"Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?"
(Matthew 24:3)
Tell Us
Dear Friends,
Greetings. There is a lot of talk recently, and there will be much more so in the near future, concerning December 21, 2012. Although it may usher in great changes, one thing we can absolutely assure you is that it is not the end of the world.
How can we be so definate in our assurance that this date does not signify the world's end? Because it is not in accordance with God's Word, the Bible.
Although we do believe we are living in the End Time and that we will be seeing great and dramatic events taking place such as those described in Matthew 24, Luke 21, and Revelation chapters 8, and 9:11-13, it still does not signal the end of the world.
One very simple proof of this, among many, is Revelation 20:4 which says Christ is going to rule and reign for one thousand years on earth after the battle of Armageddon!
Don't let the powers that be, and the movies and media frighten you into believing that December 21, 2012 means the end of the world. That simply is not true. It could however, as we mentioned, signal major changes in our world.
Jesus even said concerning the End Time; "And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened."(Matthew 24:22)
He also said; " I am with you always, even to the end of the age..." (Matthew 28:20) and we might add, and beyond!
It would however be wise to prepare. As some of the following articles illustrate, we are moving closer to the time the Bible refers to as "great tribulation". The most important preparation we can make is spiritual preparation.
Canada Free Press
United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen
Obama Poised to Cede US Sovereignty, Claims British Lord
By Editor
October 15, 2009
-Fighting Words - The Minnesota Free Market Institute hosted an event at Bethel University in St. Paul on Wednesday evening. Keynote speaker Lord Christopher Monckton, former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, gave a scathing and lengthy presentation, complete with detailed charts, graphs, facts, and figures which culminated in the utter decimation of both the pop culture concept of global warming and the credible threat of any significant anthropomorphic climate change.
If credible, the concern Monckton speaks to may well prove the single most important issue facing the American nation, bigger than health care, bigger than cap and trade, and worth every citizen's focused attention.
Here were Monckton's closing remarks, as dictated from my audio recording:
At [the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in] Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. Your president will sign it. Most of the third world countries will sign it, because they think they're going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regime from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won't sign it.
I read that treaty. And what it says is this, that a world government is going to be created. The word "government" actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfication of what is called, coyly, "climate debt" - because we've been burning CO2 and they haven't. We've been screwing up the climate and they haven't. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.
How many of you think that the word "election" or "democracy" or "vote" or "ballot" occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn't appear once. So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it left within a year, because [the communists] captured it - Now the apotheosis as at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He's going to sign it. He'll sign anything. He's a Nobel Peace Prize [winner]; of course he'll sign it.
What Obama Reads
In the photo here, Obama is spotted with a book penned by Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World. Zakaria's book argues that a world order is emerging led by the authoritarian slave state China and India.
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RIA Novosti
Russia ready to abandon dollar in oil, gas trade with China
October 17, 2009
Russia is ready to consider using the Russian and Chinese national currencies instead of the dollar in bilateral oil and gas dealings, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.
The premier, currently on a visit to Beijing, said a final decision on the issue can only be made after a thorough expert analysis.
"Yesterday, energy companies, in particular Gazprom, raised the question of using the national currency. We are ready to examine the possibility of selling energy resources for rubles, but our Chinese partners need rubles for that. We are also ready to sell for yuans," Putin said.
He stressed that "there should be a balance here."
On Tuesday, Russia and China agreed terms for Russian gas deliveries at a level of up to 70 billion cubic meters a year. China also imports oil from Russia.
The Russian prime minister said the issue would be addressed among others at a meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) finance ministers, who are to convene before the end of the year in Kazakhstan.
Britain's Independent newspaper reported last Tuesday that Russian officials had held "secret meetings" with Arab states, China and France on ending the use of the U.S. dollar in international oil trade.
The countries are reportedly seeking to switch from the dollar to a basket of currencies including the euro, Japanese yen, Chinese yuan, gold, and a new unified currency of leading Arab oil producing countries.
The Independent said the meetings have been confirmed by Chinese and Arab banking sources.
guardian.co.uk
Dissenting voices to be silenced as liberal Russian TV channels come under state control
Critics claim that restructuring of two remaining private stations takes media back to Soviet era
Luke Harding in Moscow
16 October 2009
Campaigners accused the Kremlin today of killing off the last vestiges of independent television in Russia, after it emerged that the two remaining private TV channels would come under state control next year.
REN TV and St Petersburg's Fifth Channel, which are sometimes critical of the authorities, have until now been Russia's last semi-independent private TV stations. Although neither can be described as radical, they are the only channels on which opposition politicians can air their views, or where dissenting voices may be heard.
Next year both channels' news bulletins will be restructured, Russia's Kommersant newspaper reported today. The state-owned, pro-Kremlin English language television station Russia Today will take over responsibility for their news broadcasts from 2010, the paper added.
Journalists said they were appalled by the move.
"This means independent TV will be destroyed. It will disappear," said Oleg Ptashkin, a former correspondent with Russia's state-run Channel One TV. Ptashkin, who now runs an independent journalists' union, added: "Russians won't be able to find alternative views to state propaganda. We are returning to the Soviet regime and Soviet model."
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From The Sunday Times
October 18, 2009
A particle God doesn't want us to discover
Could the Large Hadron Collider be sabotaging itself from the future, as some physicists say
Jonathan Leake
Explosions, scientists arrested for alleged terrorism, mysterious breakdowns -- recently Cern's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has begun to look like the world's most ill-fated experiment.
Is it really nothing more than bad luck or is there something weirder at work? Such speculation generally belongs to the lunatic fringe, but serious scientists have begun to suggest that the frequency of Cern's accidents and problems is far more than a coincidence.
The LHC, they suggest, may be sabotaging itself from the future -- twisting time to generate a series of scientific setbacks that will prevent the machine fulfilling its destiny.
At first sight, this theory fits comfortably into the crackpot tradition linking the start-up of the LHC with terrible disasters. The best known is that the £3 billion particle accelerator might trigger a black hole capable of swallowing the Earth when it gets going. Scientists enjoy laughing at this one.
This time, however, their ridicule has been rather muted -- because the time travel idea has come from two distinguished physicists who have backed it with rigorous mathematics.
What Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, are suggesting is that the Higgs boson, the particle that physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be "abhorrent to nature".
What does that mean? According to Nielsen, it means that the creation of the boson at some point in the future would then ripple backwards through time to put a stop to whatever it was that had created it in the first place.
This, says Nielsen, could explain why the LHC has been hit by mishaps ranging from an explosion during construction to a second big bang that followed its start-up. Whether the recent arrest of a leading physicist for alleged links with Al-Qaeda also counts is uncertain.
Nielsen's idea has been likened to that of a man travelling back through time and killing his own grandfather. "Our theory suggests that any machine trying to make the Higgs shall have bad luck," he said.
"It is based on mathematics, but you could explain it by saying that God rather hates Higgs particles and attempts to avoid them."
His warnings come at a sensitive time for Cern, which is about to make its second attempt to fire up the LHC. The idea is to accelerate protons to almost the speed of light around the machine's 17-mile underground circular racetrack and then smash them together.
In theory the machine will create tiny replicas of the primordial "big bang" fireball thought to have marked the creation of the universe. But if Nielsen and Ninomiya are right, this latest build-up will inevitably get nowhere, as will those that come after -- until eventually Cern abandons the idea altogether.
This is, of course, far from being the first science scare linked to the LHC. Over the years it has been the target of protests, wild speculation and court injunctions.
Fiction writers have naturally seized on the subject. In Angels and Demons, Dan Brown sets out a diabolical plot in which the Vatican City is threatened with annihilation from a bomb based on antimatter stolen from Cern.
Blasphemy, a novel from Douglas Preston, the bestselling science-fiction author, draws on similar themes, with a story about a mad physicist who wants to use a particle accelerator to communicate with God. The physicist may be American and the machine located in America, rather than Switzerland, but the links are clear.
Even Five, the TV channel, has got in on the act by screening FlashForward, an American series based on Robert Sawyer's novel of the same name in which the start-up of the LHC causes the Earth's population to black out for two minutes when they experience visions of their personal futures 21 years hence. This gives them a chance to change that future.
Scientists normally hate to see their ideas perverted and twisted by the ignorant, but in recent years many physicists have learnt to welcome the way the LHC has become a part of popular culture. Cern even encourages film-makers to use the machine as a backdrop for their productions, often without charging them.
Nielsen presents them with a dilemma. Should they treat his suggestions as fact or fiction? Most would like to dismiss him, but his status means they have to offer some kind of science-based rebuttal.
James Gillies, a trained physicist who heads Cern's communications department, said Nielsen's idea was an interesting theory "but we know it doesn't happen in reality".
He explained that if Nielsen's predictions were correct then whatever was stopping the LHC would also be stopping high-energy rays hitting the atmosphere. Since scientists can directly detect many such rays, "Nielsen must be wrong", said Gillies.
He and others also believe that although such ideas have an element of fun, they risk distracting attention from the far more amazing ideas that the LHC will tackle once it gets going.
The Higgs boson, for example, is thought to give all other matter its mass, without which gravity could not work. If the LHC found the Higgs, it would open the door to solving all kinds of other mysteries about the origins and nature of matter. Another line of research aims to detect dark matter, which is thought to comprise about a quarter of the universe's mass, but made out of a kind of particle that has so far proven impossible to detect.
However, perhaps the weirdest of all Cern's aspirations for the LHC is to investigate extra dimensions of space. This idea, known as string theory, suggests there are many more dimensions to space than the four we can perceive.
At present these other dimensions are hidden, but smashing protons together in the LHC could produce gravitational anomalies, effectively tiny black holes, that would reveal their existence.
Some physicists suggest that when billions of pounds have been spent on the kit to probe such ideas, there is little need to invent new ones about time travel and self-sabotage.
History shows, however, it is unwise to dismiss too quickly ideas that are initially seen as science fiction. Peter Smith, a science historian and author of Doomsday Men, which looks at the links between science and popular culture, points out that what started as science fiction has often become the inspiration for big discoveries.
"Even the original idea of the 'atomic bomb' actually came not from scientists but from H G Wells in his 1914 novel The World Set Free," he said.
"A scientist named Leo Szilard read it in 1932 and it gave him the inspiration to work out how to start the nuclear chain reaction needed to build a bomb. So the atom bomb has some of its origins in literature, as well as research."
Some of Cern's leading researchers also take Nielsen at least a little seriously. Brian Cox, professor of particle physics at Manchester University, said: "His ideas are theoretically valid. What he is doing is playing around at the edge of our knowledge, which is a good thing.
"He is pointing out that we don't yet have a quantum theory of gravity, so we haven't yet proved rigorously that sending information into the past isn't possible.
"However, if time travellers do break into the LHC control room and pull the plug out of the wall, then I'll refer you to my article supporting Nielsen's theory that I wrote in 2025."
This weekend, as the interest in his theories continued to grow, Nielsen was sounding more cautious. "We are seriously proposing the idea, but it is an ambitious theory, that's all," he said. "We already know it is not very likely to be true. If the LHC actually succeeds in discovering the Higgs boson, I guess we will have to think again."
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Telegraph UK
Duke of Edinburgh visits Catholic shrine before Pope's stay at the Palace
Mandrake reported last week that the Queen is said by senior sources at the Vatican to have "grown increasingly sympathetic" to the Roman Catholic Church.
Tim Walker -
13 Oct 2009
Duke of Edinburgh Photo: Getty Images
Now, I hear that the Duke of Edinburgh has demonstrated his own affinities with Catholic traditions ahead of Pope Benedict's visit to Britain.
Duke has visited the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, the first time that a senior member of the Royal family has done so for more than 400 years.
We wrote to the Royal household to ask if someone could come to open the new wing and we were told that the Duke would do so," says a spokesman for the shrine in Norfolk. It was customary for monarchs from Henry III until Henry VIII to visit the shrine on pilgrimage, but this tradition was abandoned after the Reformation. The Duke is the first member of his family to visit the shrine since the Duchess of Kent, who converted to Rome in 1994.
The shrine is where Mary is believed to have appeared in a vision to Richeldis de Faverches, a devout Saxon noblewoman, in 1061. The Pope is expected to stay at Buckingham Palace next year when he makes only the second Papal visit to this country since Henry VIII broke with Rome and established the Church of England 500 years ago. It will be the first time that a pope has visited Britain since Pope John Paul II in 1982.
Last week, I reported that sources at the Vatican claim the Queen's sympathy for Catholicism has increased as she has become "appalled", along with the Prince of Wales, at developments in the Church of England. The Queen, who is the Supreme Governor of the Church, is "also said to have an affinity with the Holy Father, who is of her generation".
- CNN
Vatican welcomes Anglicans into Catholic church
Vatican opens door to disillusioned Anglicans wanting to join Catholic Church
Married priests and bishops to be allowed to "enter into full visible communion"
Vatican says "hundreds" of Anglicans have expressed interest in joining
Anglicans can retain their rites while recognizing the pope as their leader
ROME, Italy (CNN) -- The Vatican said Tuesday it has worked out a way for groups of Anglicans who are dissatisfied with their faith to join the Catholic Church.
The Vatican says more Anglicans have expressed an interest in joining the Catholic Church.
The process will allow groups of Anglicans, including bishops and married priests, to join the Catholic Church some 450 years after King Henry VIII broke from Rome and created the Church of England, forerunner of the Anglican Communion.
The number of Anglicans wishing to join the Catholic Church has increased in recent years as the Anglican church has welcomed the ordination of women and openly gay clergy and blessed homosexual partnerships, said Cardinal William Joseph Levada, the head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Their talks with the Vatican recently began speeding up, Vatican officials said, leading to Tuesday's announcement. Should Anglicans be allowed to join the Catholic Church? Have your say below
"The Catholic Church is responding to the many requests that have been submitted to the Holy See from groups of Anglican clergy and faithful in different parts of the world who wish to enter into full visible communion," Levada said.
Levada said "hundreds" of Anglicans around the world have expressed their desire to join the Catholic Church. Among them are 50 Anglican bishops, said Archbishop Joseph Augustine Di Noia of the Congregation for Divine Worship.
The Anglicans will be able to retain their Anglican rites while recognizing the pope as their leader, Vatican officials said. The British monarch is the titular head of the Anglican church.
While married Anglican priests may be ordained as Catholic priests, the same does not apply to married Anglican bishops, Levada said.
"We've been praying for this unity for 40 years and we've not anticipated it happening now," Di Noia said. "The Holy Spirit is at work here."
The Church of England said the move ends a "period of uncertainty" for Anglican groups who wanted more unity with the Catholic Church.
Both groups have a "substantial overlap in faith, doctrine and spirituality" and will continue to hold official dialogues, the archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster said in a joint statement.
"Those Anglicans who have approached the Holy See have made clear their desire for full, visible unity in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church," Levada said. "At the same time, they have told us of the importance of their Anglican traditions of spirituality and worship for their faith journey."
Preserving Anglican traditions, such as mass rites, adds to the diversity of the Catholic Church, he said.
"The unity of the church does not require a uniformity that ignores cultural diversity, as the history of Christianity shows," he said. "Moreover, the many diverse traditions present in the Catholic Church today are all rooted in the principle articulated by St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians: 'There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism." E-mail to a friend
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'Bar church' ministers to any and all comers
By Hillary Gavan, Beloit Daily News, October 19, 2009
JANESVILLE--Where can one hold a Bible in one hand and nurse a beer in the other? It's at The Red Door, a ministry held at the Willowdale Saloon, 5905 W. Highway 11, Janesville, led by Beloiter Kathy Price.
In an effort to minister to those turned off by traditional religion, Price holds services at the bar at 10:30 a.m. every Sunday. A social beer and cigarette is allowed as well as chicken wings, coffee and donuts.
"I want the people who don't want to go to church, those who are wounded and broken, especially from religion," Price said.
On Sunday, about a dozen people gathered around a few tables. One woman sipped a beer and a bloody Mary, a few people lit up cigarettes and the others munched on coffee cake. Price stuck with an iced tea, but said she didn't have a problem with a couple of cocktails amongst the congregation.
After all, she said some people will go to church with a hangover or have a beer afterwards.
"I want to reach out to the person who believes a beer separates them from God," Price said.
Price, the daughter of Overflowing Cup pastor the Rev. Dave Fogderud, has been holding services on and off at the bar for a few years. Although some have attacked her for allowing visitors to drink beer, Price joked that putting down a beer is easier than forgiving somebody or letting go of anger.
"Jesus said what comes out of the heart is more defiling than what goes into the mouth," Price said.
She added that certain sins, like drinking beer or smoking cigarettes, are focused on more than sins of the heart such as greed or self-righteousness.
Price, who grew up in her father's street ministry and coffee house, said she watched her dad minister to the homeless and the lost, joking that the "apple doesn't fall far from the tree." A few years ago, Price said she became obsessed with the Catholic Saint Katherine of Sienna, a 14th Century figure known for preaching in pubs, and felt moved by the Holy Spirit do to the same thing.
After she visited the Willowbrook Saloon one night to do karaoke, Willowdale owner Art Conner offered up the bar free of charge. Since starting up the services, Price has gotten a warm response.
"There aren't phonies or hypocrites," said Dick Ziltner of Hanover, Wis. "No one's begging for money."
Ziltner, a recovering alcoholic, drinks pop during the gatherings and is teased by others for being "the resident Billy Bob Thornton" of the group. For Ziltner, he's finally found a group that loves and accepts him and his struggles. Over the years Ziltner's had bad experiences at other churches. From ministers asking for money to getting beat up on his bike ride home from church in third grade, Ziltner's been worn down by traditional religion, and Price said he's not alone.
"A hurtful church experience seems to stick with you. Religion has always had a damaging effect on people throughout history," Price said.
Beloiter Doug Goessel said he grew up Catholic and always believed in God, but felt he was never good enough, couldn't follow all the rules and didn't really understand the Bible. Goessel, who smoked a cigarette during the service, said he still struggles with his demons and doesn't always share the same views with the others, but likes how the group isn't tied to a certain building and doesn't look down on people.
Wilson, a father of eight, said he used to attend an Assembly of God Church, but was attracted to the idea of churches held in homes or other places, and was glad he could wear jeans.
"I'm comfortable wherever God is, and that's everywhere," added his friend Ed Eno.
Many people are hesitant to attend church, Price said, because they feel they aren't good enough, or are too sinful. For example, some feel they can't live with their boyfriends or girlfriends, must cease swearing, or driving and talking on the cell phone before they can even set foot in a church.
Sometimes, she said the "gerbil wheel of Christianity" eventually turns people off when they feel they can't turn their lives around right away like traditional clergy expect. Although God heals hearts, she said behaviors may not change all at once.
Price said Jesus came for the sick, not the healthy, and met people right where they were in life. At the Red Door, Price said visitors don't have to pretend to be something they aren't.
"I love them where they are at rather than where they are supposed to be," Price said. "There's nobody I refuse to fellowship with. I'd much rather hang out with someone who is broken, than someone who thinks they don't have any need."
Price defines spiritual success as having a relationship with God, which improves relationships with other people. "Religion doesn't always do that," Price said.
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Concerning this last article Matthew 9:10-13, pretty much takes care of any issues involving this church. "Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples.
And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, "Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" When Jesus heard that, He said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice.' For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."
And as Paul so aptly puts it in Romans, chapter three; "What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written: 'There is none righteous, no, not one'."
So, we are all in the same boat, so to speak, and the only way we can be sure our boat doesn't sink and we arrive safely to shore is to receive Jesus into our lives as our Saviour.
To do this just pray a simple prayer: Dear Jesus I know I have done wrong in my life and need your forgiveness. I ask you to please come into my heart, forgive my sins, and give me eternal life, Amen.
If you would like more information on your decision to receive Jesus please write as there is additional information on the web site.
We also invite you to write one of our mystics with any questions or problems you may be experiencing.
Until next week....
Almondtree Productions
"Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them."
(Hebrews 7:25)
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