| Gleanings From The Prophetic Expositor - File #25 |
HERE ARE SOME ITEMS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED WHICH HAVE COME TO OUR ATTENTION. SOME WILL BE PRINTED WITHOUT COMMENT, OTHERS NOTED IN PASSING. STILL OTHERS MAY RECEIVE EDITORIAL COMMENTS.
The following items were printed in the August, 2001 issue of The Prophetic Expositor:
The Financial Times of June 29, 2001 carried an illustrated article detailing the financial balance sheet concerning the money needed to sustain the persons of the Royal Family in Britain, in comparison with the amounts which the Queen donates to the Nation:
COMMENT: The upkeep costs for State-owned royal buildings, regalia, etc. should not be considered in the equation, because these are not owned by The Queen. They represent a National treasure, to sustain which the finances would be extracted from taxpayers in any event regardless of the presence or absence of a Royal Family. They are estates representing and preserving the nation’s history and they are also valuable tourist dollar earners.
The Weekly Telegraph No. 519 of July 4-10, 2001: Headed "Murder site shrine to Romanovs" by Stephen Robinson in Yekaterinburg, with a sub-heading "Prince Michael of Kent sees the spot where his ancestors were massacred by the Bolsheviks", an illustrated article explains:
From The Globe and Mail, 6 July, 2001: "Furor erupts as police seize spanked children" was the heading of an article by John Saunders which explained that seven children aged 6 to 14 have been removed from their home in Aylmer, Ont., because their parents, who accept the literal truth of the Bible, refused to promise they will never again hit them with switches if they disobey. Their pastor, Rev. Henry Hildebrandt of the Aylmer Church of God, said the couple have resorted to corporal punishment in the past, believing it is wrong to spare the rod if other methods fail.
The G&M of 7 July, carried an article headed "Discipline to get day in court", by Murray Campbell, accompanied by a photograph of several burley policemen carrying one of the protesting boys out of the house. In this article, the more general questions of legal use of corporal punishment are raised . It explains that a legal battle is scheduled to resume in September (concerning Section 43 of the Criminal Code), when the Ontario Court of Appeal will hear arguments about whether parents and teachers have the constitutional right to use "force by way of correction" on children. The case, which will likely find its way to the Supreme Court of Canada, is seeking to resolve whether the state should intervene in a family to protect the constitutional right to security of children.
COMMENT: It is improper to comment directly on a case before the court, but we will try to keep readers up to date on this case as it would appear to centre upon a vital question.
From the same G&M issue: Cloned animals are genetic misfits, MIT scientists find – by Carolyn Abraham, medical reporter: "They’re often so fat and deformed they endanger their surrogate mothers while in the womb. They’re prone to breathing troubles and dying young. Now scientists have found that cloned creatures also suffer a range of other problems invisible to the human eye. A team of U.S. scientists studying 38 cloned mice has found that even clones that look healthy carry genetic glitches which could lead to physiological defects.
COMMENT: God’s word states in Leviticus 19:19 "Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee." If even such practices are forbidden, what do we make of genetic manipulations? Are the problems being encountered in the laboratory indicative of the reason underlying the above injunction?
The Weekly Telegraph No. 520, July 11-17 carried the following column under the by-line of Peter Simple.
From The Toronto Globe and Mail of July 7, 2001: U.S. proposes classifying fetuses as persons – WASHINGTON: – "State health-insurance programs could pay for prenatal care and childbirth by classifying an ‘unborn child’ as a person who is eligible for services under a new policy being considered by the bush administration.
COMMENT: An Editorial in the same G & M issue which expounds on the above news, ends in a paragraph revealing its own humanist inclination and editorial bias: "Not only is Mr. Bush handing the church a more active role in the nation’s social problems, but he is building its values into the foundation of the nation’s law. It’s a disturbing trend in a country that has previously taken pains to separate church and state, and one that bears monitoring." We do not incline to share the evident dismay. From The Globe and Mail, July 5, 2001: "EU reform plans dealt blow as takeover code nixed" headed an article from Strasbourg/Brussels. Briefly, "The European Parliament yesterday rejected a common corporate takeover code that had been 12 years in the making, dealing a stunning blow to the European Unions financial market reform plans. The proposals died amid controversy as legislators split equally with 273 votes for and 273 against with 22 abstentions. EU Parliament president Nicole Fontaine declared the text had been rejected because it failed to obtain the required simple majority of votes cast.
From The Weekly Telegraph No. 520, July 11-17, 2001: Euro MPs sink takeover pact, COMMENT: This follows on the matter of the Irish vote which we reported in the last issue, with the heading "EU in turmoil as Irish reject Nice treaty."
From Biblical Archaeology Review July/August, 2001, No. 4:
1. Obituary of Cyrus H. Gordon, 1908-2001: 2. "Financing the Colosseum" – Where did the money come from to build this magnificent Roman structure? An extremely unusual inscription - one without any extant letters - points to the spoils from the Jerusalem Temple. by Louis H. Feldman. The article is very well illustrated. A broken stone at an entrance to the Colosseum, on which is superimposed a carved Latin inscription from the fifth century, is pitted by three faint irregular rows of small peg-holes which would fit metal pegs of letters of a former inscription. Careful measurements and knowledge of the customary forms of such earlier metal lettering indicate that it dates from the days of Vespasian and Titus. The reconstruction which best fits the array was done by Professor Alfoldy, and reads: "I[MP(ERATOR)] T(ITVS) CAES(AR) VESPASI[ANVS AVG(VSTVS)] / AMPHITHEATRV[M NOVVM?] / [EX] MANVBI(I)S (vacat) [FIERI IVSSIT (?)]". Parentheses indicate the complete form of words that have been abbreviated; brackets indicate words or letters that are omitted but which are suggested by Professor Alfoldy. Translated, the words read: "The Emperor Titus Caesar Vespasian Augustus ordered the new amphitheater to be made from the (proceeds from the sale of the) booty." The well-known arch of Titus contains the inside panel showing victorious Roman soldiers bearing the sacred candelabrum (menorah) and other ritual artifacts from the Jerusalem Temple. What became of the wealth has long remained a mystery. The phrase "ex manubiis" – from the spoils – likely refers to the spoils taken by the Romans from Jerusalem and its Temple.
Cost of Royal Family to the Nation last year: £35m.
Donation by The Queen from Crown Estate revenues to The National Treasury: £133m. Thus the nation owes the Queen a debt of gratitude for her largess! "People are inclined to talk about how much the Queen costs the taxpayer. In fact, the queen doesn’t cost the taxpayer anything," said Sir Michael Peat, Keeper of the Privy Purse, the chief accountant.
"ON the very piece of earth where the Bolsheviks massacred the Russian imperial family nearly 83 years ago, a vast cathedral is rising into the Siberian skyline, as the Orthodox Church and the nation’s elite belatedly reclaim the Romanovs as their own.
Tsarism was effectively obliterated from the Soviet mind for seven decades until perestroika allowed the Russian masses to lift the veil on their imperial past. Today, Russians are coming back to pay their respects at the place where the massacre occurred and where the zealous guardians of the revolution tried to conceal their crime.
The pilgrims are actively encouraged in their reverence by their Church, and by Russian big business, which is paying millions of pounds for a wave of new building in the town of Yekaterinburg in honour of the martyrs. Building work on the cathedral continued apace upon foundations once stained by the blood of the imperial family.
The presence last week of Prince Michael of Kent – a descendant of the Romanovs – did not slow down the construction workers creating what is soon to be consecrated as the Church of the Saviour on the Spilt Blood.
Nicholas II, the Tsarina Alexandra, their five children and four attendants were massacred in a merchant’s house in the town on July 17, 1918, as the White Russian army advanced towards them.
The house stood until 1977 when the Politburo became alarmed at reports of monarchists making pilgimages to the site.
Now suddenly, and with a zeal which is unsettling to observe, church officials flaunt their devotion to the martyrs. Last year the tsar’s family were canonised."
He said police, acting on a request from child-welfare workers, carried the children from the house on Wednesday after friends and relatives tried to prevent them from being taken. "They didn’t want to go. As they were coming out I was standing out there in the parking lot and the children just put their arms out and they said, ‘Help me, help me!’" Four boys and three girls of a German-speaking immigrant Mennonite family who came from a Mennonite agricultural community in Mexico did not have a mark on them, as the parents demanded that the authorities verify before they were removed from the house to foster care.
The G&M of 10 July reported that the court had granted the Mennonite parents limited visiting rights.
While such abnormalities were not severe enough to result in miscarriages or stillbirths, scientists suspect that these defects could wreak havoc with organs and even trigger foulups in the brain later in life. The findings provide further evidence that cloning a human being is a dangerous idea. But they also cast a sobering light on a field in which scientists are anxious to clone embryonic stem cells to grow human tissue and organs for transplant… .
… (I)t is estimated that for every 100 cloning attempts fewer than five result in live births. Those that survive tend to be obese and suffer circulatory problems… ."
The article closes with an observation worth noting: "Dr. Humpherys (the molecular biologist who led the research) said he was surprised at the range of genetic ‘instability’ despite the fact that they had created the clones from embryonic stem cells. These primordial cells have generated huge excitement since they have the ability to become any tissue and organ that constitutes a living body."
Headed "Legends", it states: "SLOBODAN Milosevic may be as nasty a tyrant and schemer as he is made out to be. He may deserve the howls of execration now directed at him from all sides. But his defiant demeanour before the war crimes tribunal deserves respect and admiration.
He is right not to recognise such a court. It is nothing more than an arbitrary creation of the bogus ‘international community’, which anticipates the projected One World Government of the future. It is an instrument which enables the United States and its satellites to kidnap and bring to trial anybody thought to be an impediment to their plans.
For Milosevic and many, if not most, of his fellow countrymen, it is an instrument for further persecuting them and reducing them to a subordinate place in the system of protectorates the ‘international community’ is setting up in the Balkans. Moreover, the arrest of Milosevic was achieved by bribery - £900 million worth of aid to repair the damage done through the ‘international community’s’ own war crime, the infamous and hypocritical attack on the Serbs two years ago.
The Serbs are not likely to forget all this. They are a people much derided in the West for their national pride and devotion to their tragic history. Of course they seem absurd to Blairite thinkers, who have no legends to stir their hearts except the legends of welfare benefits, hospital organisation, classroom sizes and ‘human rights’.
The legends of the Serbs, so unfashionably heroic, are different. Confounding the beliefs of smug, self-righteous officials at The Hague, they may prove more enduring. Certainly, one more chapter – the betrayal of the hero Milosevic for money – will be added to the endless epic story called the Sorrows of the Serbs."
The change would allow states to consider a fetus ‘a targeted low-income child’ under the Children’s Health Insurance Program, according to a proposal under review by Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson.
Abortion-rights advocates said the move appeared to be a back-door effort to undermine Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court case that established the right to an abortion.
Health services spokesman Bill Pierce said the goal is to expand access to prenatal care and give states more flexibility in running their programs.
‘This just gives the states another tool to expand access,’ he said yesterday. ‘States don’t have to do this.’
The Republican administration could easily accomplish the same goal through legislation expanding the children’s health-insurance program to pregnant women. Eleanor Smeal, resident of the Feminist Majority Foundation, said. Associated Press and New York Times
The code was aimed at aligning takeover rules across the 15-nation bloc and giving shareholders a bigger role in deciding the fate of a company targeted by a bid. Fourteen of the EU’s 15 member governments backed the compromise proposals. But the planned text ran into fierce opposition from Germany and its powerful group of 99 EU deputies, who feared the code would leave German firms vulnerable to a flurry of hostile bids.
"It is tragic to see how Europe’s broader interests can be frustrated by certain narrow interests… ." Arlene McCarthy, Labour’s legal affairs spokesman said … "The vote blows a hole in the Lisbon agenda of modernising the European economy and sends a very bad signal to the outside world."
It seems that the great EU Babylonian structure is showing serious cracks within it. Is this a building that the British should be placing totally in charge of Britain’s Sovereignty? We would urge the British to sustain their Sovereign Independence by detaching from this financial monstrosity! But then, - are we only preaching to the converted?
Gordon, a giant in Biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies, died March 30, 2001. With his passing, the world of scholarship has lost not only a brilliant intellectual, but also the last link to a distant past. He knew many of the luminaries of the 20th century, including the archaeologists Sir Flinders Petrie and Sir Leonard Woolley. During his teens he mastered not only Hebrew but also Aramaic, Latin and German. Generations of Biblical scholars learned Ugaritic through Gordon’s books. Gordon considered his most significant accomplishment to be his decipherment of Minoan inscriptions.