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Pastoral
Bible Institute News
PBI News Today in Prophecy, our analysis of today’s current events in the context of Bible prophecy and principles, now appears as a regular article rather than as an insert. This feature can now be found following News and Views. World News Religious Attacked by mobs and terrorists, repressed by the growing popularity of fundamentalist Islamic law and cut off from crucial business ties, Christians are fleeing the Middle East in an unprecedented exodus. More than half of Iraqi Christians — an estimated 400,000 people — have left that country over the last decade as power has fallen in the hands of increasingly hostile Shi’a Islamic leaders. In Egypt, home to at least 8 million Copt Christians, at least 95,000 have emigrated since March 2011. The number could reach 250,000 by year’s end, reports the Egyptian Federation of Human Rights. The most popular destination was the United States, which took in an estimated 42,000 of the Egyptian Copts. Other destinations included Canada, Australia and Western Europe. (Newsmax.com, 10/24/2011) Pope Benedict XVI joined Buddhist monks, Islamic scholars, Yoruba leaders and a handful of agnostics in making a communal call for peace, insisting that religion must never be used as a pretext for war or terrorism. Traditional Catholics condemned the meeting, saying it was blasphemy for the pope to invite leaders of “false” religions to pray to their Gods for peace. (AP, 10/27/2011) A parish in India’s southern Kerala state, fighting a decline in their Catholic population, offers cash pay- ments to couples producing more children. “Every fifth child born in a family in our parish stands to get richer by 10,000 rupees ($257),” said Salu Mecheril, regional co-coordinator of the scheme started by the St. Vincent De Paul Forane Church in Waynad district in northeast Kerala. “We are working to spread this campaign in all the diocese’s parishes,” he declared, concerned over the province’s dwindling Christian population. (New Zealand Herald, 10/22/2011) The BBC broadcast a shocking story from Uganda about widespread child sacrifice. As a result of an undercover investigation, it said many cases were not being followed up by the police, and little was being done to protect potential victims. Reporters spoke to a witch doctor who offered to kill a child for them to bring luck to a construction project. Last year, according to the United States human rights reports, over 9,000 missing children were “lost” and presumed killed. (ABC, 10/20/2011) Although at one time a large and influential religious denomination in North America, a fact sheet published by The Episcopal Church shows that its membership has dipped below two million members. The survey of membership trends noted that in 2006 there were over 2.1 million “Active Baptized Members” in the church. By 2010, however, the number decreased to less than 1.96 million. At their peak, Episcopalians in the United States numbered 3.6 million members, which was in 1966. (The Christian Post, 10/27/2011) Social India is one of the main engines of global population growth. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the crowded northern state of Uttar Pradesh, home to 200 million people. The world’s 7 billionth person was born on the last day of October, according to U.N. estimates. The world has grown quickly over the last century, adding 1 billion people in just the past 12 years. Though the rate of growth is slowing, India’s population is expected to continue climbing until about 2060. Based on current trends, India will overtake China as the world’s largest country by 2025, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. (Washington Post, 10/16/2011) Gang membership in the United States is growing, with an estimated 1.4 million members — up 40% in the past two years — in some 33,000 gangs, according to a new government report. White-collar crime is an increasing focus, with gangs collaborating with transnational drug-trafficking organizations, expanding into mortgage fraud and counterfeiting, video-game piracy as well as trafficking in guns and drugs. Much of the growth in gang-related activity is coming from increases in ethnic-based gangs, the report said. (AP, 10/22/11) A 7.2-magnitude earthquake hit eastern Turkey, collapsing buildings and killing an estimated 500- 1000 people. The mountain town of Ecris and the city of Van, near the Iranian border, suffered heavy casualties, with scores of buildings — including a dormitory — collapsing, burying people in rubble. The epicenter of the earthquake was in the village of Tabanli, about 10 miles from the busy city of Van. (AP, 10/23/2011) If the world’s population was packed in at New York City’s density, it would fit inside the state of Texas. (Time, 10/31/2011) Cancer, diabetes, heart and lung disease account for nearly two-thirds of deaths worldwide and 9 out of 10 deaths in the U.S. Much attention is being placed on places such as Ethiopia, where there are only four oncologists to treat cancer in a country of more than 80 million people. (AP, 9/14/2011) Overdoses of prescription painkillers led to the deaths of almost 15,000 people in 2008, many because of unwarranted use. That is more than three times the 4,000 deaths from narcotics in 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (AP, 11/2/2011) The world’s 7 billionth person was born in October. The most representative example of the world’s population: lives in China (19%); is Christian (33%); is male (50.4%); lives in a town or city (50.5%); is 29 years old; earns $10,290 annually; and does not use the Internet (73%). (Time, 10/31/2011) The first genome-scale model for predicting functions of genes and gene networks in a grass species has been developed by an international team of researchers including scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI). Called RiceNet, this systems-level model of rice gene interactions should speed the development of new crops for advanced biofuels, and improve the production and quality of an important food staple. (Berkeley Lab news release, 11/2/2011) Political
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– Number of democracies in 1946 (The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker) Nearly every aspect of the killing of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi was mired in confusion. New rulers in Libya are disorganized, its people embittered and divided. Even liberal newspapers in the United Kingdom and the United States felt the media had gone too far in showing the bloodied body of the former dictator being dragged through the streets in order to prove his death. The bloody siege of Misrata over the summer of fighting instilled a particularly virulent hatred of Gadhafi in the area where he was found hiding in a sewer pipe. (AP, 10/22/11) Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic 1919 Gemlich letter, described as the most significant document ever acquired by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, is now on display at the Los Angeles center’s Museum of Tolerance. The letter was typewritten by Hitler decades before the Holocaust when he was a German soldier. It is believed to be Hitler’s first written comments calling for the annihilation of the Jews. Wiesenthal Center Rabbi Marvin Heir unveiled the letter in New York. In one section, Hitler writes that Jews should be denied rights, with a final aim being the “uncompromising removal of the Jews altogether.” (ynetnews.com, 10/16/2011) The U.S. will send about 100 troops to Uganda and nearby countries to combat the Lord’s Resistance Army and kill or capture its leader, Joseph Kony, who has been charged with war crimes for a decades-long campaign against civilians in Central Africa. In a letter to Congress, President Obama outlined a strictly advisory role for U.S. forces, whom he said would engage in combat only in self-defense. The decision follows more than a year of study within the White House on how to support the intent of a bill passed by Congress to help several Central African nations defeat a destabilizing guerrilla movement. (Washington Post, 10/15/2011) Financial European leaders moved to stem the debt crisis gripping the continent by agreeing to a plan that imposes steep losses on investors holding troubled Greek bonds and boosts the firepower of the region’s bailout fund to at least a trillion dollars. European leaders said banks and other major investors in Greek bonds agreed to take losses of up to 50 percent. This concession was meant to help prevent the Greek government from defaulting on bills it cannot pay and avoid an even costlier shock to the European financial system. Under the deal, the bailout fund, known as the new European Financial Stability Facility, would help cash-strapped countries such as Italy and Spain borrow at least a trillion dollars by providing a kind of insurance that would make their bonds more attractive to investors. (AP, 10/27/2011) The most important economic question in the world today is whether China can save the world, or whether the entire country is a $6 trillion bubble that’s ready to pop. If it crashes, the reverberations will be felt from Boise to Brussels. (Time, 10/31/2011) IBM Corp. has passed a milestone, naming the first female CEO in the company’s 100-year history. The selection of Virginia Rometty is also a statement about the growing influence of women in the top tiers of business. Although women have made momentous strides, breaking through corporate America’s “glass ceiling” over the past half century, a woman’s ascendance into the chief executive position of a major corporation still holds significance. Currently, only 16 Fortune 500 companies are led by a woman. (AP, 10/26/2011) Editor’s Note: For a review of the changing global role of women as part of Bible prophecy, see Today in Prophecy, September/October 2010
Tens of thousands of people around the world took to the streets to reiterate their anger at the global financial system, corporations and government. Rallies were held in more than 900 cities in Europe, Africa and Asia, as well as in the U.S. The largest rallies took place in Europe where crowds were largely peaceful. Demonstrators in the U.S. adopted the slogan, “Love employment, hate the employer.” (Washington Post, 10/15/2011) Farm subsidies that have existed for decades have been cut as part of a sea change in how agriculture will be supported in the United States. Direct payments to farmers of $50 billion over 10 years will be eliminated because some growers are now generating over one million dollars in net income. (AP, 10/22/2011) After watching their homes’ values collapse in recent years, a quarter of all homeowners are “underwater,” owing more than their homes are worth. As many as 9 million homeowners are in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. (Washington Post, 10/24/11) Israel An Israeli scientist won this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering quasicrystals, a material in which atoms were packed together in a well-defined pattern that never repeats. Recent Nobel prizes have generally split credit for scientific advances among two or three people, but this year’s chemistry prize and the accompanying 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.4 million) went to a single scientist: Dan Shechtman, 70, a professor of materials science at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. Israeli leaders expressed delight and pride at the 10th Nobel Prize won by a citizen of Israel, which has a population of less than eight million. (New York Times, 10/5/2011) When the 2011-2012 school year began in the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, millions of shekels in sparkling new or renewed classrooms, computers and sports facilities greeted 42,153 students and their teachers. Many of the 59 public schools approved and budgeted under the Jerusalem Education Authority of the Ministry of Education have been neglected, under supplied or over crowded for decades. Since taking office in November 2008, Mayor Nir Barkat has been implementing improvements to get these facilities on par with schools in the western sector of the city. The municipality is currently investing the unprecedented sum of NIS 300 million (about US $69 million) in the planning and construction of 285 additional new classrooms for Arab schoolchildren. (Israel21c, 10/16/2011) Israel, with less than 1/1000th of the world’s population, has produced innovative scientists who have contributed to cell phone, computer and medical technology, including the development of “a disposable colonoscopic camera that makes most of the discomfort surrounding colonoscopies obsolete,” discovery of “the molecular trigger that causes psoriasis” as well as “the first large-scale solar power plant — now working in California’s Mojave Desert.” (Israel21c.org/didyouknow, 9/20/2011) Egyptian Energy Minister Abdullah Ghorab said that Israel will be paying a lot more for the natural gas it buys from Egypt under a contract negotiated during the reign of Hosni Mubarak. Since Mubarak’s overthrow, the gas deal has been a frequent target of dissent and resulted in long jail terms for officials from the Mubarak era that cut the deal that provides Israel with 40% of its natural gas supply. The allegation that Israel is being charged less than the market rate for gas is part of the overall rising anti-Israel animus present in post-Mubarak Egypt. The flow of gas to Israel has been interrupted six times by sabotage since the fall of Mubarak. (The Media Line, 10/5/2011) On the outskirts of Tianjin, China, the Beijing Power and Desalination Plant is a 26-billion-renminbi technical marvel: an ultrahigh-temperature, coal-fired generator with state-of-the-art pollution controls, mated to advanced Israeli equipment that uses its leftover heat to distill seawater into fresh water. The desalination complex was almost wholly made in Israel — shipped to Tianjin and bolted together. (New York Times, 10/26/2011) A revolutionary, minimally invasive heart repair procedure, now being investigated in America and already being performed by European doctors, could save the lives of older people who might not be able to withstand open-heart surgery to repair their heart valves. However, up to 15% of all patients undergoing this procedure — called TAVI (transcatheter aortic valve implantation) — suffer a stroke on the operating table. Foreseeing the risk years ago as TAVI was being developed, Israeli cardiologist Dr. Dov Shimon invented a novel way to prevent stroke. His innovation is a filter against these embolisms. The SMT filter holds great promise for many patients because it is performed through an artery in the leg. (Israel21c, 1021/2011) The number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States increased for the first time since 2004, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s annual audit. The audit showed that there were 1,239 incidents in 2010, up slightly from 1,211 reported the previous year. The audit tracks assaults, vandalism, and harassment reported during the calendar year in 45 states and the District of Columbia. Last year, 22 physical assaults, 900 cases of harassment and 317 cases of vandalism were reported. The majority of incidents were concentrated in the states with the largest Jewish populations. The top three states were California with 297 incidents, New York with 205 and New Jersey with 130. (JTA, 10/5/2011) The October 18 edition of Al-Masry Al-Youm includes an article on developing Sinai that features a map of Sinai along the Gaza Strip, Israel and the West Bank. The entire area is labeled “Palestine,” with no lines of delineation in the areas. The word Israel does not appear on the map. Jerusalem is identified — as is Aqaba and Taba. Eilat is not. (imra.org, 10/19/2011) A plastered building, probably a ritual bath, dating to the Second Temple period was exposed in an archaeological excavation conducted by the IAA (Israel Antiquities Authority. According to the IAA director, archaeologist Pablo Betzer, it was the first time that any remains dating to the Second Temple period have been exposed in the region near Kibbutz Tzora. A video of the discovery can be found at the following website: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFBJfl3CNjg (Isranet, 10/14/2011) |
