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Letters from Readers Thank you for the booklets ordered. We do so appreciate the loving efforts of all the brethren who have prepared these booklets and those who serve us in their faithful studies providing meat in due season. I look forward to receiving the Herald and devour it with much anticipation and glee and feast upon it more than once. May the Lord continue to bless your service. — Colorado Just wanted to mention how much I appreciated reading the article on “The Kingdom of God” in the (January/February) Herald. It was so direct and refreshing. Seems like in this time of increasing world trouble, people are more open to the comforting and encouraging Gospel of the Kingdom. The special part about sharing it with others is that we ourselves are strengthened and encouraged by doing so! (The) article on “The Harvest” was such an excellent line-up of all those amazing statistics of what the Pastor was doing in his day and although we “laborers” are fewer now, we are all so amplified with all our technological resources today. What a responsibility! Thank you so much. — New Jersey Religious With 2.18 billion adherents, Christianity has become a truly global religion over the past century as rapid growth in developing nations offset declines in Christianity’s traditional strongholds, according to a report released December 19 by the Pew Research Center. “Global Christianity” reports on self-identified Christian populations based on more than 2,400 sources of information, especially census and survey data. Findings illustrate major shifts since 1910, when two-thirds of the world’s Christians lived in Europe. Now only one in four Christians lives in Europe. Most of the rest are distributed across the Americas (37 percent), sub-Saharan Africa (24 percent) and the Asia-Pacific region (13 percent). The report confirms Christianity’s standing as the world’s largest religion, with 32 percent. Islam is second with about 23 percent, according to a 2009 Pew report. — Washington Post, 12/20/2011 The overwhelming victory for Islamists in the Egyptian elections revealed that a significant number of Egyptians want to implement Sharia rules within the country. The slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) that “Islam is the Solution” claims that implementing Sharia law will magically solve all the problems in the country. Other Egyptians supported the Brotherhood with the hope that it will be less corrupt than the Mubarak regime. — Newsmax. com, 12/23/2011 The U.S. Roman Catholic Church will establish a body in January to house disaffected members of the Episcopal Church, beginning with a few dozen ministers and at least two congregations seeking communion. Some 35 of 67 Anglican ministers who have applied to join the Catholic Church have received the “nulla osta” from the Holy See, allowing them to move forward to become priests, said Cardinal Donald Wuerl, archbishop of Washington, D.C. — Reuter’s, 11/15/2011 The Dead Sea Scrolls may have been written, at least in part, by a sectarian group called the Essenes, according to nearly 200 textiles discovered in caves at Qumran, in the West Bank, where the religious texts had been stored. The research reveals that all the textiles were made of linen, rather than wool, which was the preferred textile used in ancient Israel. Not everyone agrees with this interpretation. An archaeologist who has excavated at Qumran said that the linen could have come from people fleeing the Roman army after the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, and that they are in fact responsible for putting the scrolls into caves. The Dead Sea Scrolls consist of nearly 900 texts, the first batch of which were discovered by a Bedouin shepherd in 1947. — Live Science, 11/15/2011 More than 100 people have been killed in a series of attacks in north-east Nigeria by a radical Muslim sect. The sect, called Boko Haram, also killed a police inspector. Sect gunmen stopped the officer’s car at gunpoint as he neared a mosque to pray with his family, local police commissioner Simeon Midenda said. Boko Haram wants to implement strict sharia law across Nigeria, an oil-rich nation of more than 160 million which has a predominantly Christian south and a Muslim north. An Associated Press count shows the group has killed at least 361 people this year alone. — AP, 11/6/2011 As war, the economy and persecution by Muslim extremists push Arab Christians and religious minorities out of the Middle East, the refugees and immigrants are quietly settling in small pockets across the U.S. Religious leaders said if violence continues, more can be expected to seek safety in the U.S. while disappearing in lands where they’ve lived for 2,000 years. According to the U.S. State Department’s 2011 reports on International Religious Freedom, for example, Iraq had an estimated Christian population of around 1.4 million before the U.S.-led invasion. The report says only around 400,000 to 600,000 remain and face increasing violence. — AP, 11/11/2011 Social Despite media reports to the contrary, the Census officials say about 49.9 million Americans, roughly 13.8 percent of the U.S. population, are living below the poverty line and another 53.8 million, or about 18 percent, are considered low income. That’s still a pretty substantial chunk of the U.S. population, but not quite the “nearly half” that made its way into headlines around the Web and onto TV broadcasts. The new account of poverty in the U.S. considers medical, taxes and transportation costs. The “low income” cut off for a family of four is $45,000. According to a survey of mayors in 29 cities, 1 in 4 residents requesting food assistance are not getting it. — NBC, 12/15/2011 Mexican farmers lost 2.2 million acres of crops to dry conditions, and 1.7 million farm animals died in 2011 from lack of water or forage, according to that nation’s Agriculture Department. Mexico is suffering under its worse drought on record. — AP, 12/3/2011 Barely half of all adults in the United States — a record low — are currently married, and the median age at first marriage has never been higher for brides (26.5 years) and grooms (28.7), according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census data. In 1960, 72% of all adults ages 18 and older were married; today just 51% are. The same trend has taken hold in most other advanced post-industrial societies, and these long-term declines appear to be largely unrelated to the business cycle. The declines have persisted through good economic times and bad. In the United States, the declines have occurred among all age groups, but are most dramatic among young adults. Today, just 20% of adults ages 18 to 29 are married, compared with 59% in 1960. — Pew Social & Demographic Trends, 12/14/2011 A Virginia company is leading a national movement to replace classrooms with computers — in which children as young as 5 can learn at home at taxpayer expense. K12 Inc. of Herndon has become the country’s largest provider of full-time public virtual schools, upending the traditional American notion that learning occurs in a schoolhouse where students share the experience. In K12’s virtual schools, learning is largely solitary, with lessons delivered online to a child who progresses at her own pace. Conceived as a way to teach a small segment of the home-schooled and others who need flexible schooling, virtual education has evolved into an alternative to traditional public schools for an increasingly wide range of students. — Washington Post, 11/26/2011 Fertility rates have dropped in many parts of the world in recent decades, but something particularly remarkable happened to the once-prolific family across Latin America. From sprawling Mexico to tiny Ecuador to economically buoyant Chile, fertility rates plummeted. In 1960, women in Latin America had almost six children on average. By 2010, the rate had fallen to 2.3 children. ... [Brazil] is a country of continental proportions whose population is an ethnic stew of almost 200 million. There is also a great gap between rich and poor, although millions have joined the middle class during Brazil’s recent economic expansion. Brazil’s fertility rate has fallen from 6.15 children per woman in 1960 to less than 1.9 today. That is a lower rate than in any other Latin American country except Cuba. — Washington Post, 12/30/2011 (Editor’s note: For an examination of the prophetic implication of a falling population around the globe, see the September / October issue, “Today in Prophecy.”) Political Two-thirds of Americans believe it is important for a presidential candidate to have strong religious beliefs, even if those beliefs are different than their own, a survey said. The survey of Americans’ attitudes by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute found only one in five Americans would object to a candidate whose beliefs were different to their own. — Reuter’s, 11/8/2011 Iranian protestors ransacked the British diplomatic compounds as an apparent show of anger over Western sanctions to punish Tehran for defiance over its nuclear program. Iranian parliament had approved a bill days before to downgrade relations with Britain. In 1979, Iranian protestors took over the U.S. embassy and held its workers hostage for over a year. — AP, 11/30/2011 U.S. authorities said they discovered a major cross-border tunnel in a spate of secret passages found to smuggle drugs from Mexico. The tunnel links warehouses in San Diego and Tijuana. More than 70 tunnels have been found on the border since 2008, surpassing the number of discoveries in the previous six years. — AP, 11/30/2011 A report compiled by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) suggests that “there is a real chance that Western effort to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon will fail.” The report was six months in the making and according to its authors, any serious US policy on Iran must operate under the premise that the Islamic Republic will become a full fledged nuclear power by 2013. “Iran remains the leading sponsor of international terrorism, a proliferator of missiles and nuclear materials, a regional aggressor, and an abuser of human rights.” the report concluded. — 12/6/2011 Tens of thousands of Russians turned out for protests across nine time zones, challenging Prime Minister Vladimir Putin with a newfound sense of solidarity and marking a turning point in his rule. After a decade of silence, ordinary citizens rallied to express their disgust with what they called a fixed election. Between 25,000 and 40,000 people filled Bolotnaya Square across the river from the Kremlin in Moscow, chanting against the “party of crooks and thieves,” as they have come to call Putin’s United Russia. An additional 10,000 gathered in St. Petersburg, with towns from Siberia to the Urals reporting 500, 1,000, or even 3,000 each in the largest opposition protests Putin has ever encountered. — Washington Post, 12/11/2011 The United Nations reported a substantial increase in the number of those killed in the ongoing violence against the opposition in Syria, upping the death toll to more than 5,000. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said that “credible reports from a variety of sources received by my office indicate that the total number of people killed [in Syria] since the protests began in March now probably exceeds 5,000,” according to a report on the website for the Office of the High Commissioner. The Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad has brutally repressed the opposition protest movement that began in March, reportedly using the Syrian military to open fire on its own citizens. — themideastupdate.com, 12/13/2011 Financial As Europe’s economic crisis bites hard, Spain, the eurozone’s fourth largest economy, is saddled with its own myriad woes, and low productivity resulting from long work days is one of them. It is groping for ways to reinvent itself after a housing bubble that largely fueled the economy went bust three years ago. Unemployment now stands at 21.5 percent. Debt is piling up everywhere. One thing that would help is to scrap the traditional two-to-three-hour lunch at midday, say economists and advocates of a more American-style 9-to-5 schedule. Of the 17 nations that share the euro, Spain is 10th in productivity per hour worked, according to Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical agency. — AP, 11/14/2011 U.S. farmers are enjoying their best year in decades, thanks to high prices for many crops, livestock and farmland and strong global demand for corn used in making ethanol. Farm profits are expected to spike by 28 percent to $101 billion and the amount of cash farms have available is expected to top $100 billion — the first time both measures have done so, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. All the while, crop sales are expected to pass the $200 billion mark for the first time in U.S. history. — AP, 12/13/2011 Eurozone ministers sent Greece a $10.7 billion Christmas rescue package to stem a liquidity crisis, yet failed to resolve fears that the common euro currency might be doomed. “There is no one single silver bullet that will get us out of this crisis,” said Olli Rehn, EU monetary chief. The euro zone called on the International Monetary Fund for more resources to help further protect Europe’s currency. — AP, 11/30/2011 Banks just posted their highest quarterly profits in four years, with a net income of $35 billion, a 49-percent increase from the same quarter last year. This was the industry’s ninth consecutive profitable quarter. It’s not that banks are lending a lot of new money, however. The gains have come as the economy’s gradual recovery has reduced banks’ need to set aside large amounts of cash to cover losses on bad loans. — Wall Street Journal, 11/22/2011 A landmark summit of the 27-nation European Union ended here with both a pledge and a wedge: A pledge among nations to work toward a new treaty binding them more closely in a pact to save the euro, and a wedge between the continent and Britain, which opted to sit it out. In a summit portrayed by leaders as a make-or-break moment in the decades-long march toward European unity after World War II, the outcome signaled the growing clout of Germany and a potentially wayward path for Britain. After marathon talks, nations unveiled a deal to quell a debt crisis that is threatening the global economy. The summit organizers announced that they had agreed to try to forge a new pact centering on strict caps on government spending and borrowing to shore up the euro’s foundations. — Washington Post, 12/9/2011 Israel Israeli scientists have discovered a way of growing trees in the barren sands of the Arava Desert. The pollution-reducing forest planted over the summer is soaking up harmful excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and releasing beneficial oxygen. Another “green” bonus is that the trees are nurtured with recycled sewage water and saltwater. The project is research collaboration between Tel Aviv University’s [TAU] Porter School of Environmental Science, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and the University of Tuscia in Viterbo, Italy. Until now, growing crops dedicated to fuel production has been controversial, since converting agricultural land could have the side effect of creating food shortages. Arid and previously unused desert lands provide an ideal solution. Israel doesn’t have enough of this land to make a large-scale operation economically feasible, but places like the Sahara Desert could be ideal. — Israel21c.org, 11/7/2011 The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is using technology in a race against time, with the aim of identifying and locating 1,100 orphaned babies and children and others separated from their families during the Holocaust. “Remember Me?” is a campaign aimed at locating the people in the pictures [http://rememberme.ushmm.org/]. Since it was launched in March, 230 of the babies and children have been found — 15 of them in Israel. — YNetnews, 11/14/2011 Technology giant Apple is putting together the deal for its first acquisition in Israel. Apple is in advanced negotiations for the acquisition of Israeli startup Anobit for about [US] $400-$500 million. Anobit developed a chip which enhances flash drive performance through signal processing (DSP). The chip is already incorporated in Apple’s bestselling devices, such as the iPhone, iPad and the MacBook Air. The chip may as much as double the memory volume in the new iPads and MacBooks. — Ynetnews, 12/13/2011 Israeli archaeologists announced a rare discovery: a clay seal that appears to have a link to rituals performed in the Jewish Temple about 2,000 years ago. The seal reads, in Aramaic, “pure for God.” The seal is from the period between 1st century BC to 70 AD, when the second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. Archaeologists believe that the seal was used to indicate approval of an object for use in a ritual. — AP, 12/25/2011 Gibraltar — the tiny British territory of 30,000 that sits at the foot of Spain at the gateway to North Africa and the Mediterranean — has four synagogues, a mikvah, a kosher coffeehouse and separate boys and girls religious high schools. Combined, they suggest a community far larger than just 750 Jews. Gibraltar’s largely Orthodox and Sephardic Jewish community has grown substantially in the past decade, increasing its rolls by 25 percent in just the last three years. — JTA, 12/11/2011 |
