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Pastoral
Bible Institute News PBI Annual Report for 2008-2009 “Let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.”—Galatians 6:9,10 Paul gave this advice to the Galatians because he knew discouragement is one of the weapons of the great Adversary of God. As he wrote to others, “we are not ignorant of his [Satan’s] devices” (2 Corinthians 2:11). Those who are serving God know they must resist discouragement and do with their might what their hands find to do. Our activities continue to focus primarily on the publication of this journal, The Herald of Christ's Kingdom. Its circulation remains about the same as a year ago. It is distributed to subscribers in nearly fifty countries. Each issue continues to be translated into the Polish language for those fluent in that language. Our brethren in India translated the special July/August 2008 “Israel at Sixty” into the Tamil language for distribution within India and have since translated one other issue. Others may follow as they have opportunity. We recently participated in an effort to attract more readers in cooperation with the brethren associated with Faithbuilder’s Fellowship. Five-hundred sample copies of the May/June 2009 issue were sent with a cover letter to those receiving the Faithbuilder’s publication in Africa, India, and a few other countries encouraging them to request a free one-year subscription. Our web site, www.heraldmag.org , has a complete archive of past issues. Visitors who prefer a language other than English may now click on a “translate” button to change the English on the site into any one of nearly twenty other languages. This capability is provided by a free translation service from Google. Recently we advertised a special, large-format Chart of the Ages printed in color on vinyl, suitable for hanging on a wall during group studies. We received more than eighty orders for it. Each is lovingly hand-made by brethren in the Pacific Northwest using professional, sign-making equipment. We know that soon earth’s weary night of weeping will end as the Lord establishes the kingdom for which he taught his disciples to pray saying, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth” (Matthew 6:10). But until that time comes, let us all be found faithfully doing those things that bring praise and honor to his name. Directors and Editors of the Pastoral Bible Institute
World News Religious The Vatican is considering welcoming into the Roman Catholic Church a group of traditional Anglicans who broke away from the global Anglican Communion nearly two decades ago over women’s ordination and other issues, officials say. Anglicans split with Rome in 1534 when English King Henry VIII was refused a marriage annulment. The Traditional Anglican Communion formed in 1990 as an association of orthodox Anglicans concerned about what they considered the liberal tilt in Anglican churches. —Associated Press, 3/4/2009 A potentially troubling era dawned in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, where a top Islamist militant leader, emboldened by a peace agreement with the federal government, laid out an ambitious plan to bring a “complete Islamic system” to the surrounding northwest region and the entire country. Cleric Sufi Mohammed said he would not allow any appeals to state courts under the system of sharia, or Islamic law, that will prevail there as a result of the peace accord. He declared that in Swat, home to 1.5 million people, all “un-Islamic laws and customs will be abolished,” and he suggested that the official imprimatur on the agreement would pave the way for sharia to be installed in other areas. —Washington Post, 4/20/2009 Converting to Christianity, punishable by death under Taliban rule, is no longer a criminal offense in Afghanistan, but remains a highly risky choice in this conservative Muslim country. Just two years ago, the new Constitution notwithstanding, an Afghan man was sentenced to death for converting—and was only reprieved, on grounds of insanity, after a massive international campaign. He later went into exile. Christian groups estimate the number of Afghan Christians here ranges between 500 and 8,000—in a country of over 30 million Muslims. Official churches don’t exist, and congregants often gather in secret, using coded messages to direct them to the underground churches that move weekly. —Christian Science Monitor, 2/27/2009 Year-to-year membership statistics for the LDS Church place the Utah-based faith among the fastest-growing religious traditions in the U.S. and Canada. According to the data, membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints grew by 1.6 percent from 2006 to 2007. At the same time, membership in both the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Church of God of Cleveland, Tenn., grew 2 percent. The yearbook is published by the National Council of Churches and uses figures provided by different faiths. —Associated Press, 4/10/2009 In 2007 Roman Catholics numbered 1.147 billion people, or some 17.3 per cent of the global population, the Vatican said in its latest report on church statistics. The total, which relates to the number of people baptized as Catholics, marks a 1.4 per cent increase over the previous year. —Earth Times, 2/28/2009 A veritable ark armada is appearing around the world. Three Hong Kong billionaires spent 17 years building an ark to biblical specifications. In the Netherlands, an ark one-fifth the biblical size has just been completed. There is a 300-foot-long ark in Florenceville, New Brunswick, Canada and one built by Greenpeace in 2007 on Turkey’s Mount Ararat. Some of the arks are hotels, some are theme parks and some have been built as religious monuments. —Wall Street Journal, 4/14/2009 Unlike Europe and much of the Western world, where church membership seems to be on a constant decline, Africa is a kind of religious Klondike, where mainstream Christian churches, evangelical churches, and Muslim faiths all appear to be growing with no end in sight. The Catholic Church alone has 185 million members in Africa—20 percent of the continent’s population. —Christian Science Monitor, 3/18/2009 Social Those who are extremely obese, about 100 or more pounds over a healthy weight, could be shortening their lives by as many as 10 years, a recent study found. Being extremely obese is similar to the effect of lifelong smoking. Michael Thun, emeritus vice president of epidemiological research at the American Cancer Society, said, “What is particularly worrisome in the United States is that more than a third of people now qualify as obese, and a subset of people are becoming progressively more obese. Once you gain weight, it’s hard to lose it and easy to gain more. So the goal should be to stop your weight gain now.” —USA Today, 3/17/2009 Cremation accounted for less than 4 percent of funerals in the mid-1960s but more than one third of them last year. Cremation cuts out the three most expensive pieces of a funeral: the casket, the embalming process and the grave plot. —Newsweek, 3/16/2009 Gertrude Baines celebrated her 115th birthday on Monday with a little party where she received a proclamation from Guinness World Records acknowledging her as the world’s oldest person. Baines was born in 1894 in Shellman, Georgia. —Associated Press, 4/6/2009 Job seekers are swamping federal, state and local police agencies across the country. Police chiefs expect the new prospects, many of them highly experienced and victims of corporate cutbacks, will be better suited to fill a range of public safety jobs, from dispatchers to beat cops. The FBI is sorting through 227,000 applications for 3,000 jobs. The FBI says that fifty percent of the applicants normally fail background checks. —USA Today, 3/12/2009 The jobless rate spiked to a 25-year high in March. Some 5.1 million jobs have been lost since the recession began in December 2007. The unemployment rate jumped to 8.5%, the highest since November 1983. —Investors Business Daily, 4/6/2009 California home prices dropped 41 percent last month from a year earlier, more than double the U.S. decline, as surging foreclosures drove down values. The median price for an existing, single-family detached home in California sank to $247,590 in February from $418,260 a year earlier. The U.S. median price fell 16 percent during the same period, the second-biggest drop on record. —Bloomberg, 3/25/2009 U.S. highway deaths in 2008 fell to their lowest level since 1961 as the recession and $4-per-gallon gas prompted people to drive less. Experts also cited record seat belt use and tighter enforcement of drunken driving laws. 37,313 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes last year, 9.1% lower than the year before. —Los Angeles Times, 4/6/2009 More babies [4,317,119] were born in the United States in 2007 than any other year in the nation’s history. On average, a U.S. woman has 2.1 babies in her lifetime. That’s the “magic number” required for a population to replace itself. Births to unwed mothers reached an all-time high of about 40 percent. —Associated Press, 3/19/2009 Foreclosure filings spiked in March despite industry and government efforts to keep people in their homes, according to data from RealtyTrac released today. The firm counted 341,180 filings nationally, which can range from default notices to bank repossessions. That was up 46 percent from March 2008 and was the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began collecting this data in 2005. —Washington Post, 4/16/2009 Political As of March—or halfway through fiscal year 2009 —federal tax revenue is 14% lower than last year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently reported. Considerably more people are out of work than they were last year, which means they’re not paying as much in income taxes. At the same time, the country’s spending levels midway through the fiscal year rose by $480 billion, or 33 percent, compared to last March. The CBO estimates that the annual deficit will spike to between $1.67 trillion and $1.85 trillion. That’s nearly four times last year’s then-record $455 billion deficit. —CNNMoney.com, 4/14/2009 The International Monetary Fund, dismissed as increasingly irrelevant when the world economy was booming, will now wield more than $1 trillion to help bring it back to life. Leaders from the world’s most powerful nations agreed to triple the money the IMF can lend to rescue crisis-stricken nations, to $750 billion. The agency will also get another $250 billion in Special Drawing Rights, an overdraft facility for its 185 members. —Bloomberg, 4/3/2009 Sales-tax revenue for U.S. states has fallen more sharply than at any time in the past 50 years according to the Rockefeller Institute of Government. Fiscal experts say more states are likely to try to raise tax revenue by turning to broad-based tax increases. —Wall Street Journal, 4/9/2009 Georgians are calling on President Mikheil Saakashvili to resign early and call for new elections. Five years ago he was swept to power in the so-called Rose Revolution on promises of improved living standards and democracy. Since then, Mr. Saakashvili has concentrated power in his hands, muzzled the media and been provoked into a war with Russia. The conflict crushed the Georgian army, left swathes of the country occupied and battered the economy. —Dow Jones, 4/9/2009 Financial Western European banks have made $1.7 trillion in loans to Eastern countries. Investors are seeing a rising risk that one or more European countries may default on its debt. Analysts from Danske Bank, Denmark’s largest financial institution, warned clients of the “very clear risk of an Asian crisis-style meltdown,” a reference to the 1997 episode that spread from Thailand to topple the region’s large economies. —USA Today, 3/12/2009 Visa Inc. reported that the total dollar volume of purchases made using its branded debit cards surpassed credit-card purchases for the first time during the last three months of 2008. … The personal savings rate [of Americans] increased to 5% in January, the highest level in nearly 14 years. —Wall Street Journal, 4/30/2009 A footnote in the U.S. presidential budget for 2009 reinstates the estate tax that will take a majority of a dead person’s estate valued at over $3.5 million. William Beach, senior fellow in economics at the Heritage Foundation says, “By and large, the death tax is borne by people who own small businesses. People who may have built up value in land over generations find themselves in situations where they’ve got to sell the farms to pay the taxes.” —Investor’s Business Daily, 4/6/2009 Last year was a bad one for most banks. The IMF estimates that since the credit crisis began, financial institutions have taken about $1 trillion in write-downs. But lending of last resort is still a winning proposition. The Federal Reserve released its annual financial statements Thursday, revealing that in 2008 it earned $32 billion, even as it absorbed assets from the collapse of Bear Stearns and AIG and launched unprecedented programs to revive the economy, purchasing mortgage-backed securities and creating new lending facilities. Profits from the programs are forked over to the Treasury. —Forbes, 4/23/2009 Israel The Israel Antiquities Authority has announced the discovery of royal seal impressions from the times of the First and Second Temples. The finds were made at a site in the southern Jerusalem hills. The seal impressions are believed to date back to the time of King Hezekiah, who ruled over Judea in the late eighth century BCE. A later inscription, estimated to have been made 600 years after Hezekiah’s reign, was found on a jar neck. The finds were made at an excavation in the village of Umm Tuba, located between the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Tzur Baher and Har Homa. —Arutz 7, 2/23/2009 Arab growth rate in Israel has dropped in the past decade by over 26%, while Jewish growth is closing the gap, having risen 22%. Live Jewish births have risen continually over the past 20 years, reaching a high in 2008 of 112,763—a jump of more than 55% during that period. This figure does not include the nearly 4,700 live births among the non-Jewish Russian population. Of the one million people whom the Jewish Agency brought to Israel from the Former Soviet Union, approximately one third of them are not Jewish. —Arutz 7, 3/17/2009 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took office saying his government faced “many challenges.” In an interview with the US-based The Atlantic magazine given just prior to assuming his new office, Netanyahu said that any long-term delay in halting the Iranian ambitions to gain nuclear weapons would result in an “imperiled Israel” taking action. Netanyahu said he would support the Obama administration and their decision to “engage Iran” but added he is skeptical. —BFP Israel Mosaic Radio, 4/1/2009 Israeli scientists have developed a new device that taps into the stem of a tree and when water levels are low, the tree can text a message, email the farmer, or turn on the irrigation tap to water itself. The device will save farmers up to 40% in water use. —www.Israel21c.org, 3/25/2009 British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that the British government would review its weapons sales to Israel. The examination of all arms export licenses was prompted by members of parliament who were upset at images transmitted from the Gaza Strip during Israel’s military operation there in January. Britain has very little involvement with Israel’s military, supplying less than one percent of its equipment. —The Media Line, 4/22/2009 Hebrew University announced that according to research done by Prof. Sergio DellaPergola, as many as 32 million Jews would be alive today had the Holocaust never happened. Some estimates say there are less than half that many Jews currently alive. —BFP Israel Mosaic Radio, 4/20/2009 |
