Pastoral Bible Institute News

Date of Annual PBI Meeting

The annual meeting of PBI Members and Directors will be held on Friday, July 14, at the University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The General Convention of Bible Students will begin on Saturday, July 15, at the same location and end the evening of July 20. Those who are interested in the Pastoral Bible Institute, whether members or not, are welcome to attend this meeting. Contact the Institute’s secretary for accommodation details.

World News

Religious

The number of Catholic priests in the U.S. has shrunk from 59,000 in 1965 to 43,000 today, even though the number of Catholics has grown. More than 3,000 U.S. parishes—27 percent of the nation’s Catholic churches—no longer have a full-time priest in residence. And as older priests retire or die, the shortage is growing worse. Lawrence Young, a co-author of the book Full Pews and Empty Altars predicts that the U.S. Catholic Church will lose another 16,000 priests by 2015, a decline of 45 percent. “The priesthood is in free fall,” said Rev. Mark Massa of Fordham University.

—The Week, 11/25/2005

In vast numbers Americans are turning away from traditional religions. The number of Americans who claim no religion has more than doubled in a decade. More than 27 million adults—nearly one in seven—reject all religious labels. Pollster George Barna, who works for Christian ministries, estimates that 20 million Christians have largely forsaken their local church in favor of discussion groups with friends, Bible study with colleagues or spiritual questing online.

—Los Angeles Times, 11/16/2005

Turkey became the first predominately Muslim country to open membership talks with the European Union. The negotiations almost failed because of conflicts over the island of Cyprus which is divided on religious lines.

—Religious Tolerance.org website, 10/3/2005

In November 1984, 40 percent of Americans said that they believed the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally word-for-word; 41 percent said that the Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally. In response to the same questions in May, 2005, only 32 percent answered affirmatively to the Bible being taken literally while 47 percent said not everything should be taken literally.

—Bible Review, Winter 2005

A Saudi high school chemistry teacher accused of discussing religion with his students has been sentenced to 750 lashes and 40 months in prison for blasphemy. Mohammed Salamah al-Harbi was convicted of questioning and ridiculing Islam, discussing the Bible and defending Jews, judicial officials said.

—Associated Press, 11/18/2005

Social

For many people, science has changed what were once immediate death sentences into chronic diseases. Lives that are longer are not necessarily better. Fewer people may be dying from heart attacks, but they’re living on in poor health, says Dr. Mark Monane, a biotechnology analyst at investment banking firm Needham & Co. In 1900, Americans, male and female, could expect to live to 47.3 years old, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics. By 2002, the latest year for which data exist, the average U.S. life span was 77.3 years. But maximum life expectancy is stuck at around 104, Monane says. Our cells will divide only so many times. When they stop doing that, they lose some of their functions, as does the whole body.

—Investors Business Daily, 10/31/2005

Among the depleted ranks of police departments throughout the country, it has come to this: desperate want ads offering signing bonuses to new recruits, and cops paying other cops to find new cops. It seems nobody wants to be a police officer anymore, officials say. In a generation’s time, the job of an American police officer, previously among the most sought-after by people with little college background, has become one that in many communities now goes begging. The resulting shortage of new officers is the top concern among issues facing law enforcement across the country.

—The New York Times, 12/28/2005

Eight million people die every year because they are too poor to stay alive.

—Time, 12/26/2005

Improvement in the overall health of Americans has stalled in the last five years as more people became obese and fewer quit smoking. The America’s Health Rankings report, issued at the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting, showed that 23.1 percent of the U.S. population is now considered obese, more than twice the level in 1990. Tobacco use remains the biggest preventable cause of premature death in the United States, resulting in some 440,000 deaths from a variety of diseases each year, the report said. The report was produced by the APHA, which represents public health professionals, along with the United Health Foundation and the Partnership for Prevention.

—Reuters, 12/12/2005

The global fertility rate now stands at 2.9 children for every woman of child-bearing age—a decrease of nearly 50 percent since 1972. According to the latest U.N. projections, the world’s fertility rate will fall below “replacement” levels by 2045, meaning that the human population will start shrinking. Some 60 countries are now operating below replacement levels. “Never in the last 650 years, since the time of the Black Plague,” said sociologist Ben Wattenberg, “have birth and fertility rates fallen so far, so fast, so low, for so long, in so many places.”

—The Week, 11/18/2005

Tehran’s thickening smog clouds are bringing the Iranian capital to a standstill.  The government shut down the city for two days [in December] as pollution reached 13 times the level of London. The smog has cloaked the top floors of buildings such as the 435-meter [1,400 foot] Milad communications tower for more than a week. “They’ve taken the sky away from us,” Majid Mokhtari, a lung specialist, said in an interview. “Tehran was designed for maximum five million people, not twelve.” Most of the city’s two million cars are dilapidated and damage the environment. Emergency measures including school closures and driving bans on some days aren’t working, residents say.

—Bloomberg News, 12/29/2005

Forty-nine people have been indicted in a scheme that bilked thousands of dollars from a Red Cross fund designated for Hurricane Katrina victims, federal authorities said Tuesday. At least 14 suspects worked at a Red Cross call center in Bakersfield [California] and are accused of helping family and friends file false claims for aid money. The Bakersfield site is the largest of three Red Cross centers set up to handle hurricane calls. Officials with the company which operates the call center said the company didn’t have time to run background checks on its 1,200 workers.

—Associated Press, 12/27/2005

Two days before the end of 2005 there have been 34 fatal accidents, compared with 28 in the whole of 2004, and the number of fatalities is 1,050 compared with only 466 [in 2004]. African airlines had another bad year, suffering 12 fatal accidents, with the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and Sudan all seeing multiple accidents. There were no fatal accidents involving any of the world's major airlines.

—FlightInternational.com, 12/29/2005

Political

Zimbabwe is a country in ruins; its people are destitute. The unemployment rate is more than 70 percent and the annual inflation rate is more than 500 percent. Since 1998, annual foreign investment inflows have dropped from $436 million to less than $5 million. The rural population suffers from increasing starvation, which is now being exacerbated by the influx of people displaced from the townships. Nearly 40 per cent of Zimbabweans are malnourished, with 70 percent of the population living below the poverty line of $1 a day. In the span of only 15 years, the average life expectancy has declined from 60 years to 30 years.

—International Herald Tribune, 12/27/2005

Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, Iran’s president, said Israelis wanting a Jewish state should establish one in Europe, rather than the Middle East. In the same speech, he attacked Europe for prosecuting doubters of the mass killings of Jews by the Nazis during the second world war. Mr. Ahmadi-Nejad’s comments follow widespread international outcry after he called in October for Israel to be “wiped from the map.” Iran is calling for a referendum of all present and past citizens of historic Palestine—Israel, the West Bank and Gaza—to determine its future.

—Financial Times, 9/9/2005

Eighty-nine of the world’s 192 nations are now considered “free,” according to Freedom House’s annual survey of world governments. That’s way up from 76 a decade ago, and a mere 40 countries as recently as 1975. In addition, 122 nations now qualify as electoral democracies, up from 119 in 2004 and 76 in 1990. In fact, the world has more democracies today than at any time in history, despite a steady drumbeat of seemingly horrible news.

—Investors’ Business Daily, 12/22/2005

More than 2,000 companies paid about $1.8 billion in illicit kickbacks and surcharges to Saddam Hussein’s government through extensive manipulation of the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq, according to key findings of a U.N.-backed investigation. The report indicates that about half the 4,500 companies doing business with Iraq paid illegal surcharges on oil purchases or kickbacks on contracts to supply humanitarian goods. The investigators reported that companies and individuals from 66 countries paid illegal kickbacks through a variety of devices while those paying illegal oil surcharges came from, or were registered in, 40 countries. The oil-for-food program was one of the world’s largest humanitarian aid operations, running from 1996-2003.

—Associated Press, 10/27/2005

A year after a tsunami ravaged the shores of South and Southeast Asia, killing more than 180,000 people and wiping away entire villages, rebuilding is lagging in many areas, leaving tens of thousands without homes and billions of dollars in donations unspent. In Indonesia and Sri Lanka, less than a fifth of the homes that were destroyed have been rebuilt. Only a small slice of the more than $13 billion pledged by foreign governments, international aid agencies, private donors and others has been spent. Even where projects are going forward, relief workers have faced a bewildering array of logistical problems, including a lack of clear land titles, ruined roads, a shortage of building materials and skilled labor, and the sheer remoteness of many in need.

—Wall Street Journal, 12/19/2005

US planning for Cuba’s transition after the demise of Fidel Castro has entered a new stage, with a special office for reconstruction inside the US State Department preparing for the “day after”, when Washington will try to back a democratic government in Havana. Every six months, the National Intelligence Council revises a secret watch list of 25 countries in which instability could require US intervention. The reconstruction office was focused on Sudan, Haiti, Congo and Nepal. In a controversial move, Cuba was added to the list.

—Financial Times, 11/1/2005

Financial

There’s an unprecedented wave of capital flowing around the world, with all of its owners anxiously searching for a better return. World pension, insurance and mutual funds have $46 trillion at their disposal, up almost a third from 2000. In the same period global central-bank reserves have doubled to $4 trillion, and other gauges of available capital have risen as well. For good measure, many investors use today’s low interest rates to borrow money to amplify their bets. This “leverage,” in effect, thus enlarges the already overflowing pool of investment capital. As these markets draw more investors, whose buying pushes up their price, prospects rise that a reversal could cause widespread pain.

—Wall Street Journal, 11/3/2005

The number of work stoppages in the U.S., including strikes by unions and management-sponsored lockouts, is on the upswing as tensions rise between workers and companies that are seeking to cut wages and benefits. According to the Bureau of National Affairs Inc., a Washington, D.C. publisher of legal and regulatory information, work stoppages are up 14% in 2005. The recent upswing is “a sign of frustration, almost to the point of desperation,” says Prof. Chaison of Clark University. “For many workers there’s no alternative. They feel that they were badly beaten up in past negotiations or that companies are making tremendous demands on them.”

—Wall Street Journal, 11/16/2005

Israel

More than 60 people in need of heart transplants or major surgery have been treated using a new procedure patented by TheraVitae, a privately owned company in Israel. [Although 60 is] a small number, the results are nonetheless stunning: all of them improved. The treatment repairs damaged or inactive heart tissue using adult stem cells harvested from the patient’s blood and processed outside the body by mimicking the body’s environment. The procedure takes about a week, including the time needed to fly the blood to TheraVitae’s laboratories in Israel. The resulting product is then injected into the patient’s heart where it appears to trigger the body’s natural healing mechanisms, helping the heart tissue recover some of its function.

—TIME, 12/12/2005

Israel’s high-tech sector is having its best year since the dot-com implosion in 2000. The Intel Corporation, the world’s largest chip maker, announced that it would invest $3.5 billion to build a new plant, adjacent to an existing one that makes Pentium 4 chips, at an industrial park in southern Israel, which has long struggled economically despite the money poured into it. The high-tech sector generates more than $13 billion of annual exports, or about 40 percent of Israel’s total exports, according to government figures.

—The New York Times, 12/19/2005

Two Israeli medical innovations have been cleared by the American FDA and will soon be available on the global market. One improves laser eye surgery and the other simplifies removing tumors. Ophthalmologists can use the new laser to treat several retinal conditions that can lead to vision loss and blindness—including proliferative diabetic retinopathy, retinal tears and detachment, premature retinopathy, and retinal vein occlusion. Another Israeli company has announced approval for a device critical to the treatment of breast fibroadenoma. The procedure involves the application of sub-zero temperatures to freeze the tumors, using needles capable of creating ice-balls of diverse sizes and shapes to match the shape of the tumor exactly.

—Arutz 7, 12/1/2005

With the expected exit from politics of Ariel Sharon, just over a year after the death of Yassir Arafat, a generational shift in power across the middle East is almost complete. In the broader Middle East, Mr. Sharon is among the last of the towering and controversial figures whose careers were defined largely by the Arab-Israeli struggles. Over the past six years, the region has lost Hafez al-Assad, Saddam Hussein, and King Fahd in Abdelaziz of Saudi Arabia. With King Hussein of Jordan long gone, Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president is the only leader from the old guard to still be in power. The redrawing of Israel’s political map is only now beginning.

—Financial Times, 1/10/2006

Archaeology and the Bible

These findings link the Bible and the land of Israel. While not surprising to Bible Students, these reinforce Israel’s right to claim the land with secular authorities and anti-Israel proponents who claim they have no history there.

Bethsaida—the home of Andrew and Peter (John 1:44) and the place where Jesus cured a blind man (Mark 8:22-25) and fed the multitude (Luke 9:10-15). Verification of the city existing in the first century was discovered in 1987 with a Hellenistic and Roman-era residential quarter, and the largest and best-reserved city gate yet discovered in Israel.

Dan—the “House of David” inscription contains the only mention of David and his dynasty known outside the Bible; it was discovered at the foot of Mt. Hermon.

Dor—mentioned as the location of one of Solomon’s twelve district governors (1 Kings 4:7-8,11). Located 15 miles south of Haifa, the excavation has uncovered gates, walls and monumental buildings and Hellenistic-Roman complexes and temples.

Hazor—the head of the Canaanite kingdoms according to Joshua 11:10. Joshua burned it to the ground (11:13). Hazor lies 20 miles north of the Sea of Galilee and has been discovered to have an upper mound and a lower city. Excavations have revealed 22 strata of occupation with the earliest dating to the 18th century B.C.

Hippos/Sussita—mentioned in both Matthew and Mark. Excavations indicate an important Roman-era town with temples, baths, a sacred enclosure and a main east-west street.

Megiddo—mentioned in Rev. 16:16. Recently named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, excavations have found more than six millennia of history buried in the remnants of more than 30 different settlements.

Ramat Rachel—Finds have included seal impressions from the reign of King Hezekiah.

Tell Es-Safi/Gath—mentioned in 1 Samuel 5:3-9 as the Philistine city destination of the captured Ark of the Covenant. Last summer excavators uncovered what might be the oldest Philistine inscription.

Tamar—listed as one of the boundaries of Israel in Ezekiel 47:13,19. More than 25,000 objects ranging from the First Temple period to the early Arab period have been uncovered.

Tiberias—John 21:1. Excavations have so far unearthed a basilica, a main street, a covered bazaar, a bathhouse and streets, shops and a theater.

Yotvata—one of the places Israel wandered to during their 40-year journey, mentioned in Deut. 10:7. The modern site is 28 miles north of Eilat. Last year a previously unknown occupation level was discovered.

Zayit—mentioned in 2 Kings 12:17,18 as the site of an invasion by the Aramean King Hazael. It is located approximately 25 miles east of Ashkelon. So far discoveries include a large Egyptian public building and two destruction levels, one dating to the 13th century B.C. and the other to the ninth century B.C., consistent with the period of the Judges.

—Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 2006