Dear Ron,
This newsletter is available online by
clicking here. The archived newsletter are also available by
clicking here.
The News In Review newsletter is a service
provided
by Understand The Times that
is a compilation of the news articles
previously posted
on our site . Understand The Times does not
endorse these events but rather is
showing the church the current events.
The
purpose of posting these articles is to warn the church of deception from a
Biblical perspective.
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September 7 - Ahmadinejad Describes Introduction of New World Order as Main Mission of Iran
Article: One World Government
Comment from Understand the Times:
Would you trust a man who says exactly the opposite of
how he behaves? The president of Iran has called for the
complete destruction of Israel. If this is the New World
Order that Ahmadinejad is calling for, then it won't be
long until we see God's supernatural hand wipe out those
who plan to wipe out Israel. See Ezekiel chapter 38
TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad underlined the
Islamic Revolution's influence on the world nations and their rise
against tyrannical rulers, and said
introducing the new world order is the main mission of Iran.
"The most important mission of the Islamic
Republic of Iran is to introducing an alternative world order to the
people of the world," Ahmadinejad said,
addressing a gathering of Iran's cultural attachés in 80 countries
here in Tehran today.
"Today, we should present a
desirable world order against the inhuman and materialistic order
dominating the world today," Ahmadinejad stated.
He pointed to the recent popular uprisings in the region and other
political developments in the world, and stated that
the message of the Islamic Revolution and the alternative world
order presented by Iran have instigated a change in the thoughts and
will of the world nations today.
President Ahmadinejad has
on many occasion underlined the necessity and
need for the establishment of a new world order, saying that the
current unjust order has failed to resolve global problems and,
thus, reached its end. He added that corrupt
rulers are trying to maintain their power through intimidation,
pressure, misinformation and propaganda campaign.
Read Full Article ....
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September 7 - Mexican cardinal remembers John Paul II's call to fidelity
Article: Roman Catholic Church And The Last Days
Cardinal Norberto Rivera
Carrera of Mexico City recently noted that Blessed John Paul II's call
to "fidelity to Christ in his Church" is being repeated
as the late Pope's relic is being venerated in the
country.
"Today we rejoice at
welcoming to our Cathedral of Mexico City
the relic and spiritual presence of Blessed John
Paul II, a model of the Good Shepherd and a powerful intercessor of our
Church. For 32 years his presence has been in this place and the memory
remains alive in our minds and hearts," the cardinal
said. The relic of John Paul II is on display at the Cathedral of Mexico
City through Sept. 9.
He also recalled
the late pontiff's love for Our Lady of Guadalupe.
During his last visit to Mexico for the canonization of Juan Diego, John
Paul II was very excited despite his physical limitations and poor
health, Cardinal Rivera said. "What could separate us from the love of
Christ and his Church? His testimony told us: 'Nothing, because it is
when I am weak that I am strong,'" the cardinal added.
"The loving memories
and warm sentiments we experienced during each of John Paul II's visits
run together. We thank our Holy Father Benedict
XVI with all our hearts for the rapid beatification of our 'Mexican Pope,'"
Cardinal Rivera said.
He concluded by
praying for John Paul II's intercession
that Mexico be faithful to its Christian roots and that "peace and
justice become a reality in our nation."
Read Full Article....
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September 7 - As wildfires rage across Texas, feds take control and scuttle volunteer firefighters
Article: Signs Of The Last Times
As fires raged across central Texas for
the past three days, local citizens sprang into action to protect
their lives and property. Local churches opened their doors and
began hosting refugees left homeless by the
fires which have now destroyed more than 1,000 homes and 100,000
acres across the state in just the past week. Several
branches of the YMCA also began hosting families with children, and
a public school in Bastrop County opened its doors to serve as an
emergency relief center.
Hundreds of firefighters from all the
surrounding counties worked two days and nights in a heroic effort
to contain the fires, but high winds Sunday night and all day Monday
thwarted their efforts. So the call went out for more
volunteer firefighters to join the effort from across the state.
RealNewsReporter.com is now reporting that
volunteer firefighters who had in some cases
driven all night to reach Bastrop county were turned away by the
feds, who claimed that since local officials never made a "formal
request" for volunteers, the volunteers could not be "activated."
So while Bastrop County burns from 40+ fires
that are still raging, the federal
government is actually telling volunteer firefighters to go home.
"We were at the station getting set up into
strike teams, and this guy came up and said
that the U.S. Forest Service had 'assumed control of the situation,
and that If you don't have a vehicle that squirts water, go home,'
said Gordon Greer of Kirbyville, in a RealNewsReporter article.
Gordon reportedly drove all night Monday to arrive in Bastrop and
take part in the firefighting effort. "You've
got guys who had driven all night long from Corpus Christi and
Brownsville on their own dime, and they turned them away," he
said.
· Two fatalities have been reported so far:
A young mother and her 18-month-old daughter were killed in
Gladewater due to the wildfires there.
· Total property damage from the
fire is now estimated at $100 million according
to the Insurance Council of Texas.
· 85 fires are
still burning across Texas. There is a rumor that at least
one Texas fire was started by arson (the fire in Leander), but this
has not been confirmed.
· The winds died down
significantly all day Tuesday, greatly slowing the spread of the
fires. Low winds are also expected to hold out Wednesday.
The severe drought conditions
in Texas have made the state a fire tinderbox, and any wind over
5-10 mph could easily cause these fires to spread out of control
once again (actually, they're still not even 10% contained, so
they're not "in control" at all
Read Full Article....
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September 8 - Be aware of the problems of organ printing and the future of artificial biology
Article: Cloning And Genetic Engineering
Organ printing,
or the process of engineering
tissue via 3D printing, possesses revolutionary potential for
organ transplants. But do sociological consequences follow?
Organ printing offers help to those in need
of immediate organ transplants and other emergency situations,
but it also pushes the medical
establishment towards utilizing artificial biology as an
immediate means of treatment over sound nutrition and
preventative treatment. The hasty
technological advancement towards organ printing is offering
surgery-happy medical establishments even more ways to use
invasive medical practices.
The creation process of artificial tissue is a complex and
expensive process. In order to
build 3D structures such as a kidney or lung, a printer is used
to assemble cells into whichever shape is wanted. For this to
happen, the printer creates a sheet of bio-paper which is
cell-friendly. Afterwards, it prints out the living cell
clusters onto the paper. After the clusters are placed close to
one another, the cells naturally self-organize and morph into
more complex tissue structures. The whole process is then
repeated to add multiple layers with each layer separated by a
thin piece of bio-paper. Eventually, the bio-paper dissolves and
all of the layers become one.
To get a further understanding of the
methodology, it is important to understand the current
challenges that go along with 'printing' artificial organs to be
used in human bodies. As of now, scientists are only able to
produce a maximum of about 2 inches of thickness.
"When you print something very thick, the
cells on the inside will die -- there's no nutrients getting in
there -- so we need to print channels there and hope
that they become blood vessels", explains
Thomas Boland, an associate professor at Clemson University.
Blood vessels feed organs in the body, keeping them alive and
working. Without blood vessels, the organ cannot function.
This is the problem scientists are
currently facing with organ printing.
Using the patient's own cells as a catalyst,
artificial organs may soon become
mainstream practice among treatment centers worldwide. As the
health of the nation delves down to record negatives, organ
printing may be the establishment's answer to a number of
preventable conditions.
Organ printing is relatively new, and
the idea of printing new organs
sounds very much like science fiction. But it is on its way to
becoming a reality. It is more than just a possibility that 50
years from now people will be walking around with a new lung
printed in a lab.
Read Full Article....
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September 8 - A Record Year for Billion-Dollar Weather Disasters
Article: Signs Of The Last Times
With 2011 not
even three-quarters complete, the year is shaping up as one of the
costliest ever in terms of weather disasters.
So far,
there have been 10 separate natural disasters with economic losses of $1
billion or more, according to Chris Vaccaro,
spokesman for the National Weather Service.
That's the most since the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration began tracking the cost of weather disasters
in 1980.
There have been costlier years than 2011,
mostly due to single extraordinary disasters like Hurricane Katrina in
2005. But this already ranks among the
top 25 percent all time, said Vaccaro,
and hurricane
season isn't even half over.
There are
myriad explanations for this year's record number of billion-dollar
weather disasters -
from a blizzard that stretched from late January to after Groundhog Day,
to an outbreak of more 100 tornadoes in April, to flooding in spring and
summer, to Hurricane Irene last month and the Texas wildfires this
month.
Jeff Masters, co-founder of and director
of meteorology for Weather Underground, comes down on the side of
warming. At a news conference Wednesday, he explained that a "warmer
atmosphere has more energy to power storms." He warned that,
"Years like 2011 may become the new normal in the
United States in coming decades."
That does not bode well
for the U.S. economy. Weather disasters have caused more than $40
billion in losses so far this year. And it's not inconceivable that
those losses could grow to nearly twice as much by the time hurricane
season is over.
Read Full Article....
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August 31 - Bioengineering Methuselah - Human beings living to be 150?
Article: Cloning And Genetic Engineering
Reflecting on
the Paris exposition of 1900, Henry Adams admitted to being overwhelmed by the
new technologies on display. He was awed in particular by the
electricity-generating dynamo. One wonders what he would make of the
technologies described by Sonia Arrison in her new book "100 Plus."
"We are at the cusp of a revolution in medicine
and biotechnology," Ms. Arrison announces,
"that will radically increase not just our life spans but also, and more
importantly, our health spans." This revolution will "change everything, from
careers and relationships to family and faith."
Consider tissue engineering, in which human organs, grown from scratch or
rebuilt in a laboratory, are transplanted into sick humans.
Scientists
across the world, Ms. Arrison says, are working
on engineering close to two dozen different human organs in the lab, including
bladders, lungs and hearts. Progress is slow, and it might be decades before
bioengineered organs are commonplace, but the trend-line is clear.
The quest for longevity is an old one, of course, from Ponce de León's Floridian
adventures to Benjamin Franklin's wondering whether he
should have his body preserved in a cask of Madeira wine to "be recalled to life
at any period, however distant." Ms. Arrison entertainingly chronicles
efforts to conquer aging and death from antiquity to today. Food, sex, exercise
and alchemy have all been employed to keep the grim reaper at bay.
But technology offers the most plausible route, she says,
noting that biology and computing are drawing ever closer together with the
sequencing of the human genome.
What is more, technology
heavyweights are paying attention, including Bill Gates (if he were a teenager
today, Mr. Gates once said, he'd be "hacking biology") and Jeff Bezos ("atom by
atom we'll assemble small machines that will enter cell walls and make
repairs"). Larry Ellison, of Oracle, started a foundation more than a decade ago
to support anti-aging research; the institution donates about $42 million a
year.
Noting that similar worries have been raised whenever technology alters social
conditions, Ms. Arrison argues that
apocalyptic prophecies are unlikely to be realized. Increasing wealth
and mankind's adaptability and ingenuity mean that as new problems emerge, new
solutions will be forthcoming. "In looking at the trends of
history," she says, "we can see that even when
there are downsides to a particular wealth- or health-enhancing technology, the
problem is often fixed once the population reaches a point where it feels secure
in spending the resources to do so."
Ms. Arrison's sunny outlook is infectious, and surely
mankind does have remarkable powers of problem-solving and adaptation. But
one can't help wishing, a bit ahead of time, for some wise
counsel from one of those 150-year-olds she envisions, who might be able to tell
us whether all the effort and all the dreaming were worth it.
Read Full Article....
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September 4 - Signs of the Times: Surveillance Watching the US?
Article: One World Government
Sept. 11 turned much of the West into a high
surveillance society. And hi-tech devices could soon enable the
government to track our lives more than we'd like. Surveillance may not
be at the level that author George Orwell wrote about in 1984, where
"big brother" could see and control all.
But experts say the tools are being forged to
create such a world.
"We're talking Little
Brother now, and we're talking Big Brother down the road," said
Michael Ostrolenk, national director of the Liberty Coalition.
Attempts to track
terrorists and illegal immigrants have led to massive new efforts to
identify people, using their body's unique fingerprints, facial
characteristics and iris patterns. A
program called Real ID would marry this "biometric" information with a
person's driver's license, making it easier to track. "It would require
all states to conform to national standards for your driver's license,"
Ostrolenk explained.
"So it basically creates a national identity
card."
The E-Verify system has also been proposed
to boot illegal immigrants out of the American workplace. But both
Ostrolenk and Stepanovich object to its overreach. "E-Verify is kind of
the government inserting itself between an employer and an employee,"
Stepanovich said. "The employer must
collect certain types of information and send it over to the
government." The
government will check verification databases and let the employer know
if they can hire or keep the worker.
"But you should never have to seek permission from
the federal government to be employed," Ostrolenk
said. "Or for an employer to hire a new
person."
And Stepanovich says the
databases are filled with errors. "So
people are being rejected for employment or they lose the employment
they already have based on information in the system that may or may not
be true," she added.
Some government programs and cities are making this RFID
"chipping" mandatory. And it's now becoming more acceptable to use
biometrics and RFIDs on people.
Supporters say this
chipping could help track lost or kidnapped children, or Alzheimer's
patients who wander off. But they can also be used to control a person's
actions. One Florida school is
requiring students to have their biometrics checked before they get food
from the cafeteria. And a Miami university hospital has embedded
microchips to track whether medical workers are washing their hands.
Read Full Article....
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September 6 - Cardinal Proposes Eucharistic Solution for Economic Problem
Article: Roman Catholic Church And The Last Days
Amid
worldwide grappling with the economic crisis, Benedict XVI's
representative at Italy's 25th National Eucharistic Congress
is proposing the Eucharist as an invitation to
solidarity.
Cardinal Giovanni Battista
Re opened the congress in Ancona on Sunday. He said that
for today's society, marked as it is with "so much egoism," the Eucharist is
"an appeal for openness toward others, to be able to love and to be able to
forgive."
The Eucharist "is an invitation to solidarity and
commitment to the poor, the suffering, the little ones, the marginalized,"
the cardinal reflected. "It is light to recognize the
face of Christ in the face of our brothers. To acknowledge Christ in the
Holy Host, in fact, leads to being able to see him also in our brothers and
it opens our hearts to go out to meet every poverty."
In this light, Cardinal Re
presented the Eucharist as light for
service to the common good and the contribution that Christians are called
to make to social and political life.
He expressed hopes that the Eucharistic
Congress could be an "occasion to find in Christ the strength that changes
life and society."
The Eucharist is "the great engine of Christian life:
it is encouragement to remake the Christian fabric of society and to educate
to the 'good life of the Gospel'; it is the point of departure for the hoped
for New Evangelization, capable of infusing behavior, culture and the whole
of life with evangelical contents," he said.
"Also in this world of ours,
distracted and busy, perhaps there are not a few persons who, unwittingly,
are seeking God, because they feel the need for something more than the
material goods they possess and the success they attained in their
profession," Cardinal Re stated. And this
Eucharistic Congress is to remind people precisely that "in addition to
material bread, which is necessary to live, there is another bread that the
human heart needs; a bread that comes from heaven, a bread that is Christ
himself, who gives himself to us."
Read Full Article....
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September 8 - Organic churches offer alternative to traditional service
Article: Emerging Church
As God builds his church, sometimes he does it in a home,
a park or a pizzeria,
said LIndsay Cofield, director of
multi-housing/organic churches for the Baptist General
Convention of Texas. Cofield assists and mobilizes the birth, growth
and development of organic churches across the state, he said.
He described an organic church
as one detached from the conventional concept of a traditional
church. Organic churches
typically exhibit a much more informal setting
and meet in homes, apartments, recreation centers and other
locations.
Cofield said just as Christians point to verses like John 3:16 to
grasp the essence and meaning of salvation,
organic churches do the same with the definition of a church.
Organic churches often provide a place for
"overlooked people" - those who may not attend a larger institution
but would be more open to participating in an organic church setting,
Cofield said.
Cofield said since an organic church is
generally smaller, it is more relational and community-based.
"Oftentimes, we go to larger churches just
to fade into the background, and people can go to church, and not go
to Church," she said. "The Church -
capital C - is meant to be about intertwining with people and being
in community."
This summer, the Hortons branched out to
open their home to people who may not have found the larger
institution church yet. Amanda called it a "God thing," because the
response to their invitation was overwhelming.
To represent a true church, Cofield said, people have to love
God, love others and be passionate about making disciples.
He listed five functions every church should
have: fellowship, ministry, worship, evangelism and discipleship.
Even in the larger institution churches, everything comes out of
those five functions, he said.
Read Full Article....
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September 5 - Tony Blair is godfather to Murdoch child
Article: Miscellaneous
Former prime minister. Middle East envoy.
Now Tony Blair is also revealed as
godfather to one of Rupert Murdoch's daughters.
A person close to Blair confirmed Monday
that the former British leader was the godfather
of Grace Murdoch, now 9, when she and her younger sister Chloe were
baptized at the River Jordan last year. British media reported
that the October issue of Vogue, which carries an interview with
Murdoch's wife Wendi Deng, disclosed Blair's role in the ceremony. The
report of Blair's involvement in the baptism was not attributed to her.
Blair's presence at the event on the
banks of the river -- claimed to be the place where Jesus was baptized
by John the Baptist -- underlined the political
influence of Murdoch and News Corp., to which all British prime
ministers since Margaret Thatcher have been attentive.
Murdoch's British
newspapers endorsed Blair's Labour Party in three consecutive elections,
but switched support last year to David Cameron, the current prime
minister, and his Conservative Party.
In his memoirs published last year, Blair
said he came to have "a grudging respect and even
liking" for Murdoch despite their differences on Europe, social policy
and gay rights.
Blair and
Murdoch have yet another connection as fellow Roman Catholics. Murdoch
has been honored as a papal knight, and Blair formally embraced the
faith after leaving office in 2007.
Read Full Article....
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We hope the Weekly News In Review has been a
blessing to you.
Sincerely,
Roger Oakland
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