Pastoral Bible Institute News

New Booklet

We are pleased to announce the availability of the small book Creation Triumphs Over Evolution, produced by our Bible Student friends in New Brunswick, New Jersey. In addition to a description of the generally-accepted theory of evolution within the scientific community in spite of the lack of proof, the presentation correctly shows that a belief in evolution automatically means a belief that there is no life after death, there is no meaning to life because it is an accident, and there is no such thing as ethics or morals because these inhibit your ability to triumph over your competitors. Order it by filling out the form on the back of the insert found in each issue of this magazine sent to subscribers.

World News

Religious

Thanks to the dedicated efforts of Bible Society workers across the globe, the Bible—in full or partial form—is now available in 2,303 languages, an increase of 16 from a year ago. The complete Bible can now be read in 405 languages worldwide, compared with 392 last year.

—American Bible Society, Spring 2003 Newsletter

An international conference in Paris on intolerance opened with a stern warning that acts of hatred against Jews, particularly in Europe, have reached their highest level since World War II. “A new generation of haters has been brought up and are ready to act,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. In a statement, the center said it recorded 1,300 anti-Semitic acts in France since 2001—the highest level since World War II.

—Associated Press, 5/13/2003

Israeli geologists have examined a sandstone tablet detailing repair plans for the Jewish Temple of King Solomon. The tablet bears an ancient Hebrew inscription attributed to Jehoash (also known as Joash), king of Judea in the late ninth century B.C. The inscription describes the renovations carried out by Jehoash in the first Temple in Jerusalem. The find is about the size of a legal pad, and its text is similar to the biblical description found in 2 Kings 11-12. If authenticated, it would be a rare piece of physical evidence confirming biblical narrative. It could also strengthen Jewish claims to a disputed holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City that is now home to two major mosques. Muslim clerics insist, despite overwhelming archaeological evidence, that no Jewish shrine ever stood on the site. The origin of the stone tablet is unclear, making it difficult to establish authenticity.

—Haaretz, April 2003 (specific date unknown)

Social

Industrial fishing fleets have systematically stripped 90% of the giant tuna, swordfish, marlin and other big fish from the world’s oceans, according to a new study that suggests the virtual collapse of these stocks—such as happened to the cod off New England—is a distinct possibility. Fishing fleets are now competing for the remnants of the biggest fish in the oceans, concludes a 10-year research project reported in today’s issue of the science journal Nature. If the current level of overfishing continues, fish populations will soon become too small to be sustainable, causing fisheries to disappear. That, in turn, could have a serious impact on human food supplies and cause long-term damage to the ocean environment.

—Los Angeles Times, 5/15/2003

1,260,000         Number of traffic-accident deaths worldwide each year.

310,000            Number of deaths caused by wars and conflicts each year.

—TIME, 5/26/2003

Monsoon rains arrived in India’s northeast bringing hope for relief from a grueling heat wave that has killed nearly 1,400 people nationwide in the past three weeks. Most of the deaths have been in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh where sunstroke and dehydration have killed at least 1,281 people. Thousands have been hospitalized. Temperatures have eased from a peak of 120 degrees to daily highs of 111.

—Los Angeles Times, 6/7/2003

A Nigerian oil pipeline tapped by thieves exploded, killing more than 100 villagers scavenging for fuel, witnesses said. Nigeria is the world’s eighth largest exporter of crude oil, but it suffers chronic fuel shortages because of extensive corruption and technical problems with its four domestic refineries. Witnesses said villagers using buckets had been scooping kerosene from the pipeline since it was deliberately punctured about two months before the accident. A thriving black market is a major incentive for thieves to tap into the 3,125-mile network of pipelines that transports refined products across the country.

—Reuters, 6/21/2003

Five million people will lose their jobs this year in the worldwide tourism industry because of the SARS epidemic and the economic slump, with Asia by far the hardest hit region, the United Nations said in a report. The industry, which employs about 80 million people, has lost 11.5 million jobs since late 2001, according to the UN. Travel and tourism employment in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam, the countries most affected by SARS, will decrease by as much as 30%, the report said.

—Bloomberg News, 5/14/2003

The changing demographic picture in Europe is beginning to change some of the fundamentals of both social and political life. Governments there are reacting to a shift from youth to the aged and are moving to reduce social services, including the pensions that millions have been counting on for their golden years. Many experts see it as a harbinger of things to come, a sign of a demographic shift with important implications not only for the welfare of retirees but also for the European societies as a whole. The crucial factor is age. In Europe, the median age in 2050 is expected to rise to 52.3 from 37.7 today. The likely meaning of this “stunning difference,” as the British weekly The Economist called the growing demographic disparity is that American power—economic and military—will continue to grow relative to Europe’s, which will also decline in comparison with other parts of the world like China, India and Latin America.

—New York Times, 6/29/2003

Five million people in South Africa are infected with the AIDS virus, health officials estimate. It is one of the largest H.I.V.-positive populations in the world. These masses have been rendered “nameless and faceless” by a government that perpetuates confusion about the origins and magnitude of their disease, while refusing to follow the example of other African countries and make life-prolonging antiretroviral drugs publicly available as a treatment. With a death toll of at least 600 people a day, the struggle by AIDS patients for recognition and public medical care is a major problem that refuses to go away and struggles for recognition.

—New York Times, 5/10/2003

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicted that one in three Americans born in 2000 will develop diabetes during his or her lifetime—a forecast that envisions 29 million Americans will be diagnosed, and a further 10 million undiagnosed cases will develop, by 2050. While lifetime risk for American males born in 2000 is 33%, women and Hispanic-Americans face grimmer odds, with some equaling the 50% risk of diabetes faced by the Pima Indians in the Southwest, said Judith Fradkin of the National Institute of Health’s diabetes institute.

—Wall Street Journal, 6/16/2003

 Civil

Thousands of tons of chemical weapons dating back to the Second World War have been rusting away at the bottom of the Baltic Sea and are beginning to leak, scientists and environmentalists have warned. A poisonous legacy of Nazi Germany, more than 300,000 tons of weapons confiscated by the Allies were dumped between 1945 and 1947. Under the terms of a pact drawn up in 1945, the allies agreed that the weapons would be disposed of at sea. Regional governments have downplayed risks but a scientific mission based in the Russian enclave of Kalingrad has joined Green groups in warning that the impact of a simultaneous release into the ecosystem could be devastating.

—The Independent, 6/3/2003

Embattled President Charles Taylor of Liberia appealed to the United States for help in rescuing his country from civil war. Mr. Taylor, an American-educated former rebel leader who won the presidential election in 1997, declared that he wouldn’t give up power before the end of his term. Rebel groups responded by vowing to fight until they had achieved their ultimate goal of seizing the capital and toppling the government of Mr. Taylor. Liberia, which was founded by freed American slaves in the 19th century, has been wracked by 14 years of violence that, in the 1990s alone, killed some 200,000. In the past three years of conflict, 300,000 Liberian refugees have fled to Guinea, Ivory Coast, and Sierra Leone. The war has displaced nearly half of its 2.7 million citizens.

—New York Times, 6/27/2003

Congo aid workers are being terrorized by rampaging militia. Bunia, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is a cauldron of brutality, intimidation and abuse. In May, more than 430 civilians were butchered in ethnic massacres in the town where a French-led contingent of 1,400 peace-keepers is due to deploy. Some remains were eaten by packs of stray dogs, others apparently cannibalized. These days a Hema militia is in charge, and Bunia’s half-empty streets are rife with looting, rape, death threats and extortion. The culprits are the gunmen who carried out the killing. At least 60 percent of the Huma militiamen are children, the UN estimates.

—The Independent, 6/3/2003

The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee voted to repeal a 10-year old ban on the development of small nuclear weapons, asserting that the United States must begin looking at new ways of deterring terrorist groups and so-called rogue nuclear powers like North Korea. “This just undermines our whole argument,” said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. “We’re driving recklessly down a road that we’re telling other people not to walk down.” The law defined a low-yield weapon as having the explosive force of less than five kilotons of TNT. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was about 15 kilotons.

—New York Times, 5/10/2003

Financial

[A North Korean] defector who testified to the U.S. Senate said “Kim Il Sung told his people to grow opium because he needed cash.” In late 1997 the government decreed that all North Korean collective farms must allocate about 25 acres of land to poppy farming, the defector said. The opium is sent to pharmaceutical plants where it is processed into heroin. Farmers [were ordered] to switch their fields to poppy cultivation during the height of the famine that killed an estimated 2 million people. “There were some complaints that during the famine we should be growing grain, not poppies, but the instruction from the central government was that if we grow poppies, we can sell the product for 10 times as much to buy grain.”

—Los Angeles Times, 5/21/2003

The full effects of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) have yet to be felt, and are bound to act as a brake on economic growth. Yet China’s economy is still likely to grow far more quickly than most this year. Thanks to its membership in the World Trade Organization since the end of 2001, and the increasing contribution to growth made by its own voracious consumers, the economy now depends far less on the state. As a result, it is also exerting an unprecedented degree of influence over world trade. Last year, China’s imports and exports had a combined value of about $620 billion and accounted for 4.7% of world trade—nearly double the country’s share of 2.7% as recently as 1995.

—The Economist, 6/27/2003

Rebuilding Iraq will take billions of dollars, and dozens of entrepreneurs are angling for a share of that money. These businesspeople—mostly retired military or diplomatic personnel who spent their careers in the middle East—act as middlemen for hire. They do everything from rounding up local suppliers for construction projects to helping companies set up branch offices in the region. Middlemen and go-betweens with strong military contacts always appear wherever there’s a war and wherever there’s money to be made supplying the U.S. armed forces.

—Wall Street Journal, 6/16/2003

Israel

A Weizmann Institute study suggests that rising carbon dioxide levels in the world might help upgrade dry environments to valuable forests. In fact, researchers think the 7 billion tons of unaccounted for carbon dioxide may be the explanation for the expansion of forests into dry areas. A group of scientists, headed by Prof. Dan Yakir of Weizmann Institute’s Environmental Sciences and Energy Department, found that the Yatir Forest, planted at the edge of the Negev Desert 35 years ago, is expanding at an unexpected rate. The findings, published in the current issue of Global Change Biology, suggest that forests in other parts of the globe could also be expanding into arid lands, absorbing carbon dioxide in the process. Yakir’s team says that the reason for the connection between carbon dioxide and forest growth is in the process of photosynthesis. Plants need carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, but to obtain it, they must open pores in their leaves, consequently losing large quantities of water to evaporation. Yakir suggests that the 30% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide since the start of the industrial revolution eases the plant’s dilemma because the plant needs to open its pores only slightly to receive the necessary amount of carbon dioxide, thus causing it to lose less water. This efficient water preservation technique keeps moisture in the ground, allowing forests to grow in areas that previously were too dry.

—Arutz 7, 5/12/2003

The victory for US-led forces in Iraq has given George Bush enormous political capital to change the atmosphere of the Middle East, said one senior White House official. Impetus has been added to a renewed peace process by the dire state of Israel’s economy, which Ariel Sharon has linked to the continuing conflict with the Palestinians. Israel has yet to receive $9 billion in loan guarantees pledged by the US, and this may be one of the prime factors in Sharon’s willingness to negotiate at the request of the US president.

—Financial Times, 6/3/2003

Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and British Gas may soon finalize an agreement to drill for natural gas in what are believed to be vast gas fields off Gaza. The deal was put on hold more than two years ago because of Arab-Israeli fighting. The plan calls for Israel to buy much of the gas and for the money to go into an account under the control of Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayad in an effort to keep it from getting into the hands of terrorists. The project will take about three years while British Gas installs a pipeline to pump gas to Israel. The deal will also enable a Palestinian gas-powered electricity plant to begin operating. Palestinians currently receive electricity from Israel.

—Associated Press, 4/22/2003

Over 2,000 Jews from all over France attended the Jewish Agency’s mega-Aliyah Fair in Paris. The fair featured 45 stands set up by Israeli industries, mortgage banks, municipalities, educational institutions, the Jewish Agency, and the government. Aliyah from France in 2002—2,500 Jewish people—was more than double that of the preceding year. The Jewish Agency reports that anti-Semitic incidents in France have risen sharply.

—Arutz 7, 4/13/2003

Naim Dangoor, once a merchant in Baghdad but now operating one of London’s largest property companies, is aiming to re-establish the glory that was Iraqi Jewry, starting with the $20 billion he estimates Iraq’s new leaders—whoever they turn out to be—owe his people for the calamity that befell the world’s oldest and wealthiest Jewish community when radical Arab nationalists began ruling Iraq after World War II. With the birth of Israel in 1948, anti-Jewish riots swept the Arab world. In Iraq, regulations modeled on Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg laws restricted the role of Jews in commerce.

—Wall Street Journal, 6/30/2003

Book Review

Crisis of Conscience (fourth edition), Raymond Franz, Commentary Press, Atlanta, 2002. 438 pages.

Few know how the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society makes decisions. Raymond Franz knows because he became a member of its Governing Body in 1971. For a variety of reasons he was asked to resign from that body in 1980. At the end of 1981 he was formally disfellowshipped during an inquisition-like set of proceedings that strikes an outsider as simply incredible.

Franz describes how this organization grew from a small beginning to a worldwide organization of millions all of whom are expected to render unquestioning obedience to what they are told by the Governing Body. There is no room for individual interpretation of Scripture. If the publications of the Society have spoken, the matter is settled. Or perhaps one should say, settled until the Society itself changes them. Evidently Franz has thrown no scrap of paper away since he makes his points by reproducing the original documents, not just summarizing what they say.

Franz became unpopular because he believed that the Scriptures convey God’s word to Christians, organizations do not. He was a principal contributor to Aid to Bible Understanding, an excellent reference book, produced over a five-year period just before he was invited to join the Governing Body. He explains that when that project began, the team was told to focus on the Bible, not the Society’s publications. This they did with enthusiasm and consequently produced a work of value. It is not likely such direction would be given by the Society today.

It has been said that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Examples are the Nixon White House during the Watergate scandal, Enron, the rise of the Roman Catholic Church and Inquisition during the dark ages, and now this, yet another religious organization that demands loyalty to itself above loyalty to God.

None of us knows how our own dedication to the Lord will be tested in the years ahead. Franz takes us on a fascinating journey through his own “soul” with amazing insights into the secretive Brooklyn organization we have heard about but of which we all know so little.

—Michael Nekora