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Pastoral Bible Institute News World News Religious The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which now has more than 12 million members and, thanks to the vigorous missionary tradition started by Joseph Smith himself, is one of the fastest-growing Christian denominations in the United States. This American-born faith has spread to more than 160 countries and territories. [An accompanying graphic put the increase in the number of Mormons from 1990 to 2004 at 354% within Nigeria and 192% within Ghana, the only countries with triple digit increases.] —Newsweek, 10/17/2005 Christianity is enjoying growth on the African continent like few other places in the world. “As far as we know it is a fairly unique phenomenon,” says Jonathan Bonk, editor of the US-based International Bulletin of Missionary Research. Reliable statistics are hard to come by, but estimates there were 8.7 million Christians in Africa in 1900, rising to 117 million by 1970 and almost 389 million today. —Financial Times, 9/13/2005 They’re sometimes called “acts of God” and, when disasters strike, it’s not unusual for people to read a divine punishment into earthquakes, floods or other natural cataclysms. Now, with the unrelenting devastation of the last few months, a few religious thinkers have done the same in response to the Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, mudslides in Guatemala and the earthquake in Pakistan. They have proclaimed these events as heavenly retribution for sins ranging from legalized abortion to U.S. support for Israel and the war on Iraq. —Associated Press, 10/14/2005 An Episcopal panel will ask the denomination’s top legislative body to express regret for the church’s past support for slavery in the United States and to authorize research about whether reparations should be made to black Episcopalians. One resolution would ask the next General Convention to express its “most profound regret” that the church “lent the institution of slavery its support and justification based on Scripture” and supported “de facto discrimination” even after slavery was abolished. —Associated Press, 10/20/2005 Voice of the Martyrs, a ministry that provides support and advocacy for members of the persecuted Church around the world, is reporting that cases of attacks by militant Hindus against Christians are on the rise in India. Recently a group of Hindu fundamentalists attacked a Christian missionary compound, severely injuring several people. In the latest attack, Hindu militants stormed the facility of the Gospel Echoing Missionary Society, the largest indigenous Christian missionary agency in eastern India. Before that attack, a mob of about 800 Hindu fundamentalists held the compound under siege for several days. —Agape Press, 10/21/2005 Social The worst earthquake in Pakistan’s history has killed an estimated 79,000 people, according to the latest government figures, wounded another 77,000 and devastated nearly 30,000 square kilometers, as well as leaving at least 2.8 million people homeless. In addition to the enormous human toll, the earthquake and its aftermath will cost an estimated US$5.2 billion … according to a report released Saturday by the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank. As temperatures drop, cases of acute respiratory disease among infants and children are on the rise. The Meteorological Office of Pakistan has said that more rains and snowfall are expected in the earthquake areas, causing extreme difficulty in reaching survivors for relief and rehabilitation. —Environment News Service, 11/14/2005 Not since the torrential floods from Tropical Storm Allison, which badly damaged the Texas Medical Center in 2001, has scientific research been disrupted on such a large scale. [When Hurricane Katrina hit,] thousands of laboratory animals—many genetically engineered with human diseases like cancer and painstakingly bred and cared for—perished along with vital tissue samples thawed in abandoned labs. Important work on heart disease, cancer, AIDS and a host of other ailments may be lost forever to scientists at Tulane and Louisiana State universities’ medical schools in New Orleans. —Associated Press, 9/13/2005 Along with the destruction of homes, neighborhoods and lives, Hurricane Katrina decimated the legal system of the New Orleans region. More than a third of the state’s lawyers have lost their offices, some for good. Most computer records will be saved. Many other records will be lost forever. Some local courthouses have been flooded, imperiling a vast universe of files, records and documents. It is an implosion of the legal network not seen since disasters like the Chicago fire of 1871 or the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 —New York Times, 9/9/2005 The outbreak of an avian flu pandemic that experts say could come soon could result in anywhere from 30 million to 380 million deaths globally. The avian flu bug that’s getting so much attention is H5N1, which has infected 117 people and killed 60 worldwide the past two years—a death rate of more than 50 percent. Research shows that the H5N1 virus has similarities to the 1918 Spanish flu, which killed more Americans than all the wars of the 20th century. An estimated 50 million to 100 million died worldwide. —Investor’s Business Daily, 10/13/2005 The proportion of young males who have grown up without fathers has risen relentlessly in the U.S. The indicator here is the illegitimacy ratio—the percentage of live births that occur to single women. It was a minuscule 4 percent in the early 1950s, and it has risen substantially in every subsequent decade. The ratio reached the 25 percent milestone in 1988 and the 33 percent milestone in 1999. —Wall Street Journal, 9/29/2005 Political From Iraq to Chechnya to China, the kidnap industry is booming. According to companies that offer ransom insurance and groups that track the problem, kidnapping generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year, enriching criminal gangs and helping fuel armed insurgencies. In almost all cases, for fear of encouraging the practice, governments and companies that pay ransoms deny cooperating with kidnap groups. China reported nearly 4,000 abductions in 2004, the first time it disclosed such data. In Iraq, a Dutch group that’s one of the leading monitors of the kidnap business says reported cases more than doubled to about 14,500 compared with 2001. —Wall Street Journal, 9/22/2005 Armed conflicts have declined by 40 percent since the end of the Cold War primarily because the United Nations was able to launch peacekeeping and conflict-prevention operations around the world, according to a new study funded by Canada, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and Britain. The first Human Security Report paints a surprising picture of war and peace in the 21st century: a dramatic decline in battlefield deaths, plummeting instances of genocide, and a drop in human rights abuses. The report noted that 60 wars are still being fought around the world, including serious conflicts in Iraq and Sudan’s western Darfur region. —Associated Press, 10/18/2005 Advisors to England’s Prime Minister Tony Blair have recommended abolishing Holocaust Day because it is offensive to Muslims. Since 2001, Britain has observed an annual day commemorating the slaughter of 6 million Jews by the Nazis during World War II. But members of a Blair-appointed task force on Islamic extremism argued that the day should be replaced with a generic Genocide Day that honors victims of all massacres. —London Daily Telegraph, 9/14/2005 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared Wednesday that Israel is a “disgraceful blot” that should be “wiped off the map. Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury,” state-run television quoted the president as saying. Ahmadinejad’s speech to thousands of students at a “World Without Zionism” conference set a hard-line foreign policy course sharply at odds with that of his moderate predecessor, and the United States said [his] remarks showed that Washington’s fears about Iran’s nuclear program were accurate. —Los Angeles Times, 10/27/2005 Financial Hurricane Wilma roared across Florida, bringing new misery and destruction to a state now battered by eight hurricanes in the past 14 months. An estimated 10.2 million Floridians, or 60% of the state’s population, live in counties that were pounded by Wilma, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Risk Management Solutions, a catastrophe-modeling firm in Newark, California, predicted insured losses of $6 billion to $10 billion. The worst-case estimate would make Wilma the third-costliest hurricane in U.S. history, behind Hurricane Katrina which cost insurers as much as $60 billion when it hit the Gulf Coast in late August. —Wall Street Journal, 10/25/2005 Over the past 30 years, there has been a 15-fold increase in insured losses from catastrophic episodes of severe weather, according to the Ceres investor group. —Financial Times, 9/9/2005 Every day, another 2,000 new cars hit the road just in Beijing. Like a hungry dragon snaking through the Chinese capital, there’s no better symbol of China’s insatiable appetite for oil. “China is now the second-largest buyer in the world oil market,” says Chen Xing Dong, an energy analyst at BNP Paribas. With its phenomenal economic growth, China is desperate for all sources of energy these days—for heavy industries, for construction, for assembly lines. There’s a mad rush to build more hydroelectric dams, more nuclear power plants. —ABC News, 9/3/2005 The world consumes two barrels of oil for every barrel discovered. —Chevron advertisement, 9/26/2005 The United States, a creditor country just 20 years ago, now owes the rest of the world $2.5 trillion (if you net out U.S.-owned assets abroad with foreign-owned assets in the U.S.). The U.S. in 2005 will borrow from abroad a sum equal to 6 percent of its output of goods and services, more than in any year in the past 135 for which data are available. —Wall Street Journal, 9/29/2005 Venezuela is preparing to take political control of private banks as part of a drive to spread “revolutionary” government control over the economy of the world’s fifth-largest exporter. President Hugo Chavez wants to place two government representatives on the institutions’ governing boards. Mr. Chavez’s drive to introduce what he describes as “socialism of the 21st century” would be a new stage in instituting his own brand of socialism into Venezuela. —Financial Times, 9/2/2005 The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp., the government agency that insures private pensions, already had a $23 billion deficit before the recent bankruptcies of Delta and Northwest Airlines. Without reform, it will cost $92 billion in today’s dollars to keep the agency solvent in the long term, according to Douglas Elliot, president of the nonpartisan Center on Federal Financial Institutions. If Delta and Northwest terminate their pension plans in bankruptcy, the agency would have to make good on a combined $11.2 billion shortfall in claims. —Investor’s Business Daily, 10/3/2005 A World Bank study reports a decline in poverty in the ex-communist countries of eastern Europe and central Asia. Even though conditions remain difficult for many of the region’s 470 million people, the numbers surviving below the poverty level of $2.15 a day dropped from 102 million to 61 million in 1998-2003. The bank argues that the single most important factor behind the significant decline in poverty is the high economic growth in the former Soviet Union, including Moldova, a largely rural country wedged between Romania and Ukraine. —Financial Times, 10/13/2005 Israel United States President George W. Bush declared that the dream he shares with the Arab world of birthing a Muslim state on the ancient Jewish lands of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza is closer to reality today than ever before. He vowed to use America’s considerable influence to help “realize [that] shared vision.” Speaking at a joint press conference in Washington, Bush heaped praise on visiting Palestine Liberation Organization chief Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), despite the latter’s refusal to honor his primary peace commitment to disarm and dismantle anti-Jewish Palestinian terrorist organizations. For Israel he had a warning: You will be “held to account” for any actions that hinder Washington’s “peace” efforts and burden the lives of the Palestinian Arabs. —Jerusalem Newswire Dozens of evangelical Christians from the United States, Europe and Asia toured Jewish settlements in the West Bank, taking time out from their organized pilgrimage to the Holy Land to show their support for the Israeli settlers. Many of the evangelical Christians are fervent Zionists who believe Jews are the chosen people and their return to the biblical Land of Israel will speed the Second Coming of Christ. Evangelical groups have contributed millions of dollars to Israel in recent years. —Associated Press, 10/24/2005 A First-Temple period seal has been discovered amidst piles of rubble from Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, an Israeli archaeologist said, in what could prove to be an historic find. The 2,600 year old artifact, with three lines in ancient Hebrew, was found amidst thousands of tons of rubble discarded by Wakf officials at city garbage dumps six years ago, following the Islamic Trust’s unilateral construction of a mosque at an underground compound of the Temple Mount known as the Solomon’s Stables. Meanwhile, in a separate major archaeological development in Jerusalem, a Jewish ritual bath, or mikveh, dating back to the Second Temple period, and a First Temple Wall have been found in an underground chamber adjacent to the Western Wall tunnels. —Jerusalem Post, 9/27/2005 The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been examining plans for a multi-stage unilateral withdrawal from as much as 90% of the West Bank. Officials said the Defense Ministry and military have been reviewing a range of options for unilateral withdrawal in the West Bank by 2007. They said the National Security Council has drafted options for the removal of between 10,000 and 100,000 Jews from the area. “Only unilateral [withdrawal] can work in this era,” Brig. Gen. Eyval Giladi, a senior adviser to Sharon, said. Officials said any unilateral withdrawal plan would be facilitated by the construction of the security wall and fence in the West Bank. —The Middle East News Line, 10/16/2005 Russian officers are in Israel training the police force of the Palestinian Authority (PA). The Russians have refused to give details of the number of instructors or the length of the training period. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has reported that the officers are “restructuring” the PA forces. This is the first time Russia has sent officers into Israel to train PA policemen, even though defense links have existed between Russia and the PA since the latter was first established. In an official statement, Ivanov confirmed that representatives of the Russian foreign and defense ministries are “helping to train Palestinian police forces, due to deterioration in these forces’ powers since the intifada.” —Arutz 7,10/20/2005 The Palestinian Authority (PA) is engaging in institutionalized backing of anti-Jewish terrorism by financially supporting terrorists imprisoned in Israeli jails. PA Minister for Prisoner Affairs, Sufayan Abu Zayda, revealed data showing his office receives an official budget of some US$50 million per year to support jailed Palestinian terrorists, Israel’s News First Class reported. From those funds, each prisoner receives a monthly “salary” of 1,200-4,500 shekels, full legal and medical coverage, and funds to complete a university degree. In addition, each prisoner that is released by Israel receives a “salary” for six months, until he or she can secure employment. The finances are made available to every prisoner, regardless of which terrorist organization they belong to and what their crimes against the Jewish people consisted of. The PA receives hundreds of millions of dollars in aid every year from the United States and Europe for the day-to-day running of its government. —Bridges for Peace, 9/6/2005 Book Review The David Story. A translation with commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel. Robert Alter, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1999. 392 pages. King David is arguably one of the most fascinating characters in the Jewish Testament. Perhaps it is because we can identify with his weaknesses yet admire his loyalty to God and God’s love for him. Seldom, however, do we read the story of David as a stand-alone book. Alter is a Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. His first book was a highly praised translation of Genesis, which most recently was incorporated into a new translation of the entire five books of Moses. That translation is especially interesting for Bible Students because of Alter’s highly different and descriptive translation of Genesis 1. For example, rather than God’s spirit (Hebrew: ruach) moving over the water, he says “God’s breath hovering over the waters” along with these words of commentary: “The verb attached to God’s breath-wind-spirit elsewhere describes an eagle fluttering over its young so it might have a connotation of parturition or nurture as well as rapid back-and-forth movement.” What an apt description of God’s preparation of the earth for man! By giving us this translation as a stand-alone story, Alter helps us see the essence of David’s transformation from young man to king and then to failing father. Reading the translation as a novel with extensive footnotes brings the entire story of David to life in a way not known before. I especially liked the section “Cast of Characters” in which he gives us all of the people found in David’s life. His extensive footnotes on history and culture are an excellent supplement for personal study. His translation—he did not review other translations but created an entirely new one—details the meanings behind certain words and phrases and the difficulty of rendering certain thoughts from Hebrew into English in an objective way, generally not done in other translations which seem to interpret the Hebrew with a theological bias. In this translation David comes alive in all his color and complexity. —Len Griehs |
