In this issue of The Prophetic Expositor, we must attempt to catch up with about two or three months of news clippings, so we will, once again, be brief.

The following items were printed in the March, 2001 issue of The Prophetic Expositor:

From The Toronto Globe & Mail of November 8 & 15, and The Weekly Telegraph No. 486 of November 15-21, 2000 we learn details of the life, death, and funeral of the Queen Mother, Queen Ingrid of Denmark. The heading of the half-page Globe & Mail Obituary states "Gave royalty a warmer image - She was known for her professional approach to the monarchy, insisting on system, order and accuracy in her undertakings"
- The Weekly Telegraph notes: "HER MAJESTY QUEEN INGRID OF DENMARK, the widow of King Frederick IX, who has died aged 90, was the daughter of a King, the wife of a King, the aunt of a King and the mother of two Queens.
- Her father was King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden, and her mother Princess Margaret of Connaught, daughter of Queen Victoria's third son Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught. She was the mother of Margrethe II, the present Queen of Denmark, and of Queen Anne-Marie of the Hellenes, the wife of King Constantine. She was also an aunt of the present King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf." Further interesting royal connections to the family, and their life during Nazi occupation and thereafter are also outlined.

From The Toronto Globe & Mail of 16 November, 2000: "Scientist sees pyramid secrets in the stars" by Anne McILROY, OTTAWA. The greatest construction project in the world was still in the design phase one starry night about 4,467 years ago when an Egyptian carrying a long piece of string figured out how to align the Great Pyramid to the true north.
- According to a new theory put forward today in the journal Nature by Egyptologist Kate Spence, the architects of the ancient burial tombs used two stars in the night sky to place the final resting place of their pharaohs so that the two sides ran almost precisely north-south.
- Her paper, based on calculations of what the heavens looked like in ancient Egypt, proposes a solution to the long-standing mystery of how the Egyptians could have lined up the pyramids with such extraordinary precision. ..."
- The article continues, explaining "The heavens slowly shift over time, so back then, what is now the North Star, Polaris, did not indicate north.
- But two other bright stars were close to the celestial pole, or the imaginary line in the sky that points directly to Earth's North Pole. Calculations show that in 2467 BC, Kochab, one of the stars in the bowl of the Little Dipper, and Mizar, a star in the middle of the handle of the Big Dipper, were each about 10 degrees from the celestial pole.
- However, when the pyramids were built, these stars circled nightly around a point over the North Pole. So, when one star appeared directly over the other, the Egyptians could have used a plumb line to find north, Dr. Spence says in her report.
- An Egyptian astronomer standing on scaffolding could hold a string, vertically with a weight attached against the night sky while the heavens slowly pivoted around the unmarked pole. Eventually, the string would intersect both stars.
- The sight line to the horizon point directly below the plumb line would then point straight north, Dr. Sepnce says."
- The Great Pyramid of Giza is aligned with true North, but alignments of later pyramids drift slightly off from true North, which allows calculations for their construction dates. It was in 2467 BC that the North Pole was exactly between the two stars.

From The Weekly Telegraph No. 485 of November 8-14, 2000: "Rights Act will allow Catholics to take throne" by David Bamber, Jonathan Petre and Charles Clover. THE BAN on Roman Catholics ascending the English throne is certain to be overturned because it does not comply with the new Human Rights Act.
- The ban breaches two of the convention's 14 provisions, lawyers say, and a legal challenge is already being prepared by the Scottish National Party.
- The relevant sections are article 12, which gives every-one the right to marry whoever he or she wants, and article 14, which bans discrimination on religious grounds.
- Neil Addison, a leading human rights barrister who has launched a number of successful actions under the new convention, said: "The act of settlement clearly breaches the Human rights act. Any legal challenge would be successful... ."
- From The Weekly Telegraph No. 490 of December 13-19, 2000 we have the related article headed "Throne claim seems a cause without a rebel" by Joshua Rozenberg Legal Editor, in which THE Guardian announced a legal challenge to the 300-year-old law ... but it is currently a claim without a claimant, in spite of an ad in the Suddeutsche Zeitungsearching for any minor German princelings who might have qualified. The problem is that to bring an action under the Human Rights Act one has to be a "victim."
- COMMENT: The Throne of The Lord over Israel today is occupied by our Queen, who was inducted into office by Coronation Oaths and ceremonies attesting, in detail, the Protestant character of her office as Defender of The Faith. The occupant of The Throne is, ex-officio, head of the (Protestant) Church of England. The right of a member of the royal family to marry a non-Protestant does not automatically convey entitlement to ascend that Throne. Our Monarch also rules in other British Dominions as well as in Britain, and all would have to give consent for such a change.

From The Weekly Telegraph, No. 488, November 29-December 5 2000, by Simon Davis in Los Angeles: "THE Rev Billy Graham, the world's first television evangelist, is stepping down from the ministry he founded 50 years ago.
- Graham, 81, was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease six years ago and his health is deteriorating. His son, 48-year-old Franklin, will take over the running of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
- Although Graham said he still wanted to take part in future 'crusades', friends said he was too ill to travel. 'I now want to turn over the administrative and management burden of running the organisation to my son, who has proven to be a great leader,' he said.
- Franklin Graham was expelled from school and once rebelled against his father's faith and conservative values.
- The son of a North Carolina dairy farmer, Graham was ordained by a church in the Southern Baptist Convention in 1939, but came to prominence in 1949 when he held his first crusade in Los Angeles.
- He achieved international recognition in 1954 when a crusade in Britain lasted 12 weeks. He has preached his fundamentalist brand of Christianity to more than 210 million people in 185-plus countries and his televised preaching has reached billions. He has had several audiences with the Queen.
- He has been married for 57 years and has five children."

From the same Weekly Telegraph: Sullivan credit for popular hymn - "SIR Arthur Sullivan has been named as the true composer of the popular hymn tune St. Clement (The Day Thou Gavest, Lord is ended) by an expert on Victorian hymns. The tune to the hymn, which regularly appears in the top three of polls on favourite hymns, has always been attributed to the Rev Clement Schofield, an Anglican clergyman. Sir Arthur, half of the Gilbert and Sullivan team, also wrote the tunes to Onward Christian Soldiers and Nearer, My God, to Thee."

From The Weekly Telegraph No. 489 of December 6-12, 2000: Immigration rate doubles
- THE number of immigrants settling in Britain has almost doubled, largely because of a scheme to reduce a backlog of applications by asylum seekers. There were 129,100 acceptances for settlement in the year to June, 52,400 more than in the previous 12 months.
- Britain's largest ferry company is this week starting to check every Dover-bound lorry in a massive crackdown on illegal immigrants. P & O Stena Line has hired 40 security guards to work round the clock at Calais at a cost of œ500,000, to check about 750,000 lorries that use its ferries each year.

From The Weekly Telegraph No. 491 of December 20-26, 2000: - Obituary: Colonel Alec Salmon who has died aged 89, was Chief of Staff to Lieutenant-General John Glubb "Pasha", commander of the Arab Legion, from 1950 to 1953.
- His appointment to the post came at a critical time. A Soviet thrust from the Caucasus towards the Suez Canal was seen as a real threat. Jordan was pledged to come to Britain's aid in the event of war with the Soviet Union and the British Government accordingly decided to transform the role of the Arab Legion from that of a minor client to that of fully operational ally.
- When Salmon arrived in Amman in 1950, the Arab Legion was little more than a desert police force. Not one Jordanian officer was trained in staff work. A balanced army had to be created with a full range of supporting arms.
- The introduction of British officers provided the opportunity for Arab nationalists to exploit anti-British feeling. Glubb accordingly insisted that the officers sent to him were few in number but of high quality. In 1953, when Salmon left Jordan, the Arab Legion was a modern army of some 17,000 officers and men, 12,000 of them combat-trained.
- William Alexander Salmon was born at Poona in 1910 to a family whose connection with the Indian Army went back four generations, and was educated at Haileybury and Sandhurst. In 1930 he was commissioned into the Highland Light Infantry. His wartime service included a daring escape from the Greek island of Leros.
- Alec Salmon married, in 1939, Jean Macmillan. She died in 1982. They had a son and two daughters.
- The same edition of The Weekly Telegraph carried information on Colin Powell, newly appointed U.S. Secretary of State. It says, in part, "He is proud of his ethnicity, and very proud to be the first black American to reach the very top of the military. But he doesn't wish to be a race symbol." It notes that he was "Born in the South Bronx in 1937 to Jamaican parents - with Scottish blood in his veins, as evidenced in his pale complexion... ."

An Editorial in The Weekly Telegraph No. 493, January 3-9, 2001, - "Happy birthday to us" notes the lack of any observances relative to the 200th birthday of the United Kingdom, which united on January 1, 1801. Stating "In part, this reflects Labour's tendency to abase itself before Irish republicans, to whom the Act of Union represents a surrender. But this is not how it was perceived at the time. William Pitt saw the merger of the two parliaments as the best alternative to continued repression in Ireland, and intended that the Act should be accompanied by the enfranchisement of Catholics. He knew that Catholic emancipation within an Irish parliament would provoke violent resistance from Irish Protestants, who would find themselves in an electoral minority. But by diluting Ireland's feud within the wider British polity, he hoped to make sectarian differences irrelevant.
- In the event, the planned emancipation was vetoed by George III. Without this critical balance, the Act of Union served to exacerbate rather than soothe Ireland's denominational rivalries. Catholics, who had originally supported the measure, turned against it, while Protestants came to see it as the guarantee of their ascendancy. Battle lines were drawn up that have shifted very little to this day. But it is worth pondering what might have been had Pitt's original plan been realised... ." The Editorial concludes with some thoughts regarding Labour's lack of action in the matter.

The Toronto Globe and Mail of January 15, 2001 carries a short Obituary of Vera Constantinovna, headed "Princess was heir to Romanoff throne." Valley Cottage, N.Y. Princess Vera Constantinovna of Russia, the great-granddaughter of Czar Nicholas I, has died at age 94.The princess, who passed away Thursday, lived in New York since 1951 and worked for charitable organizations such as the Tolstoy foundation, said Catherine Larin, a foundation administrator.
- She was the youngest of nine children by Grand Duke Constantine and Princess Elisabeth of Saxen-Altenburg, and escaped - with her mother and one brother - from the Bolshevik Revolution to Sweden in 1918, said Xenia Cheremeteff of the Tolstoy Foundation. AP

Mention of this obituary brings to mind that back in August last, we missed the Obituary of HRH Prince Tomislav of Yugoslavia, dead at 72, which was carried in The Weekly Telegraph No. 470 of July 26-August 2, 2000. A younger brother of the late King Peter II of Yugoslavia and a great-great-grandson of Queen Victoria, he at one time stood 20th in the British line of succession. He was a focus for the large ‚migr‚ community of Yugoslav royalists in Britain and Europe, and a strong supporter of the Orthodox Church. Gaining permission to return to Yugoslavia, he endured the recent NATO bombing of that country.

The Toronto Globe and Mail of January 10, 2001 and The Weekly Telegraph No. 495 of January 17-23, 2001 carried news of a hoard of 43 Roman gold aureii found in City of London, England at an office development site. They had apparently been stashed in a leather bag inside a box, buried in a hole under the floor of a large family house 800 years ago. The same issue of The Weekly Telegraph carried news of discovery, during research by Anna Keay, assistant curator at The Tower, of a detailed architectural plan of The Tower of London from the time of Elizabeth I. On the same page is news of an ornate Anglo-Saxon brooch from an archaeological dig along the route of the Channel tunnel rail link. All the above are illustrated in colour.
- Both the above sources also carried news of the passing of the well known writer and columnist, Auberon Waugh, 61; The G & M on January 18 and 19, The Weekly Telegraph following up in its next issue with an obituary feature.

Following this, The Weekly Telegraph No. 496 of January 24-30, 2001 brought us up to date on the trial of that greengrocer, Steven Thoburn, who dared to sell his produce by imperial measures. His lawyer has compared his case to the 17th century Witchcraft Act. The verdict is expected on April 9.
- COMMENT: We liked the accompanying cartoon by Matt, showing a constable atop a ladder examining a statue of "Justice" with her sword and scales, and calling out: 'Sarge, I think these scales are in pounds and ounces.'

In a connected theme, headed "Imperial units are weighed off", The Weekly Telegraph No. 499, February 14-20 states "Ministers have signed the official death warrant for almost all remaining imperial measurements. A little-noticed government regulation that came into force last week sets a deadline of Dec 31, 2009, for an end to the use of pounds and ounces."

The Weekly Telegraph No. 496 of January 24-30, 2001: Commenting on the Bush administration's opening days, an article by Toby Harnden carried the following paragraph: "Mr. Bush's first acts in office were to issue the new White House code of conduct and declare a 'National Day of Prayer and Thanksgiving' for Americans to pray for leaders at every level of government."
- COMMENT: Following on the lead given by Our Queen in her Christmas Message with its specific focus on Christ's importance in her life, it would appear that "a new wind is blowing" in leadership of Ephraim and Manasseh!

- On a somewhat related theme, the same issue carried a column by A.N. Wilson, "Victoria's letters spelt upset for her daughter" which comments on a new biography of Queen Victoria, and caused him to re-visit his own source on the Queen's letters to her daughter Vicky.
- Not having room for more, we will quote a few sentences. "When the Queen quotes an appreciative mention of her daughter by the Grand Duchess Alexandrine of Mecklenberg-Schwerin, she then adds - 'Only one thing I can't understand, she says: "She is very small" which, considering that you are a good deal taller than me, and I am not a dwarf, is rather hard'. Victoria was less than five feet tall. It is her total unawareness of how she might appear to other people that is an essential ingredient in Victoria' nature. Like many small women, she made up in strength of personality what she lacked in inches, bossing her daughter's life as if she was in the next room, rather than in Berlin. She scolds her about the temperature of her rooms, her diet and the timing of her babies. Though, or because, the mother of nine herself, she took the news of any potential grandchildren as a personal affront. 'The horrid news contained in Fritz's letter to papa upset us dreadfully,' She wrote on hearing of Vicky's first pregnancy... ."
- Crowned at the age of 18, Queen Victoria reigned until January 22, 1901. Marking this, the centennial of her death, a parallel column in the same issue of The Weekly Telegraph by Vernon Bogdanor also deals at length with Queen Victoria's reign.
- While on the subject, we noted in the "University of Toronto Winter 2001 Vol. XXVIII No. 28" the coloured picture of the Royal Standard in the Archival collection of Victoria College in that University, personally selected by King George V, a grandson of Queen Victoria, in 1921 to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the founding of Victoria College - the first college in the British Empire to be named after Victoria the Good... . The Standard, from Osbourne Castle on the Isle of Wight, was the one draped on Victoria's coffin on Jan. 22, 1901.
- We might note that the Harp prominently displays the winged female figure, which some later heraldic renditions omit. British-Israelites consider this figure to be that of the Princess-Royal of Judah, (Tephi, or Scota), King Zedekiah's daughter, on her journey to Ireland, bearing the harp of her ancestor, King David and other identifying items such as The Coronation Stone in company with the Prophet Jeremiah.
- Under the heading "Victoria honoured with 5 pound coin", The Weekly Telegraph No. 496 of January 24-30, 2001 also carried the note that "A (pounds)5 COIN is to be minted to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Queen Victoria's death. It will go into circulation in May and is the first coin commissioned by the Royal Mint to celebrate an entire era. The Queen and the Queen Mother on Sunday attended a service in Sandringham to commemorate the anniversary.

An Obituary in The Toronto Globe and Mail January 25, 2001:
- Great Britain has produced many famous scientists, and we can add to the list one more with the Obituary of Tom Kilburn, the British Scientist who built the first modern computer. Notice of his passing, at 79, was carried in the obituary by Hilary J. Kahn, LONDON. The Cathode-ray machine took 52 minutes to execute its initial program in 1948. "In a career that spanned almost 40 years, from 1942 to 1981, he was at the forefront of electronics, and of the computing revolution that he himself kick-started by providing the first example of computer software and helping design and build the world's first modern computer - technically known as the stored-program electronic digital computer. Working on radar and related matters during the war, he was later invited to accompany Professor Freddy Williams, a colleague, to the University of Manchester, where many advances in the field were pioneered.

Under the heading "The Ukranian connection", The Globe and Mail of 31 January, 2001 carried the following:
"The Declaration of Arbroath of 1320, viewed by many Scots to be their Declaration of Independence, and signed by Robert the Bruce and 40 other Scottish noblemen of the time, declared that the Scots came from greater Scythia, says the Royal Ontario Museum. "On the surface, there are a number of similarities between the Scythians, who wandered the Ukranian steppes during the eighth to third centuries B.C. and the medieval inhabitants of Scotland."
- COMMENT: From February 18th to May 6th, 2001, The Royal Ontario Museum is displaying Scythian artifacts from The Ukraine.

The Globe and Mail of February 1, 2001 carried the news that "Man seeks prayer-free legislature - Holocaust survivor launches legal action to end Lord's Prayer recital at Queen's Park." "Henry Freitag, a 72-year-old Jew, says the ritual of reciting the Lord's Prayer before the daily sitting of the legislature (of Ontario) is a form of religious indoctrination that violates the freedom of religion provision of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms." Having succeeded in his campaign to keep the Lord's Prayer out of town council meetings across Ontario, he has now launched legal action to stop it being recited in the provincial legislature.
- COMMENT: If that is the true intent of the legislation, we had better start a campaign to rid ourselves of such an anti-Christ document at once to bring ourselves back into line with Biblical injunction! Perhaps we ought to explain to this man that many Christian troops died and many wounded, inter alia to secure his release from his persecution. Perhaps someone could supply him with a copy of Dale Carnegie's book, "How To Win Friends And Influence People"?
- The Weekly Telegraph No. 498 of February 7-13, 2001 carries a short column on a somewhat related note, by Victoria Combe Religious Affairs Correspondent: "Missionaries flock to Britain to revive passion for Church." - Missionaries from Africa and the Americas are flocking to Britain in their hundreds to convert a nation they believe has slipped into godless secularism.
- About 1,500 missionaries and their full-time staff from 50 countries are believed to be operating in churches in Britain. Sixty per cent are from the US.
- Many of the missionaries come from countries where Christianity was introduced by Britons in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
- The role reversal follows the vast growth of the Church in Africa, Asia and South America and a steady decline in churchgoing in the United Kingdom and the rest of western Europe.
- Andy Peck, assistant editor of Christianity and renewal magazine, has written a guide for churches on how to make foreign missionaries feel welcome. He suggests ways to help them acclimatise to the "island mentality".
- "The days when Britain led the world in exporting Christianity along with coal and cricket have long gone, said Mr Peck. :Having led the way we are now on the receiving end of help."
* Christianity remains the dominant world religion and the number of believers has quadrupled in the past century to nearly two billion, says a new encyclopedia.
- Despite the rapid growth of Islam, Christianity is still followed by the majority in two-thirds of the world's 238 countries.

Time Magazine for February 12, 2001, under "Milestones" carried this small item: Remains Found: believed to be those of atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair, her son and her adopted granddaughter; on a ranch in Camp Wood, Texas. Missing since 1995, the O'Hairs are believed to have been kidnapped by a former employee, who led police to the site.

From The Toronto Globe and Mail 6 February, 2001: United States - HIV infections high among young gay blacks
Chicago. A stunning one third of young, gay black men in large U.S. cities are infected with HIV, another sign of the growing racial divide in the AIDS epidemic.
- The findings, based on a study released yesterday, show that HIV infections are disturbingly common among gay men of all races in their 20's, especially considering that they grew up knowing how AIDS spreads. The study, compiled by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was presented at a conference in Chicago.
- The study found that among young gay men, 3 per cent of Asians, 7 per cent of whites, 15 per cent of Hispanics and 30 per cent of blacks are infected with the virus. AP