined to a set of targeted interventions. One reason: many were constructed as a social safety net during a major national breakdown," the report states. Many of the poorest countries lack achievable targets to secure aid amid reduced contributions by donor countries. Total global development aid fell to $51.9 billion in 1998 from $59.2 billion in 1994, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The report asks wealthy nations to remove trade barriers that hinder poorer countries from entering their markets and relieve poor countries’ debts without adding economic conditions. —Financial Times, 4/5/2000 Science Israeli researchers in discovering a life-saving cure for the "killing virus" have achieved what amounts to a medical breakthrough, which also may serve as an effective protection against biological weapons. The scientific monthly Nature reports that the protein developed in the labs of the Medical School at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem comes in the form of a small molecule which blocks the operation of the toxic "super-antigens" which cause the fatal shock. This deadly virus immediately collapses all the body systems, and induces vomiting, diarrhea, and in extreme cases loss of control, loss of consciousness and death. The Israeli researchers, financed by the U.S. Defense Department were working on a defense against biological weapons, of the type possessed by Iraq and various terrorist groups. The new drug may also help overcome complications from surgical infections, cancer, and AIDS. —Nature, Israel Wire, 4/24/2000 Another iceberg has broken off Antarctica and is bumping into a huge floe that broke off the Ross Ice Shelf last week. The new iceberg is 80 miles by 12 miles, and the larger one is 183 miles by 23 miles, about the size of Jamaica. While it isn’t clear whether the two icebergs would pose a threat to shipping, some researchers say large chunks are breaking off Antarctica due to global warming. In August 1999, an iceberg measuring 24 miles by 48 miles floated toward South America from Anarctica, surrounded by 100 to 200 smaller icebergs. —Reuters 3/31/2000 Book Review A New Look at an Old Earth, Don Stoner, Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Ore., 1997 ed.,. 256 pages How do we know what is true? Don Stoner believes there are two ways: what we are told in God’s word, the Bible, and what we are told in God’s creation. Both must be harmonious because God is the author of both. When those who study God’s word differ from those who study God’s creation, one or the other must be wrong. Sometimes both are wrong. When Galileo began to teach that the earth orbited the sun, he was condemned by both the scientists and the theologians of his day. The theologians said Galileo had to be wrong because the Bible said the sun’s "going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it" (Psalm 19:6). The question of which body orbits which has since been settled. But how old is the earth? How long are the creative days of Genesis chapter 1? Stoner believes Christians have greatly harmed their credibility by claiming that the days of Genesis are 24 hours long. He summarizes the scientific evidence for an age of the earth measured in the billions of years and finds it so strong that it is essentially irrefutable. Stoner carefully puts forth eight arguments for viewing the creative days as being 24-hours. Some are obvious (e.g., giving the Hebrew word "day" its literal meaning is probably the correct meaning, otherwise a different Hebrew word would have been used), and some are not (e.g., modifying the Hebrew word "day" with a number forces its meaning to be 24-hours, not a period of time). Then he carefully rebuts each argument using Scripture. Of course those who believe the earth is only a few thousand years old have a number of problems they must answer. The apparent old age of the universe, including the distance of stars and galaxies is one; the date of artifacts from carbon-14 and potassium-argon tests is another. Answers from those who think the earth is young are shown to have fatal flaws. Ellen G. White had visions of the creation event taking place in 24-hour days. Her teachings and visions were taken by her followers, known today as Seventh-Day Adventists, as being equal in authority with the Bible. Although in 1980 the Adventists dropped White’s writings as a source of doctrinal authority, Stone claims she has greatly influenced them and others on this question. The book ends with a verse-by-verse examination of Genesis chapter one and matches the events of each "day" with the latest scientific knowledge about creation. Stoner sees no disharmony between Genesis and the observed universe if long periods of time are assumed for each creative "day." Both the biblical and the scientific arguments for a young earth and an old earth are presented in understandable language for non-scientists and those with little or no knowledge of Genesis. I found Stoner’s "old earth" thesis extremely compelling. —Michael Nekora |
