Pastoral Bible
Institute News Letters I read the book review of Philistine in the May-June Herald and was disappointed by the heavy-handed negative comments. [Ramon Bennett’s] comments are substantiated not by news clippings but by significant literary sources. A number of brethren have read the book and found it worthwhile. [Bennett] is reaching people that we are not; and when the stones cry out, the message is there, but not as we might present it. Pastor [Russell] expressed the thought in the Reprints that the Great Company may give a message that will be specifically for the benefit of the Holy Remnant [of Israel]. Might Bennett’s writing be a part of this beginning message? --Mitchell Blicharz, California World News Religious Five U.S. states sued the Vatican in federal court in Mississippi for racketeering, conspiracy and fraud, alleging that financier Martin Frankel tried to use the Catholic Church as a front to acquire insurance companies. The suit names a former Vatican judge, who has been arrested on criminal charges related to the Frankel case, as the Vatican’s agent. The suit also claims that several high-ranking Vatican officials had varying degrees of knowledge about Mr. Frankel’s attempts to acquire insurance companies through a supposedly Catholic charity he set up in 1998. Mr. Frankel has been charged with looting seven insurance companies he acquired through a trust. He allegedly used the money to acquire two mansions, a fleet of fancy cars, and to support a household of women. He fled the U.S. and was captured in Germany. According to the complaint, Mr. Frankel’s plan was to set up a Vatican foundation he would secretly control. He offered to transfer $55 million to the foundation and allow the Vatican to keep $5 million. The Vatican denied any association with Frankel. --The Wall Street Journal, 5/10/2002 36% of Americans believe that the Bible is the word of God and is to be taken literally. 59% believe the prophecies in the Book of Revelation will come true. --Time, 7/1/2002 People have the right to go door to door to advocate for religious, political or other noncommercial causes without first getting the government’s permission, the Supreme Court ruled in a lopsided constitutional victory for the ministry of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. While drawing on a series of Supreme Court precedents that found constitutional protection for the nonconformist views of the Jehovah’s Witnesses--who refuse to salute the American flag, for example--the decision today was not limited to religious expression. In his majority opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens noted that the ordinance appeared to apply to neighbors ringing one another’s doorbells to solicit support for political candidates or improved public services. “It is offensive, not only to the values protected by the First Amendment, but to the very notion of a free society,” Justice Stevens said, “that in the context of everyday public discourse a citizen must first inform the government of her desire to speak to her neighbors and then obtain a permit to do so.” --New York Times, 6/18/2002 There are a large number of JW pedophiles who have been reported to Watchtower authorities who then investigate and in nearly all cases say nothing to law enforcement agencies. Victims who report being sexually abused are in danger of being disfellowshipped (cutting them off from future eternal life according to church doctrine) if they bring a civil action against a church elder. Based on 1 Timothy 5:19 the church believes no accusation may be lodged against an elder unless there are two or three witnesses, unlikely in most child abuse cases. There are six million JWs worldwide, 16,000 congregations in the U.S., and 77,799 elders. --Excerpted from Dateline NBC, 5/28/2002 Social The death toll from a weeklong heat wave that gripped southeastern India rose to 1,030 as reports trickled in from remote villages. Most of the dead were older people unable to bear temperatures that reached 122 degrees. The intense heat turned tin-roofed shanties into ovens. Ponds and rivers dried up, birds fell from the sky, and animals collapsed. The deaths occurred May 9 to May 15. The weekly toll is the highest for any recorded Indian heat wave. --Los Angeles Times, 5/23/2002 For the first time in a decade, severe hunger is sweeping across southern Africa. The United Nations says that two years of erratic weather--alternating droughts and floods--coupled with mismanagement of food supplies have left seven million people in six countries at risk of starvation. Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Lesotho have already declared national disasters, and Mozambique and Swaziland are also struggling. Four million more people are expected to need emergency aid in the next few months as this season’s meager harvest runs out, the United Nations says. The crisis reflects the continuing economic fragility of many African nations, even here in the continent’s most prosperous region. Africa’s leaders are increasingly demanding greater access to Western markets for their textiles and agricultural goods in the hope of strengthening nations where millions of people remain vulnerable to the vagaries of weather, government missteps and foreign charity. Over the last two years, severe drought, in between bouts of flooding, has battered the region once again. This time, the problem is complicated by the high incidence of H.I.V. infection along with the political turmoil in Zimbabwe and mismanagement in Malawi. The countries of southern Africa have the world’s highest rates of H.I.V. infection, leaving millions of people vulnerable to the ravages of hunger. --New York Times, 6/23/2002 Scientists combating malaria have created genetically engineered mosquitoes that do not transmit the lethal disease, a feat hailed as a milestone in the effort to conquer a pestilence that infects 300 million people every year. There are serious safety concerns and regulatory issues that must be resolved before any of these experimental insects could be released, experts said. There have been no approved releases into the wild of genetically modified insects. The work [was] published today in the scientific journal Nature. Not so long ago, malaria was all but eradicated in many parts of the world, mostly through large-scale public sanitation efforts and the use of prodigious amounts of insecticide. In an evolutionary arms race, however, mosquitoes have grown immune to pesticides faster than new ones can be found, while the malaria parasite has become immune to most common medications. As the disease’s resistance to drugs increases, malaria deaths have soared to 3 million a year. In Africa, where 90% of all malaria cases occur, the disease claims an African child every 30 seconds. --Los Angeles Times, 5/23/2002 While drought continued to parch the West and fires blazed out of control in Colorado, the upper Midwest was hit this week with record flooding. Thunderstorms of window-rattling ferocity have touched down throughout the Midwest. Northern Minnesota took the worst pounding. In some places nearly 17 inches of rain beat down in 21 days. The Roseau River rose 15 feet in a flash. [It] crested at nearly 24 feet, 8 feet above the official flood stage and almost 3 feet above the previous high-water mark set in 1996. The [Roseau] sheriff said he flicked on the TV news Wednesday morning and watched the wildfires devouring the brittle forests of Colorado. Then he looked out the window at his waterlogged town, and wished, for a moment, that Mother Nature could see fit to even things out. --Los Angeles Times, 6/13/2002 Civil Three months ago, the directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the minute hand of their “Doomsday Clock” from nine minutes to midnight to just seven minutes to, in order to reflect the increased threat of nuclear war. The group, which was founded by scientists who had worked on the first atomic bombs in the Second World War, listed the continuing crisis between India and Pakistan over the disputed region of Kashmir as one of their concerns. The atomic scientists estimate that India has about 30-35 nuclear warheads, which is fewer than Pakistan. Some estimates have put the numbers higher: up to 200-250 warheads in India and around 150 in Pakistan. There are reports that India has enough material stockpiled to make 50-100 more nuclear weapons. Most of the warheads are thought to be below 20 kilotons, equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT. This means they are comparable to the nuclear bombs detonated by the United States over Hiroshima in 1945. Estimates of the level of destruction that could be wrought by a nuclear war between India and Pakistan vary. However, the New York Times has reported that a recent intelligence assessment carried out by America’s Defense Department predicted a frightening number of casualties. It says that in a full-scale nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, up to 12m people could be killed immediately and up to 7m injured. This would have further cataclysmic consequences, overwhelming hospitals across Asia, and requiring a vast amount of foreign assistance to deal with radioactive contamination and famine and disease. Further deaths would come from the loss of homes, hospitals, water and energy supplies. Then there would be an unknown number of deaths from cancers that would develop in future years. --The Economist, 5/28/2002 “Our greatest danger now isn’t that Russia is going to attack the U.S. with nuclear missiles,” says Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It’s that some group is going to get its hands on the growing number of nuclear warheads stored in less-than-secure conditions in Russia.” In a little-noticed report sent to Congress in February, the National Intelligence Council, an umbrella panel representing U.S. spy agencies, detailed the threat posed by stored Russian nuclear weapons. Poverty is rampant among Russian nuclear-weapons guards, it noted. Many are homeless, and some have conducted hunger strikes because they have not been paid. --Time, 5/27/2002 Financial WorldCom, the nation’s second-largest long-distance carrier, said that it had overstated its cash flow by more than $3.8 billion during the last five quarters in what appears to be one of the largest cases of false corporate bookkeeping yet. The problem, discovered during an internal audit, throws into doubt the survival of WorldCom and MCI, the long-distance company it acquired in 1998. It may follow the pattern of Enron, Global Crossing and other companies laid low by accounting scandals since last fall. In an effort to avoid that fate, WorldCom said that it would cut one-fifth of its work force. Instead of the profit of $1.4 billion the company reported in 2001 and $130 million in this year’s first quarter, WorldCom now says it lost money during those periods. WorldCom’s board said it had fired its chief financial officer after discovering a strategy in which operating costs like basic network maintenance had been booked as capital investments, an accounting gimmick that enabled WorldCom to hide expenses, inflate its cash flow and report profits instead of losses. Particularly disturbing is that WorldCom had manipulated its cash flow statements, not just its reported earnings. Investors used to believe that cash flow was a more reliable indicator of a company’s financial health because the number could not be manipulated as easily as earnings, but that assumption now appears to be wrong. --New York Times, 6/26/2002 It is known as the domino effect. Once used to describe the spread of communism, the phrase now more commonly refers to the spread of international financial crises, especially in emerging-market economies. But even there, the domino theory was until recently beginning to look dated: the catastrophic collapse of Argentina’s financial system, currency and even government at the end of last year appeared to have virtually no effect on other countries in the region. All that has now changed. As Argentina’s struggle to get to grips with its economic problems has dragged on, doubts are emerging about neighboring economies. Brazil, the largest economy in Latin America, has seen its currency fall, and the cost of servicing its foreign debts has soared. On June 20th, Uruguay abandoned its currency peg and floated its peso, which promptly sank by nearly 10% in two days. Ecuador, whose finance minister resigned on June 23rd in the wake of a bribery scandal, is finding its own corruption problems more difficult to handle because of nervousness about the region as a whole. Many Argentines, dismayed by the collapse of their economy, have blamed the outside world for its failure to help. On June 21st, Brazil’s currency, the real, fell to its lowest level since its creation in 1994 and investors grew nervous about the outcome of the presidential elections in October. Investors are concerned by the country’s public debt, now more than 55% of GDP: interest payments account for 9% of GDP. --Economist, 6/24/2002 Israel The construction of a 220-mile long fence along the pre-1967 border in Israel has become a window on Israel’s evolving views on what should be done with the West Bank and Gaza lands. The fence, built out of overwhelming fear and insecurity, reflects an important evolution in public opinion. A Gallup poll published in November 2001 in Israel showed 59% of Israelis supported the creation of a Palestinian state. This shifting public opinion in Israel helps explain why Israelis support the fence and its location. It also brought to the fore a question that touches on one of the deepest divides in Israeli society: how much land can Israel cede without jeopardizing national security? --Wall Street Journal, 6/24/2002 On June 17, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat angrily rejected American criticism of his regime, and he sent a strong message of defiance to the Bush Administration. “We don’t take orders from anyone,” declared Arafat, whose remarks were headlined and re-broadcast several times over state-run Voice of Palestine radio. Arafat was visibly vexed over newspaper interview remarks by Dr. Condoleeza Rice, the Bush Administration’s National Security Advisor, describing Arafat’s regime as corrupt. Rice indicated that the Palestinian Authority was incapable of democratic reform under present conditions. --The Media Line, 6/17/2002 Today people often must wait for months when they need an organ transplant. In the future, they may be able to simply give a tissue sample and then wait a week or two as the sample is used to custom-build the necessary organ, thanks to research conducted by Ph.D. candidate Gadi Pelled, DMD. He is to receive the prestigious Kaye Award for his work. Pelled explained that one of the major difficulties in creating bio-artificial organs is creating a network of blood vessels in the organ that can connect to those in the body. Working under the guidance of Associate Professor Dan Gazit, Dr. Pelled managed to grow and then combine cells from blood vessels and genetically engineered adult stem cells to create a three-dimensional, bio-artificial bone in the lab. Though Dr. Pelled only has conducted research related to bio-artificial bone thus far, the method he invented can be applied to any tissue that has blood vessels, he said. Dr. Pelled’s technology has been exclusively licensed to SBT, a start-up company founded by the Yissum Research Development Company of the Hebrew University and Prof. Gazit. --Hebrew University news release, 6/2/2002 Israeli doctors have cured Tatiana Sofanova, a non-Jewish Russian woman who was blinded when she attempted to uproot a booby-trapped sign reading, “Death to the Jews.” She was traveling on a highway near Moscow with her mother and daughter when she saw the sign. Offended by the message of hate, she stopped the car and tried to uproot the sign--and the ensuing explosion sent shrapnel into her right eye and caused bleeding in the left eye, and she was left practically sightless. The Union of Jewish Communities in Russia decided that this humanitarian case was its responsibility, and arranged an all-expenses-paid trip to the Ophthalmologic Department of Tel HaShomer Hospital in Israel, where in fact doctors were able to restore her eyesight. --Arutz 7, 6/10/2002 Book Review Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret Wars. Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, William Broad. Simon & Schuster, New York, 2001, 382 pages. Scientists recently determined that the anthrax powder sent through the mail in the fall of 2001 was made no more than two years before it was sent. This conclusion cast serious doubt on an alternate theory that the culprit had somehow obtained an old laboratory sample of powdered anthrax from a strain first identified in 1981. The discovery of that 1981 strain is one of the subjects dealt with in <I>Germs<I*>. Three New York Times reporters were stirred to investigate the 1997 decision by the Pentagon to vaccinate its 2.4 million soldiers and reservists against anthrax six years after the Gulf War ended. The team of reporters--a science writer, a foreign correspondent and an intelligence agency specialist--not only found their answer but also uncovered a half-century long secret history of germ weapon development. For more than twenty-five years the U.S. and U.S.S.R. competed in a race to develop biological arms--with sometimes devastating consequences. Although a treaty signed in 1972 banned biological weapons, the threat did not vanish. In fact, the Soviet Union expanded its program on a vast, industrial scale even testing its germs on unwitting human subjects. The interest to Bible students may be best found in the opening chapter to the book titled The Attack. It is a thoughtful reminder of the potential of biological weapons in the hands of radical religions. In 1981 followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh had paid $5.8 million for a remote 64,000 acre ranch in Oregon. Pressured by local authorities in September 1984, the group launched a biological siege on the citizens of The Dalles by introducing salmonella into the local restaurant food supply. It was a year later before the source of the salmonella was determined to have been the Rajineeshees. The government played down the attack to avoid panic and copycat strikes. Germs is a well-documented (there are 50 pages of endnotes), well-written (Broad is a Pulitzer Prize winner), treatise on the horror of past germ warfare, and provides an excellent perspective on the current threat posed by rogue nations with access to the scientists who formerly worked on this decades-long program. Only the knowledge that the Lord is overseeing the affairs of man will prevent the reader from viewing the likelihood of biological warfare as a real possibility for destroying a great portion of the human race. --Len Griehs |
