Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following propositions will be discussed at Wittenberg, under the presidency of the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and of Sacred Theology, and Lecturer in Ordinary on the same at that place. Wherefore he requests that those who are unable to be present and debate orally with us, may do so by letter.

In the Name our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Poenitentiam agite, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.

2. This word cannot be understood to mean sacramental penance, i.e., confession and satisfaction, which is administered by the priests.

3. Yet it means not inward repentance only; nay, there is no inward repentance which does not outwardly work divers mortifications of the flesh.

4. The penalty [of sin], therefore, continues so long as hatred of self continues; for this is the true inward repentance, and continues until our entrance into the kingdom of heaven.

5. The pope does not intend to remit, and cannot remit any penalties other than those which he has imposed either by his own authority or by that of the Canons.

6. The pope cannot remit any guilt, except by declaring that it has been remitted by God and by assenting to God's remission; though, to be sure, he may grant remission in cases reserved to his judgment. If his right to grant remission in such cases were despised, the guilt would remain entirely unforgiven.

7. God remits guilt to no one whom He does not, at the same time, humble in all things and bring into subjection to His vicar, the priest.

8. The penitential canons are imposed only on the living, and, according to them, nothing should be imposed on the dying.

9. Therefore the Holy Spirit in the pope is kind to us, because in his decrees he always makes exception of the article of death and of necessity.

10. Ignorant and wicked are the doings of those priests who, in the case of the dying, reserve canonical penances for purgatory.

11. This changing of the canonical penalty to the penalty of purgatory is quite evidently one of the tares that were sown while the bishops slept.

12. In former times the canonical penalties were imposed not after, but before absolution, as tests of true contrition.

13. The dying are freed by death from all penalties; they are already dead to canonical rules, and have a right to be released from them.

14. The imperfect health [of soul], that is to say, the imperfect love, of the dying brings with it, of necessity, great fear; and the smaller the love, the greater is the fear.

15. This fear and horror is sufficient of itself alone (to say nothing of other things) to constitute the penalty of purgatory, since it is very near to the horror of despair.

16. Hell, purgatory, and heaven seem to differ as do despair, almost-despair, and the assurance of safety.

17. With souls in purgatory it seems necessary that horror should grow less and love increase.

18. It seems unproved, either by reason or Scripture, that they are outside the state of merit, that is to say, of increasing love.

19. Again, it seems unproved that they, or at least that all of them, are certain or assured of their own blessedness, though we may be quite certain of it.

20. Therefore by "full remission of all penalties" the pope means not actually "of all," but only of those imposed by himself.

21. Therefore those preachers of indulgences are in error, who say that by the pope's indulgences a man is freed from every penalty, and saved;

22. Whereas he remits to souls in purgatory no penalty which, according to the canons, they would have had to pay in this life.

23. If it is at all possible to grant to any one the remission of all penalties whatsoever, it is certain that this remission can be granted only to the most perfect, that is, to the very fewest.

24. It must needs be, therefore, that the greater part of the people are deceived by that indiscriminate and highsounding promise of release from penalty.

25. The power which the pope has, in a general way, over purgatory, is just like the power which any bishop or curate has, in a special way, within his own diocese or parish.

26. The pope does well when he grants remission to souls [in purgatory], not by the power of the keys (which he does not possess), but by way of intercession.

27. They preach man who say that so soon as the penny jingles into the money-box, the soul flies out [of purgatory].

28. It is certain that when the penny jingles into the money-box, gain and avarice can be increased, but the result of the intercession of the Church is in the power of God alone.

29. Who knows whether all the souls in purgatory wish to be bought out of it, as in the legend of Sts. Severinus and Paschal.

30. No one is sure that his own contrition is sincere; much less that he has attained full remission.

31. Rare as is the man that is truly penitent, so rare is also the man who truly buys indulgences, i.e., such men are most rare.

32. They will be condemned eternally, together with their teachers, who believe themselves sure of their salvation because they have letters of pardon.

33. Men must be on their guard against those who say that the pope's pardons are that inestimable gift of God by which man is reconciled to Him;

34. For these "graces of pardon" concern only the penalties of sacramental satisfaction, and these are appointed by man.

35. They preach no Christian doctrine who teach that contrition is not necessary in those who intend to buy souls out of purgatory or to buy confessionalia.

36. Every truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without letters of pardon.

37. Every true Christian, whether living or dead, has part in all the blessings of Christ and the Church; and this is granted him by God, even without letters of pardon.

38. Nevertheless, the remission and participation [in the blessings of the Church] which are granted by the pope are in no way to be despised, for they are, as I have said, the declaration of divine remission.

39. It is most difficult, even for the very keenest theologians, at one and the same time to commend to the people the abundance of pardons and [the need of] true contrition.

40. True contrition seeks and loves penalties, but liberal pardons only relax penalties and cause them to be hated, or at least, furnish an occasion [for hating them].

41. Apostolic pardons are to be preached with caution, lest the people may falsely think them preferable to other good works of love.

42. Christians are to be taught that the pope does not intend the buying of pardons to be compared in any way to works of mercy.

43. Christians are to be taught that he who gives to the poor or lends to the needy does a better work than buying pardons;

44. Because love grows by works of love, and man becomes better; but by pardons man does not grow better, only more free from penalty.

45. 45. Christians are to be taught that he who sees a man in need, and passes him by, and gives [his money] for pardons, purchases not the indulgences of the pope, but the indignation of God.

46. Christians are to be taught that unless they have more than they need, they are bound to keep back what is necessary for their own families, and by no means to squander it on pardons.

47. Christians are to be taught that the buying of pardons is a matter of free will, and not of commandment.

48. Christians are to be taught that the pope, in granting pardons, needs, and therefore desires, their devout prayer for him more than the money they bring.

49. Christians are to be taught that the pope's pardons are useful, if they do not put their trust in them; but altogether harmful, if through them they lose their fear of God.

50. Christians are to be taught that if the pope knew the exactions of the pardon-preachers, he would rather that St. Peter's church should go to ashes, than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh and bones of his sheep.

51. Christians are to be taught that it would be the pope's wish, as it is his duty, to give of his own money to very many of those from whom certain hawkers of pardons cajole money, even though the church of St. Peter might have to be sold.

52. The assurance of salvation by letters of pardon is vain, even though the commissary, nay, even though the pope himself, were to stake his soul upon it.

53. They are enemies of Christ and of the pope, who bid the Word of God be altogether silent in some Churches, in order that pardons may be preached in others.

54. Injury is done the Word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or a longer time is spent on pardons than on this Word.

55. It must be the intention of the pope that if pardons, which are a very small thing, are celebrated with one bell, with single processions and ceremonies, then the Gospel, which is the very greatest thing, should be preached with a hundred bells, a hundred processions, a hundred ceremonies.

56. The "treasures of the Church," out of which the pope. grants indulgences, are not sufficiently named or known among the people of Christ.

57. That they are not temporal treasures is certainly evident, for many of the vendors do not pour out such treasures so easily, but only gather them.

58. Nor are they the merits of Christ and the Saints, for even without the pope, these always work grace for the inner man, and the cross, death, and hell for the outward man.

59. St. Lawrence said that the treasures of the Church were the Church's poor, but he spoke according to the usage of the word in his own time.

60. Without rashness we say that the keys of the Church, given by Christ's merit, are that treasure;

61. For it is clear that for the remission of penalties and of reserved cases, the power of the pope is of itself sufficient.

62. The true treasure of the Church is the Most Holy Gospel of the glory and the grace of God.

63. But this treasure is naturally most odious, for it makes the first to be last.

64. On the other hand, the treasure of indulgences is naturally most acceptable, for it makes the last to be first.

65. Therefore the treasures of the Gospel are nets with which they formerly were wont to fish for men of riches.

66. The treasures of the indulgences are nets with which they now fish for the riches of men.

67. The indulgences which the preachers cry as the "greatest graces" are known to be truly such, in so far as they promote gain.

68. Yet they are in truth the very smallest graces compared with the grace of God and the piety of the Cross.

69. Bishops and curates are bound to admit the commissaries of apostolic pardons, with all reverence.

70. But still more are they bound to strain all their eyes and attend with all their ears, lest these men preach their own dreams instead of the commission of the pope.

71. He who speaks against the truth of apostolic pardons, let him be anathema and accursed!

72. But he who guards against the lust and license of the pardon-preachers, let him be blessed!

73. The pope justly thunders against those who, by any art, contrive the injury of the traffic in pardons.

74. But much more does he intend to thunder against those who use the pretext of pardons to contrive the injury of holy love and truth.

75. To think the papal pardons so great that they could absolve a man even if he had committed an impossible sin and violated the Mother of God -- this is madness.

76. We say, on the contrary, that the papal pardons are not able to remove the very least of venial sins, so far as its guilt is concerned.

77. It is said that even St. Peter, if he were now Pope, could not bestow greater graces; this is blasphemy against St. Peter and against the pope.

78. We say, on the contrary, that even the present pope, and any pope at all, has greater graces at his disposal; to wit, the Gospel, powers, gifts of healing, etc., as it is written in I. Corinthians xii.

79. To say that the cross, emblazoned with the papal arms, which is set up [by the preachers of indulgences], is of equal worth with the Cross of Christ, is blasphemy.

80. The bishops, curates and theologians who allow such talk to be spread among the people, will have an account to render.

81. This unbridled preaching of pardons makes it no easy matter, even for learned men, to rescue the reverence due to the pope from slander, or even from the shrewd questionings of the laity.

82. To wit: -- "Why does not the pope empty purgatory, for the sake of holy love and of the dire need of the souls that are there, if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a Church? The former reasons would be most just; the latter is most trivial."

83. Again: -- "Why are mortuary and anniversary masses for the dead continued, and why does he not return or permit the withdrawal of the endowments founded on their behalf, since it is wrong to pray for the redeemed?"

84. Again: -- "What is this new piety of God and the pope, that for money they allow a man who is impious and their enemy to buy out of purgatory the pious soul of a friend of God, and do not rather, because of that pious and beloved soul's own need, free it for pure love's sake?"

85. Again: -- "Why are the penitential canons long since in actual fact and through disuse abrogated and dead, now satisfied by the granting of indulgences, as though they were still alive and in force?"

86. Again: -- "Why does not the pope, whose wealth is to-day greater than the riches of the richest, build just this one church of St. Peter with his own money, rather than with the money of poor believers?"

87. Again: -- "What is it that the pope remits, and what participation does he grant to those who, by perfect contrition, have a right to full remission and participation?"

88. Again: -- "What greater blessing could come to the Church than if the pope were to do a hundred times a day what he now does once, and bestow on every believer these remissions and participations?"

89. "Since the pope, by his pardons, seeks the salvation of souls rather than money, why does he suspend the indulgences and pardons granted heretofore, since these have equal efficacy?"

90. To repress these arguments and scruples of the laity by force alone, and not to resolve them by giving reasons, is to expose the Church and the pope to the ridicule of their enemies, and to make Christians unhappy.

91. If, therefore, pardons were preached according to the spirit and mind of the pope, all these doubts would be readily resolved; nay, they would not exist.

92. Away, then, with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, "Peace, peace," and there is no peace!

93. Blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, "Cross, cross," and there is no cross!

94. Christians are to be exhorted that they be diligent in following Christ, their Head, through penalties, deaths, and hell;

95. And thus be confident of entering into heaven rather through many tribulations, than through the assurance of peace.

Brazilian Immigration

Used Katheryn Gallant (http://www.brazil-brasil.com/cvrmar96.htm) and Davis.  

Brazil used to be a country that received immigrants from around the world. Before the 1960s, Brazil was a country that people immigrated to. In recent years, however, at least a million Brazilians have immigrated to the US, Europe and Japan. This trend may be increased by the recent Brazilian economic problems.  

After the coup d'état of 1964, thousands of opponents of the military regime went into exile. Most of  these exiles returned to Brazil after the amnesty of 1979, but the number of economic emigrants grew in the 1980s. This was especially true after the 1979 oil crisis and the military government's fiscal mismanagement.  In 1987 about 300,000 Brazilians lived outside the country.  Since then emigration has increased at a rate of 20% per year.

In 1969 the Banco do Brasil opened a New York branch.  In the same year he Brazilian-American chamber of Commerce was founded to promote trade and investment between the two countries. (Davis p. 10)

Since April 1991, there have been no official statistics about Brazilian emigrants. We only know that  the number of passports issued by the Federal Police in 1993 came to a total of 436,177.  Of this number, we do not know how many decided to emigrate.  We do know that the overwhelming majority of Brazilians in the United States (87 percent) were born in Brazil.  

The Brazilian Geography and Statistics Institute (IBGE) found a statistical "absence" of 1,379,928 Brazilians between the ages of 20 to 44 from the 1991 census (which IBGE researchers discovered while examining the census demographics).  The most logical explanation is Brazilian emigration.

Perhaps half of the emigrant Brazilians live in the United States. The largest Brazilian settlements are on the East Coast. New York is estimated to have between 80,000 to 150,000 Brazilian emigrants. Another 150,000 are estimated to live in Boston, 65,000 in Florida (mostly in the Miami area), 20,000 in California, 10,000 in Houston, Texas ,and another 10,000 in Washington, DC.

More than half the Brazilians who immigrate to the US, according to the Center for Immigration Studies in New York, already have friends or relatives in the US with whom they stay after they arrive in the country. In 25% of the cases, the immigrants do not plan on returning to Brazil.

Maxine Margolis, an American anthropologist, spent three years studying the Brazilian community in New York interviewing more than 250 Brazilian immigrants or Brazucas as they are called.  She published her work as the book Little Brazil (1994).  She found that most of the Brazilians she interviewed were ashamed to be immigrants with almost 90% saying they are not immigrants, but rather are just passing through.  Margolis discovered that most of the Brazilians in the US are from middle-class families and that the "Immigrants defend themselves from frustration by thinking that they're doing these services only for a year or two, that it's a temporary situation."

"Despite what many people think, most Brazilian immigrants arrive with money and contacts to stay in the US some time before getting a job," Gino Agostinelli, of the Center for Immigration Studies, has told the São Paulo newspaper Folha de São Paulo. "They aren't desperate fugitives, but people with money who are looking for another way of life."

About 65% of Brazilian immigrants to the US find a job within three weeks of their arrival. At first, most immigrants seek jobs in the same field in which they worked in Brazil principally because this is one of the easiest ways of getting a green card, the permanent resident visa for aliens living in the US. However, almost 70% of Brazilians living in the US are illegal immigrants.  (With so many illegal immigrants in the United States, it has to be assumed that the country secretely, or unofficially, wants the immigrants, legal or illegal.  I asked a an illegal Brazilian immigrant if Brazilians in American want information on the immigration service and she said "Not really, because they don't really have to worry about the immigration service.  There is always a way a round the immigration rules.  Even if they catch you and throw you out, you can just come back another way -- you can change your name back in Brazil and then return or come back via Mexico, or some other way.")

The high percentage of illegal immigrants means the vast majority of Brazilian immigrants end up in menial jobs with salaries between $1000 and $2000 a month. Only about 4% of Brazilian immigrants who come to New York to stay earn more than $3000 a month. Generally, these are legal immigrants who work in occupations related to the jobs they had in Brazil.

While 59% of the Brazilian female immigrants in New York have gone to college, 56% of them work as maids, housekeepers, cooks or nannies. Among the men, while only 4% have no more than an elementary school education, almost all of them are working as laborers, construction workers or bus boys in restaurants.

The two occupations in which Brazilian immigrants have an almost total monopoly in the New York metropolitan area are shoe shining among the men and go-go dancing among the women, are also considered the most "shameful."

Margolis underscored the fact that the Brazucas are an "invisible community." Since most Brazilian immigrants work from 10 to 15 hours a day at low-paying menial jobs, they do not have the time or energy to make a bigger mark on their adopted country. And given the small amount of Brazilian immigrants compared to Hispanic immigrants, it is easy for the Americans to see the Brazilians as just another Hispanic group.

Summit on financial markets and the world economy

November 15, 2008

1 - We, the Leaders of the Group of Twenty, held an initial meeting in Washington on November 15, 2008, amid serious challenges to the world economy and financial markets. We are determined to enhance our cooperation and work together to restore global growth and achieve needed reforms in the world's financial systems.

2 - Over the past months our countries have taken urgent and exceptional measures to support the global economy and stabilize financial markets. These efforts must continue. At the same time, we must lay the foundation for reform to help to ensure that a global crisis, such as this one, does not happen again. Our work will be guided by a shared belief that market principles, open trade and investment regimes, and effectively regulated financial markets foster the dynamism, innovation, and entrepreneurship that are essential for economic growth, employment, and poverty reduction.

Root causes of the current crisis

3 - During a period of strong global growth, growing capital flows, and prolonged stability earlier this decade, market participants sought higher yields without an adequate appreciation of the risks and failed to exercise proper due diligence. At the same time, weak underwriting standards, unsound risk management practices, increasingly complex and opaque financial products, and consequent excessive leverage combined to create vulnerabilities in the system. Policy-makers, regulators and supervisors, in some advanced countries, did not adequately appreciate and address the risks building up in financial markets, keep pace with financial innovation, or take into account the systemic ramifications of domestic regulatory actions.

4 - Major underlying factors to the current situation were, among others, inconsistent and insufficiently coordinated macroeconomic policies, inadequate structural reforms, which led to unsustainable global macroeconomic outcomes. These developments, together, contributed to excesses and ultimately resulted in severe market disruption.

Actions taken and to be taken

5 - We have taken strong and significant actions to date to stimulate our economies, provide liquidity, strengthen the capital of financial institutions, protect savings and deposits, address regulatory deficiencies, unfreeze credit markets, and are working to ensure that international financial institutions (IFIs) can provide critical support for the global economy.

6 - But more needs to be done to stabilize financial markets and support economic growth. Economic momentum is slowing substantially in major economies and the global outlook has weakened. Many emerging market economies, which helped sustain the world economy this decade, are still experiencing good growth but increasingly are being adversely impacted by the worldwide slowdown.

7 - Against this background of deteriorating economic conditions worldwide, we agreed that a broader policy response is needed, based on closer macroeconomic cooperation, to restore growth, avoid negative spillovers and support emerging market economies and developing countries. As immediate steps to achieve these objectives, as well as to address longer-term challenges, we will:

- Continue our vigorous efforts and take whatever further actions are necessary to stabilize the financial system.

- Recognize the importance of monetary policy support, as deemed appropriate to domestic conditions.

- Use fiscal measures to stimulate domestic demand to rapid effect, as appropriate, while maintaining a policy framework conducive to fiscal sustainability.

- Help emerging and developing economies gain access to finance in current difficult financial conditions, including through liquidity facilities and program support. We stress the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) important role in crisis response, welcome its new short-term liquidity facility, and urge the ongoing review of its instruments and facilities to ensure flexibility.

- Encourage the World Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) to use their full capacity in support of their development agenda, and we welcome the recent introduction of new facilities by the World Bank in the areas of infrastructure and trade finance.

- Ensure that the IMF, World Bank and other MDBs have sufficient resources to continue playing their role in overcoming the crisis.

- Common principles for reform of financial markets*

8 - In addition to the actions taken above, we will implement reforms that will strengthen financial markets and regulatory regimes so as to avoid future crises. Regulation is first and foremost the responsibility of national regulators who constitute the first line of defense against market instability. However, our financial markets are global in scope, therefore, intensified international cooperation among regulators and strengthening of international standards, where necessary, and their consistent implementation is necessary to protect against adverse cross-border, regional and global developments affecting international financial stability. Regulators must ensure that their actions support market discipline, avoid potentially adverse impacts on other countries, including regulatory arbitrage, and support competition, dynamism and innovation in the marketplace. Financial institutions must also bear their responsibility for the turmoil and should do their part to overcome it including by recognizing losses, improving disclosure and strengthening their governance and risk management practices.

9 - We commit to implementing policies consistent with the following common principles for reform.

- Strengthening Transparency and Accountability: We will strengthen financial market transparency, including by enhancing required disclosure on complex financial products and ensuring complete and accurate disclosure by firms of their financial conditions. Incentives should be aligned to avoid excessive risk-taking.

- Enhancing Sound Regulation: We pledge to strengthen our regulatory regimes, prudential oversight, and risk management, and ensure that all financial markets, products and participants are regulated or subject to oversight, as appropriate to their circumstances. We will exercise strong oversight over credit rating agencies, consistent with the agreed and strengthened international code of conduct. We will also make regulatory regimes more effective over the economic cycle, while ensuring that regulation is efficient, does not stifle innovation, and encourages expanded trade in financial products and services. We commit to transparent assessments of our national regulatory systems.

- Promoting Integrity in Financial Markets: We commit to protect the integrity of the world's financial markets by bolstering investor and consumer protection, avoiding conflicts of interest, preventing illegal market manipulation, fraudulent activities and abuse, and protecting against illicit finance risks arising from non-cooperative jurisdictions. We will also promote information sharing, including with respect to jurisdictions that have yet to commit to international standards with respect to bank secrecy and transparency.

- Reinforcing International Cooperation: We call upon our national and regional regulators to formulate their regulations and other measures in a consistent manner. Regulators should enhance their coordination and cooperation across all segments of financial markets, including with respect to cross-border capital flows. Regulators and other relevant authorities as a matter of priority should strengthen cooperation on crisis prevention, management, and resolution.

- Reforming International Financial Institutions: We are committed to advancing the reform of the Bretton Woods Institutions so that they can more adequately reflect changing economic weights in the world economy in order to increase their legitimacy and effectiveness. In this respect, emerging and developing economies, including the poorest countries, should have greater voice and representation. The Financial Stability Forum (FSF) must expand urgently to a broader membership of emerging economies, and other major standard setting bodies should promptly review their membership. The IMF, in collaboration with the expanded FSF and other bodies, should work to better identify vulnerabilities, anticipate potential stresses, and act swiftly to play a key role in crisis response.

Tasking of ministers and experts

10 - We are committed to taking rapid action to implement these principles. We instruct our Finance Ministers, as coordinated by their 2009 G-20 leadership (Brazil, UK, Republic of Korea), to initiate processes and a timeline to do so. An initial list of specific measures is set forth in the attached Action Plan, including high priority actions to be completed prior to March 31, 2009.

In consultation with other economies and existing bodies, drawing upon the recommendations of such eminent independent experts as they may appoint, we request our Finance Ministers to formulate additional recommendations, including in the following specific areas:

- Mitigating against pro-cyclicality in regulatory policy;

- Reviewing and aligning global accounting standards, particularly for complex securities in times of stress;

- Strengthening the resilience and transparency of credit derivatives markets and reducing their systemic risks, including by improving the infrastructure of over-the-counter markets;

- Reviewing compensation practices as they relate to incentives for risk taking and innovation;

- Reviewing the mandates, governance, and resource requirements of the IFIs; and

- Defining the scope of systemically important institutions and determining their appropriate regulation or oversight.

11 - In view of the role of the G-20 in financial systems reform, we will meet again by April 30, 2009, to review the implementation of the principles and decisions agreed today.

Commitment to an open global economy

12 - We recognize that these reforms will only be successful if grounded in a commitment to free market principles, including the rule of law, respect for private property, open trade and investment, competitive markets, and efficient, effectively regulated financial systems. These principles are essential to economic growth and prosperity and have lifted millions out of poverty, and have significantly raised the global standard of living. Recognizing the necessity to improve financial sector regulation, we must avoid over-regulation that would hamper economic growth and exacerbate the contraction of capital flows, including to developing countries.

13 - We underscore the critical importance of rejecting protectionism and not turning inward in times of financial uncertainty. In this regard, within the next 12 months, we will refrain from raising new barriers to investment or to trade in goods and services, imposing new export restrictions, or implementing World Trade Organization (WTO) inconsistent measures to stimulate exports. Further, we shall strive to reach agreement this year on modalities that leads to a successful conclusion to the WTO's Doha Development Agenda with an ambitious and balanced outcome. We instruct our Trade Ministers to achieve this objective and stand ready to assist directly, as necessary. We also agree that our countries have the largest stake in the global trading system and therefore each must make the positive contributions necessary to achieve such an outcome.

14 - We are mindful of the impact of the current crisis on developing countries, particularly the most vulnerable. We reaffirm the importance of the Millennium Development Goals, the development assistance commitments we have made, and urge both developed and emerging economies to undertake commitments consistent with their capacities and roles in the global economy. In this regard, we reaffirm the development principles agreed at the 2002 United Nations Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, which emphasized country ownership and mobilizing all sources of financing for development.

15 - We remain committed to addressing other critical challenges such as energy security and climate change, food security, the rule of law, and the fight against terrorism, poverty and disease.

16 - As we move forward, we are confident that through continued partnership, cooperation, and multilateralism, we will overcome the challenges before us and restore stability and prosperity to the world economy.

Action plan to implement principles for reform

This Action Plan sets forth a comprehensive work plan to implement the five agreed principles for reform. Our finance ministers will work to ensure that the taskings set forth in this Action Plan are fully and vigorously implemented. They are responsible for the development and implementation of these recommendations drawing on the ongoing work of relevant bodies, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an expanded Financial Stability Forum (FSF), and standard setting bodies.

Strengthening transparency and accountability

Immediate Actions by March 31, 2009

- The key global accounting standards bodies should work to enhance guidance for valuation of securities, also taking into account the valuation of complex, illiquid products, especially during times of stress.

- Accounting standard setters should significantly advance their work to address weaknesses in accounting and disclosure standards for off-balance sheet vehicles.

- Regulators and accounting standard setters should enhance the required disclosure of complex financial instruments by firms to market participants.

- With a view toward promoting financial stability, the governance of the international accounting standard setting body should be further enhanced, including by undertaking a review of its membership, in particular in order to ensure transparency, accountability, and an appropriate relationship between this independent body and the relevant authorities.

- Private sector bodies that have already developed best practices for private pools of capital and/or hedge funds should bring forward proposals for a set of unified best practices. Finance Ministers should assess the adequacy of these proposals, drawing upon the analysis of regulators, the expanded FSF, and other relevant bodies.

Medium-term actions

- The key global accounting standards bodies should work intensively toward the objective of creating a single high-quality global standard.

- Regulators, supervisors, and accounting standard setters, as appropriate, should work with each other and the private sector on an ongoing basis to ensure consistent application and enforcement of high-quality accounting standards.

- Financial institutions should provide enhanced risk disclosures in their reporting and disclose all losses on an ongoing basis, consistent with international best practice, as appropriate. Regulators should work to ensure that a financial institution' financial statements include a complete, accurate, and timely picture of the firm's activities (including off-balance sheet activities) and are reported on a consistent and regular basis.

Enhancing Sound Regulation

Regulatory regimes

Immediate Actions by March 31, 2009

- The IMF, expanded FSF, and other regulators and bodies should develop recommendations to mitigate pro-cyclicality, including the review of how valuation and leverage, bank capital, executive compensation, and provisioning practices may exacerbate cyclical trends.

Medium-term actions

- To the extent countries or regions have not already done so, each country or region pledges to review and report on the structure and principles of its regulatory system to ensure it is compatible with a modern and increasingly globalized financial system. To this end, all G-20 members commit to undertake a Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) report and support the transparent assessments of countries' national regulatory systems.

- The appropriate bodies should review the differentiated nature of regulation in the banking, securities, and insurance sectors and provide a report outlining the issue and making recommendations on needed improvements. A review of the scope of financial regulation, with a special emphasis on institutions, instruments, and markets that are currently unregulated, along with ensuring that all systemically-important institutions are appropriately regulated, should also be undertaken.

- National and regional authorities should review resolution regimes and bankruptcy laws in light of recent experience to ensure that they permit an orderly wind-down of large complex cross-border financial institutions.

- Definitions of capital should be harmonized in order to achieve consistent measures of capital and capital adequacy.

Prudential oversight

Immediate Actions by March 31, 2009

- Regulators should take steps to ensure that credit rating agencies meet the highest standards of the international organization of securities regulators and that they avoid conflicts of interest, provide greater disclosure to investors and to issuers, and differentiate ratings for complex products. This will help ensure that credit rating agencies have the right incentives and appropriate oversight to enable them to perform their important role in providing unbiased information and assessments to markets.

- The international organization of securities regulators should review credit rating agencies' adoption of the standards and mechanisms for monitoring compliance.

- Authorities should ensure that financial institutions maintain adequate capital in amounts necessary to sustain confidence. International standard setters should set out strengthened capital requirements for banks' structured credit and securitization activities.

- Supervisors and regulators, building on the imminent launch of central counterparty services for credit default swaps (CDS) in some countries, should: speed efforts to reduce the systemic risks of CDS and over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives transactions; insist that market participants support exchange traded or electronic trading platforms for CDS contracts; expand OTC derivatives market transparency; and ensure that the infrastructure for OTC derivatives can support growing volumes.

Medium-term actions

- Credit Ratings Agencies that provide public ratings should be registered.

- Supervisors and central banks should develop robust and internationally consistent approaches for liquidity supervision of, and central bank liquidity operations for, cross-border banks.

Risk management

Immediate Actions by March 31, 2009

- Regulators should develop enhanced guidance to strengthen banks' risk management practices, in line with international best practices, and should encourage financial firms to reexamine their internal controls and implement strengthened policies for sound risk management.

- Regulators should develop and implement procedures to ensure that financial firms implement policies to better manage liquidity risk, including by creating strong liquidity cushions.

- Supervisors should ensure that financial firms develop processes that provide for timely and comprehensive measurement of risk concentrations and large counterparty risk positions across products and geographies.

- Firms should reassess their risk management models to guard against stress and report to supervisors on their efforts.

- The Basel Committee should study the need for and help develop firms' new stress testing models, as appropriate.

- Financial institutions should have clear internal incentives to promote stability, and action needs to be taken, through voluntary effort or regulatory action, to avoid compensation schemes which reward excessive short-term returns or risk taking.

- Banks should exercise effective risk management and due diligence over structured products and securitization.

Medium -term actions

- International standard setting bodies, working with a broad range of economies and other appropriate bodies, should ensure that regulatory policy makers are aware and able to respond rapidly to evolution and innovation in financial markets and products.

- Authorities should monitor substantial changes in asset prices and their implications for the macroeconomy and the financial system.

Promoting integrity in financial markets

Immediate Actions by March 31, 2009

- Our national and regional authorities should work together to enhance regulatory cooperation between jurisdictions on a regional and international level.

- National and regional authorities should work to promote information sharing about domestic and cross-border threats to market stability and ensure that national (or regional, where applicable) legal provisions are adequate to address these threats.

- National and regional authorities should also review business conduct rules to protect markets and investors, especially against market manipulation and fraud and strengthen their cross-border cooperation to protect the international financial system from illicit actors. In case of misconduct, there should be an appropriate sanctions regime.

Medium-term actions

- National and regional authorities should implement national and international measures that protect the global financial system from uncooperative and non-transparent jurisdictions that pose risks of illicit financial activity.

- The Financial Action Task Force should continue its important work against money laundering and terrorist financing, and we support the efforts of the World Bank - UN Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) Initiative.

- Tax authorities, drawing upon the work of relevant bodies such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), should continue efforts to promote tax information exchange. Lack of transparency and a failure to exchange tax information should be vigorously addressed.

Reinforcing international cooperation

Immediate Actions by March 31, 2009

- Supervisors should collaborate to establish supervisory colleges for all major cross-border financial institutions, as part of efforts to strengthen the surveillance of cross-border firms. Major global banks should meet regularly with their supervisory college for comprehensive discussions of the firm's activities and assessment of the risks it faces.

- Regulators should take all steps necessary to strengthen cross-border crisis management arrangements, including on cooperation and communication with each other and with appropriate authorities, and develop comprehensive contact lists and conduct simulation exercises, as appropriate.

Medium-term actions

- Authorities, drawing especially on the work of regulators, should collect information on areas where convergence in regulatory practices such as accounting standards, auditing, and deposit insurance is making progress, is in need of accelerated progress, or where there may be potential for progress.

- Authorities should ensure that temporary measures to restore stability and confidence have minimal distortions and are unwound in a timely, well-sequenced and coordinated manner.

Reforming international financial institutions

Immediate Actions by March 31, 2009

- The FSF should expand to a broader membership of emerging economies.

- The IMF, with its focus on surveillance, and the expanded FSF, with its focus on standard setting, should strengthen their collaboration, enhancing efforts to better integrate regulatory and supervisory responses into the macro-prudential policy framework and conduct early warning exercises.

- The IMF, given its universal membership and core macro-financial expertise, should, in close coordination with the FSF and others, take a leading role in drawing lessons from the current crisis, consistent with its mandate.

- We should review the adequacy of the resources of the IMF, the World Bank Group and other multilateral development banks and stand ready to increase them where necessary. The IFIs should also continue to review and adapt their lending instruments to adequately meet their members' needs and revise their lending role in the light of the ongoing financial crisis.

- We should explore ways to restore emerging and developing countries' access to credit and resume private capital flows which are critical for sustainable growth and development, including ongoing infrastructure investment.

- In cases where severe market disruptions have limited access to the necessary financing for counter-cyclical fiscal policies, multilateral development banks must ensure arrangements are in place to support, as needed, those countries with a good track record and sound policies.

Medium-term actions

- We underscored that the Bretton Woods Institutions must be comprehensively reformed so that they can more adequately reflect changing economic weights in the world economy and be more responsive to future challenges. Emerging and developing economies should have greater voice and representation in these institutions.

- The IMF should conduct vigorous and even-handed surveillance reviews of all countries, as well as giving greater attention to their financial sectors and better integrating the reviews with the joint IMF/World Bank financial sector assessment programs. On this basis, the role of the IMF in providing macro-financial policy advice would be strengthened.

- Advanced economies, the IMF, and other international organizations should provide capacity-building programs for emerging market economies and developing countries on the formulation and the implementation of new major regulations, consistent with international standards.

Why the Feds Rescue Banks, Not Homeowners

This is my refection to Barrack Obama as a President of the United States of America.

            First of all I see this as a historical moment for the United States and the world. I’ve been living in this country for about twenty-three years and I always thought that some day I would see an African-American president. Not only for his background but, because a minority is also a great part of the American society as a whole and I never believed we are second class citizens.

            This election opened and kicked the door of opportunity wide open for any one who believes in the American spirit. It voiced the opinion of the unprivileged citizen on any part of the planet.

            Now that we have a new president, the American society should set its own expectations and work towards the next biggest challenge ahead: the economic downturn we are facing.

            It’s great to have a president like Obama but, if this country cannot fulfill the basic needs of its citizens of any color, creed or national origin then, the entire civil rights movement along many anti-war protests and the Christian revival millerite movement will be overshadowed by a great sense of despair and failure. The Pledge Alliance says:” One nation under God indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”. I would like to change this a bit and, begin with, “Many nations under God…”

 America is a land of many nations and it has been always under one God as we saw it on the pilgrim’s voyages, World War II and it on last Tuesday’s polls.

            I am certain that this country will be the stage of even greater events and also will be the catalyst for the second coming of Christ. So for those who believe Barrack Obama is the answer for the world’s problems I say take a look for the holistic point of view and you will see that we are all under God and we are indivisible.

            Congratulations Barrack Obama and God bless you.

It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day. Watch Obama's speech in its entirety »

It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America.

A little bit earlier this evening, I received an extraordinarily gracious call from Sen. McCain.

Sen. McCain fought long and hard in this campaign. And he's fought even longer and harder for the country that he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine. We are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader.

I congratulate him; I congratulate Gov. Palin for all that they've achieved. And I look forward to working with them to renew this nation's promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart, and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on the train home to Delaware, the vice president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

And I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years the rock of our family, the love of my life, the nation's next first lady Michelle Obama.

Sasha and Malia I love you both more than you can imagine. And you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the new White House.

And while she's no longer with us, I know my grandmother's watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight. I know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my sister Maya, my sister Alma, all my other brothers and sisters, thank you so much for all the support that you've given me. I am grateful to them.

And to my campaign manager, David Plouffe, the unsung hero of this campaign, who built the best -- the best political campaign, I think, in the history of the United States of America.

To my chief strategist David Axelrod who's been a partner with me every step of the way.

To the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you've sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to. It belongs to you. It belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston. It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to the cause.

It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation's apathy who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.

It drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organized and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth.

This is your victory.

And I know you didn't do this just to win an election. And I know you didn't do it for me.

You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime -- two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.

Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.

There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after the children fall asleep and wonder how they'll make the mortgage or pay their doctors' bills or save enough for their child's college education.

There's new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.

I promise you, we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can't solve every problem.

But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it's been done in America for 221 years -- block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter cannot end on this autumn night.

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.

It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

Let us remember that, if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers.

In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let's resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.

Let's remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House, a party founded on the values of self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity.

Those are values that we all share. And while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.

As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

To those -- to those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

That's the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we've already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight's about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons -- because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America -- the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.

And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.

Yes we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves -- if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.

Perfect Storm · September 01, 2008

Dear Friends,

Welcome to Keep the Faith Ministry. It is wonderful to fellowship with you by CD every month, even if I can’t see you personally. I pray that this month’s message will be a great blessing to you.

Our website now has a new feature. It is called Prophetic Intelligence Briefing. We do Prophetic Intelligence Briefings on CD virtually every month after the sermon. But there is way more material than can be put on a CD. So I have decided to place this much-appreciated feature right on our website, and we’re going to try to update it very frequently. That way you can go to our website every day or every other day and get the latest Prophetic Intelligence Briefings right there online. Go check it out. There is a lot there already.

This month we have another very timely and sobering message. I have been earnestly praying about this message for some time, seeking the Lord to know how
to approach it. Our world is headed for a very serious crisis. A few short months ago we would have never imagined that an economic storm is right upon us. We are at a most critical moment. Central banks and governments around the world are desperately trying to manage it so that the fall is not all at once. Your life is about to change dramatically. But the important thing right now is to prepare for some of the most challenging circumstances you may have ever faced. You have no time to lose to get yourself ready. Jesus is coming very soon.

Before we begin, let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we are aware that the end is near. Terrible things are going to take place in this world. We are seeing the world being squeezed for natural resources, food shortages and economic difficulties in virtually every aspect of our lives. We are reminded that Jesus told us these things would happen. As the world faces want and famine, we pray that your people will be preserved and strengthened to meet the crisis with the faith of Jesus and the courage of our convictions. May we have a sense of the importance of following the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy counsel, and wisdom that we may know what to do. As we study today, please send your Holy Spirit to awaken us to the times in which we live and a longing desire for heaven. May He also inspire us to reach out to others that don’t know the truth. In Jesus’ name and for His sake, Amen.

Please turn with me in your bibles to Revelation 18:9-11. “And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, Standing afar off for the fear of her torment saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour is thy judgment come. And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more…” and verse 15; “The merchants of these things which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing…” and vs. 17; “For in one hour so great riches is come to nought…”

My friends, the Bible predicts that there will be an economic collapse of nations. It will happen in one hour, or 15 days in prophetic time. We may not be quite there yet. But the judgment of spiritual Babylon, or Rome, will not only come upon her, but also on the men who control huge resources and economies, as depicted by the merchants of the earth, and government leaders, as depicted by the kings of the earth who have cooperated with Rome to control the wealth of the world. They will all be horrified by the judgment of Rome and by their own losses. The economies of the earth will be shattered. And the traders will suffer a great crisis because they are suddenly bankrupt. I want you to notice that the economies of the earth, behind the scenes are connected to Rome according to the Bible. We may not be able to see it, but it is surely there. A down economy increases stress and people look to their spiritual leaders for advice. This provides Rome a huge opportunity to promote her agenda of religious control through the economy.

The world is on an economic collision course. What we are feeling right now economically, is only the tip of the iceberg. Many analysts are saying that there is more pain to come – much more pain. Jobs are being lost by the hundreds of thousands world-wide. Real wages continue to fall in the inflationary environment. And this puts a ferocious squeeze on people in the grip of the credit crunch.
A colossal convergence of super-charged economic forces threatens to undo western economies and make life difficult world-wide. It is a “witches brew” of powerful forces that are aligning to make the depression of 1929 look like child’s play. These forces have been held under control for many years, in part by the efforts of central banks and governmental measures, and are now looming like a huge dark storm over the nations. Never before have so many elements converged together to create an such an economic hurricane. We are headed into the perfect economic storm. A perfect storm is when the combination of circumstances aggravates the situation drastically and at the most vulnerable point or moment.

Definition of Perfect Storm.

The London Telegraph reported on July 21, 2008 that “we are now at the point of maximum danger.” A global credit crisis, a huge and increasing federal deficit, inflationary pressure, declining consumer confidence, and much, much more, have united together to create a dramatic global inflationary trend that is not going to end anytime soon.

“Source of “Maximum Danger” article”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/07/21/ccview121.xml

Before we continue, let me share with you a very powerful statement from the Spirit of Prophecy. It is from Education, page 228. Speaking of the French Revolution, God’s messenger wrote; “The centralizing of wealth and power; the vast combinations for the enriching of the few at the expense of the many;… along with a list of other things “all are tending to involve the whole world in a struggle similar to that which convulsed France.” Please go and read the full statement carefully and thoughtfully. Also read the causes of the French Revolution in the book Great Controversy. This will give you considerable perspective concerning what is happening now.

Did you notice what Ellen White said is happening to the money? It is being organized so that vast combinations or consolidations are being developed so that the few can be enriched at the expense of the many. Economic downturns are a goldmine for those who control the economies. It helps the merchants of the earth consolidate control and power over economy. They can see it coming and can protect themselves from it. But they also take advantage of the economy at its lowest point to buy up assets that will make them rich as it recovers. But there is coming a time when it will not recover. This is what is spoken of in Revelation 18. I don’t know when that will be, but I believe it could be soon. The economic stress that we are seeing in the nations right now is a harbinger of times to come that are predicted in prophecy.

The world is currently facing an economic meltdown of unprecedented proportions. For years everyone seemed to think that nothing could go wrong. Economies were growing and expanding. People in many countries felt at liberty in such good times, to spend, spend, spend, borrow, borrow, and borrow some more. They became maxed out on their credit cards. They maxed out their mortgages, and put nothing in savings for a rainy day. But all of a sudden things have dramatically changed. The rainy days have come. What happened? How did we come so quickly to the precipice in just two years?

It didn’t happen quickly at all actually. The economy was being artificially propped up. About 15 years ago, the Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank, began to loosen credit in order to stimulate growth. It was partly driven by political reasons and partly by globalist agendas. Other nation’s central banks liked the idea too and did their own versions of loose credit.

Now before I go on, let me read to you another powerful statement in the Spirit of Prophecy. It reads much like the morning newspapers. It comes from the second volume of Selected Messages, page 142. Here it is. “The work of the people of God is to prepare for the events of the future, which will soon come upon them with blinding force.” Does that sound like an overwhelming surprise? I’ll read on. “In the world gigantic monopolies will be formed. Men will bind themselves together in unions that will wrap them in the folds of the enemy. A few men will combine to grasp all the means to be obtained in certain lines of business. Trades unions will be formed, and those who refuse to join these unions will be marked men.” Notice that your work is to prepare for the crisis. You must follow the counsel in the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy if you want to survive. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
When the economy is going well, people don’t complain or resist government shenanigans so long as it doesn’t affect them much. For example, so long as people felt that they were doing well financially, the government could increase the national debt substantially, year after year, gutting the national economy, and leading its people to financial ruin, without much protest. The very loose fiscal practice has undermined the very wealth that people thought they had. The Government Accountability Office reported in January of 2007 that its “long-term simulations continue to show ever-larger deficits resulting in a federal debt burden that ultimately spirals out of control.” The report went on to say that “the longer action… is delayed, the greater the risk that the eventual changes will be disruptive and destabilizing.” In essence the GAO is saying that the current levels of spending in the federal government are unsustainable and that it will greatly effect the nation’s fiscal health. That prediction is now being fulfilled in the United States. But it is affecting the rest of the world.

GAO report

During the same 15-year period of artificial expansion, the U.S. government was constructing trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (known as NAFTA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (known as CAFTA). These were being implemented in an effort to consolidate economic and thereby political forces for regional control. The people were told that these trade treaties would benefit the economy when in fact they did the opposite.

NAFTA source #1 , NAFTA source #2

Other trade policies made it less attractive to keep U.S. businesses in the country. These trade agreements caused the shift of large manufacturing and service industries to foreign nations like China, India and some countries in Latin America. This left a lot of people jobless in the United States, while many of the remaining manufacturing and service jobs were taken over by immigrants from Latin America.
Similar outsourcing policies were followed in Australia, Britain and other countries. The goal was to gradually weaken the economic strength of these nations so that they can be more easily manipulated into the economic, political and global order as the scripture suggests. Eventually people will be told that they need to let go of their independence; their rights; their freedoms; their sovereignty; and join the global order because it will help them economically. So while the good times rolled artificially, economic strength was undermined. When the bad times come, the people and whole nations may well be swept up in the new world order in the name of recovering from economic disaster.

U.S. Congressman Ron Paul recently gave a powerful speech before the House of Representatives. He said that a “Big Event” is about to unfold. “The world economy and political system will share in the chaos about to be unleashed,” he said. “There are reasons to believe this coming crisis is different and bigger than the world has ever experienced. Instead of using globalism in a positive fashion, it’s been used to globalize all of the mistakes of the politicians, bureaucrats and central bankers…”
“There are two choices that people can make,” he said. “The one chosen so often by government in the past is that of rejecting the principles of liberty and resorting to even bigger and more authoritarian government…” Ron Paul went on to say, “the more the government is allowed to do in taking over and running the economy, the deeper the depression gets and the longer it lasts. That was the story of the 30s and the early 40s, and the same mistakes are likely to be made again if we do not wake up.”

Congressman Ron Paul Speech

This incredible speech makes it clear that the greatest danger is that a severe economic down cycle is likely to be used by government to become more authoritarian and consolidate economy, control and power in the hands of a few, thus removing more personal liberties. And this is exactly what is happening. On June 13, 2008, the Associated Press reported that “Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Thursday that the government must move quickly to give the Federal Reserve more powers to regulate the financial system… Paulson said that the central bank’s powers should be expanded in the wake of the near collapse earlier this year of Bear Stearns, the giant Wall Street investment firm. He said there was a need to consider quickly how to give the Fed the power it needs to obtain information from investment banks and the responsibility to intervene to protect the overall financial system…

Paulson did not spell out how the new powers should be provided. It is possible some actions could be made through administration decisions without the need for laws being passed…

Paulson’s comments echoed views expressed earlier this month by Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, who said in a speech that the central bank needs more authority over firms that may need financial support from the Fed in a crisis.

Wide New Powers for Treasury, Wide New Powers for Treasury,

Blueprint for Modernization of the Treasury

Friends, this is nothing more than a power grab. Paulson wants to control the entire financial system. Consolidation of power, however well-intended, will eventually control the people more fully and remove their liberties. That is the very nature of consolidation of economic and political power.

And consolidation is happening everywhere. And it fits perfectly into the scenario of the last days as Revelation 18 suggests. When the economy slides into recession or depression, people feel the pain. They become fearful and anxious as their wealth slips away right in front of their eyes. This eventually makes them angry. Ministers tell them that the prosperity of the nation can only return if the nation returns to God. This means to most, being in church on Sunday and following certain key mandates that their church leaders suggest to them. If government leaders profess religiosity, they will respect them and also pressure them to legislate morality and support it with Sunday laws. These Sunday laws become more and more oppressive as the nation continues to sink into deeper financial distress. But the Sunday Laws only lead to national ruin.

Consolidation of power is very important to the coming new world order. As the pope tries to consolidate his power over the nations and the churches, nations are trying to consolidate control over each other. Europe is consolidating under the EU. It starts as an economic trade Union and ends with political and religious control over all citizens. This is also happening with gigantic trade consolidations such as the North American Union, the Mercosur nations in Latin America, the ASEAN nations of Southeast Asia, and now the Mediterranean Union spearheaded by French president Nicolas Sarkozy in July. These regional trade agreements are consolidating nations and economies in the hands of a few. Consolidation is a human principle that will ultimately rise up in opposition to the God of heaven. But it will have a powerful and devastating effect on the average citizen. It has been happening gradually so that people don’t overreact and panic and then become violent. That could eventually happen however.

Mercosur , ASEAN , Mediterranean ,

Notice this statement from the pen of inspiration. It is found in This Day with God, page 163; “The inhabitants of the world, under Satan’s leadership, are binding up in bundles ready to be burned.” And Maranatha, page 182 says “In the world gigantic monopolies will be formed.” While trade unions in the traditional sense are struggling to build their power, the other trade consolidations between nations known as trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA are also bundling the world together economically so that there can be centralized control, and thereby huge resources and power can be funneled into the hands of fewer and fewer people. This will lead to economic ruin.

Manipulating the economy is a prime way of centralizing control. But how did the current economic mess happen? In the mortgage industry there are mainstream banks who sell mortgages to prime borrowers with high-quality credit ratings. These mortgages have the best interest rates and lowest costs. If a borrower’s credit rating is too low, he is a subprime borrower and must go to a lender who will lend him money at a higher interest rate and higher costs. Subprime mortgages often have adjustable rates or a balloon payment after 2-5 years. Sometimes they even have a grace period in which the interest is less than prime but which, at the end of the grace period adjusts to a higher rate than prime. Subprime loans are much more risky and generate the majority of defaults.

Subprime Definition

As more and more loose credit became available, people who were unqualified to take out home mortgages from mainstream prime lenders borrowed from subprime lenders. Huge numbers of subprime mortgages were sold exposing banks and mortgage companies to these risky loans. But things were going so well that it didn’t seem like it would ever cause any problems. Unemployment rates were low, inflation was low, energy costs were low. Thanks to the Federal Reserve’s manipulation of the financial markets, the good times were rolling.

People who bought homes from the subprime market also thought that everything would go well and that there would never be a problem. As more and more people bought homes on easy credit demand for homes increased and prices skyrocketed. This made the subprime mortgages more risky because now the personal debt load of hundreds of thousands of individual borrowers was much more because of the cost to purchase the overpriced homes. Overpricing of homes was known as the housing bubble and it got bigger and bigger as more and more people took advantage of the borrowing opportunities and easy access to funds.

Many articles in the press predicted the housing bubble would break and cause serious economic distress. That time has come. It is all happening now.
Banks have to lend money to make money. If people stop borrowing it creates a cash flow problem for banks. So banks and other mortgage lenders were making it easier and easier to borrow money in order to keep their profits rolling in. However, the quality of loans deteriorated because they were being sold to people with less than ideal credit. In order to keep their cash flow going so that the banks could lend more money (and thereby earn more interest), these subprime loans were sold to large mortgage investment companies who got money from their investors to buy them. They in turn, took a share of the interest, and since things were going so well, their investors reaped the benefits through increasing share values and dividend payments. The system worked fine while there was enough liquidity in the markets to keep the system expanding. Lenders were given approval to lend with lower reserves which made the lenders even more vulnerable to an economic downturn.

But expansion has to stop at some point. Everything has limits in this world. The housing industry began to slow in the U.S. partly because of the increase in the cost of fuel and other pressures. As more and more home buyers could not afford their newly adjusted mortgage rates and balloon payments on their sub-prime mortgages, problems in the whole industry began to surface. Mortgage lenders began to tighten credit standards to limit their exposure. This began the cycle of cash flow problems for lenders. They were between the proverbial “rock and a hard place.” If they loaned more money to risky borrowers, they increased their exposure to potentially bad loans. If they tightened their lending standards, they would seriously reduce their cash flow and thereby be unable to meet their obligations. Eventually, a serious crisis of confidence in the mortgage markets developed and this started the current economic woe.

The first major bust in the system occurred when Countrywide Financial Corporation, a huge mortgage lender that was heavily exposed to the risky subprime market could not meet its obligations. They had loaned so much money in shaky investments, or had bought and guaranteed subprime mortgages from other lenders, that when a large number of people began to default on their payments, they were unable to remain solvent. This sent shock waves through the financial sector. Eventually, Countrywide and Bank of America made a deal and Bank of America bought Countrywide for almost nothing.

Countrywide Financial

The shock waves began to spread around the world. Banks in many western countries, particularly Britain and Europe had invested in the booming subprime home mortgage business in the United States and now they too were concerned about their exposure. The European Central bank infused a shocking 350 billion Euros (or $500 billion) into the EU financial system to steady 390 banks across the Eurozone that had requested the help. And the Bank of England dolled out 10 billion pounds to its banks to shore them up.

But Northern Rock, a major British lender of home mortgages ran into deep trouble quickly on the heels of Countrywide. It had been heavily exposed to the U.S. subprime crisis. After two unsuccessful bids to buy out the bank, the British government bailed them out by nationalizing them. Banks and other lenders were in trouble too, because as the housing market turned downward in the U.S., they had to cut the book value of their mortgage investments and desperately needed the cash to cover their losses and continue their operations. Then in Spain a huge real estate developer, Martinsa-Fadesa filed for bankruptcy on July 15, 2008 sending shock waves throughout the Eurozone. This company had debts of $7.9 billion. But the stresses are everywhere, including Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Europe as well as North America. ”A painful adjustment faces the global banking sector over the next few months,” said Mervin King, a governor of the Bank of England.

Northern Rock , Euro Infusion , Bank of England , Martinsa-Fedesa

Then the financial earthquake erupted. Bank after bank, lender after lender, including some of the most reputable investment firms, suddenly had to face huge write downs on the value of their assets. As confidence in the banking industry sank, so did confidence in the stock market. As the housing slump deepened and unsold home inventory soared skyward, confidence slid even further. Commercial bankruptcies soared. Huge retail chain stores shuttered hundreds of retail outlets, and there seems to be no end in sight.

Commercial Bankruptcies ,
Retail Stores

The Federal Reserve began lowering interest rates hand over fist in order to stabilize the financial markets and buy time so that the banks could try to get their financial houses in order. They only had a few months to solve their problems however – a near impossibility. The Federal Reserve also infused billions upon billions of new electronic dollars into the banking system to keep it liquid. Central Banks in Britain, Europe, Australia and other key nations followed suit.

The infusion of cash in the U.S. to shore up the banking industry did two devastating things; first it massacred the U.S. dollar, which began a gradual but steady decline against other currencies like the Euro and the Australian dollar. But it also fueled inflation, for as more instant dollars circulated, the value of all the rest of the dollars was depreciated. This directly effects consumers because their money buys less and less, as more and more money is injected into the financial system. Imports become much more expensive as a result of the weak dollar. Coupled with the increasing cost of fuel, prices of commodities as well as the end product that is produced from them soared. This hit the poor and middle classes the hardest. The days of cheap travel came to a screeching halt as the airline industry went from marginal profitability after clawing their way out of bankruptcy, to huge losses in a matter of months, largely because of fuel prices.

Then a huge financial institution teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. Bear Stearns Companies Inc. was one of the largest global investment banks and securities trading and brokerage firms in the world. From 2005-2007, Bear Stearns was recognized as the “Most Admired” securities firm in Fortunes magazine. Its stock once traded at $172 per share. The rapid decline in the subprime market and the growing credit crisis exposed serious flaws in the company and badly damaged Bear Stearns. In March of 2008 things had gotten so bad that the Federal Reserve, fearful that the collapse of Bear Stearns would bring the whole market down, took the unprecedented step of making an emergency loan in conjunction with J. P. Morgan, a rival investment firm to keep them solvent. Keep in mind, the Federal Reserve had never before made loans to non-bank financial institutions. This of course, added billions more dollars into the market. Eventually the Federal Reserve brokered a deal in which J. P. Morgan bought the whole company at a fire sale price of $10 a share and narrowly escaped a serious financial meltdown.

Bear Sterns

But that wasn’t the end of it. By July 2008, the damage to the financial sectors continued to mount. As deterioration spread, concerns were raised by Senator Charles Schumer on June 26 concerning a large California lender. The Los Angeles Times on July 12, 2008 reported his words about IndyMac Bank, based in Pasadena. “I am concerned that IndyMac’s financial deterioration poses significant risks to both taxpayers and borrowers,” he wrote. The bank “could face a failure if prescriptive measures are not taken quickly.”

Between June 26 and July 11, as word got around that the bank might fail, people with accounts at the bank began to withdraw their money, and quickly. In those few short days, over $1.3 Billion was withdrawn from the bank. That is a rate of about $100 million a day. Imagine what that does to a struggling bank! It pushed IndyMac over the precipice. IndyMac lost it ability to meet its obligations very quickly. The LA Times said that regulators called it “the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history,” second only to Continental Illinois Bank which went belly up in 1984.

On Friday July 11, Federal Regulators entered the main branch of IndyMac bank and closed it three hours early. Over the weekend the Feds reorganized IndyMac and opened it on Monday as a federal bank. While deposits under $100,000 were protected by FDIC insurance, the cost of the bailout by the Feds was between $4 and $8 billion – probably closer to $8 billion – more than 10% of the FDIC’s $52 billion in reserves.

“This institution failed today due to a liquidity crisis,” [said] John M. Reich, director of the [Office of Thrift Supervision in Washington]… “Although this institution was already in distress, the deposit run pushed IndyMac over the edge.”
In a shocking article, Reuters on July 13, 2008 said that “more than 300 banks could fail in the next three years.” The Fed had at the end of March only 90 banks on its list of troubled or “problem” banks, which by the way did not include IndyMac. So the official data does not reflect reality.

Source #1 , Source #2

As IndyMac’s troubles were being addressed by Federal Regulators, another serious problem surfaced. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two huge congressionally chartered mortgage lenders, who own 40% of all U.S. mortgages, approximately $4.4 trillion were suddenly in the news. Fannie and Freddie are designed to guarantee mortgages to banks that lend to low-income families. They work in the background behind the banks and other lenders. Pension funds, insurance companies and foreign governments invested in these two companies. They were heavily exposed to the risky subprime market by their very nature. Their liquidity was stretched so thin that the federal government stepped in to address the problems. “On July 15, 2008 Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. asked the U.S. Congress for unlimited authority to lend to them to reassure markets of their creditworthiness,” said Business Week July 16, 2008. Nobody wanted to buy the debt any more. One banker said that they are afraid because the debt “could be full of rat poison.” The toxic elements now in the subprime mortgage industry have caused an enormous slowdown of liquidity in the markets, causing great stress to banks and homeowners. The troubles at Fannie and Freddie caused mortgage rates to rise which added to the pressure.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (Source #1)”:http://www.answers.com/topic/federal-national-mortgage-association , Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac , Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac , Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac , Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

As people stopped buying homes because of the credit crisis and inflationary pressures, inventories for all types of homes increased to 4.59 million nationwide, a record 12 months supply. The inventories continued to increase. This greatly increased the stress on the financial markets, on builders and developers, and on individuals that had loans that were too much for them to handle. They couldn’t even sell their homes to pay back the bank, and had to let the bank foreclose. Some people have even been sleeping in their cars and SUVs in parking lots because they have no place to go.

Home inventories , See Also

At the same time as all this financial stress was going down, demand for natural resources, most noticeably petroleum products, soared to record highs because of new demand from China and India. As fuel increased, so did prices of everything else, especially, food. In addition, there was a tremendous new demand for copper, zinc, plutonium, uranium and other key commodities worldwide which substantially drove up costs of building.

Almost every commodity in existence including food, precious metals, energy and even water are surging in price because they are in short supply. “In the past year,” according to the investment newsletter Money and Markets, June 19, 2008, “peanut butter is up 9%, dairy prices are up 12%, eggs have shot up more than 30%, and flour is up an astounding 46%! In just the last two weeks, the price of cocoa is up almost 7% and sugar is up about 6.2%!

“…Corn prices have soared 58% since the first of the year… Wheat prices are up almost 13% so far this month. And soybean prices are on ‘a tear,’ up 18% in barely four weeks. As a result, a loaf of bread is up 17%.

“Transportation costs are up 8.1% over the 12 months ending in May. Gas prices were up 5.2% in May, 21% compared to a year earlier. And airline tickets last month were up 3.2%, their largest gain in more than six years.”

Add in another critical factor. As I prepare this sermon, a barrel of oil costs over $130. Oil and its related petrochemicals are part of the manufacturing process of almost everything you buy. Petro-products are included in the production and/or manufacture of everything rubber and plastic, clothing, medicines, and food. When the cost of oil soars, that affects much more than the prices at the pump. It also effects the prices of everything you buy. In addition there is the oil needed to heat or cool your home, run your cars, lawnmowers and anything else with a motor, as well as commercial travel.

And don’t forget that the falling value of the dollar has added to the inflation and the cost of imported goods. This vicious inflationary cycle has become a major global force and threatens to undo your life, your goals, your plans and virtually everything about your future including your retirement. It is hard for people to believe, but as the last vestiges of their former lives are left behind, they are very concerned even frightened. The reason is simple: too few dollars chasing too few goods including natural resources. Gone are the days of cheap travel. Gone are the days of inexpensive food. Gone are the days when you could depend on your job, your bank account, your home equity, or anything else… And people are hedging. They are selling their gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs (though at a great loss). They are constricting their major purchases to only the things they actually need. And they are changing their eating habits, cutting the luxury foods, the restaurant meals and turning to more basic and simple fare. And all this is hurting businesses who are laying off workers right, left and center and closing store fronts and backroom operations further compounding the economic contraction. It is a vicious cycle.
Because of the many aggravating circumstances, a perfect storm looms over the world economy. Rumors abound on the internet that there will be a collapse of the U.S. economy in September or October. If this should happen, it will ricochet through the economies of every other nation large and small, developed or not.
The Bible says in James 5:1 “Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.”

Let us talk about personal consequences for just a minute. The subprime crisis in the United States has burst the bubble that was artificially supported by real estate prices and the easy money from the central banks through the mortgage industry. Agonizingly, it threatens to strip the homes out from underneath hundreds of thousands of families worldwide. As home prices continue to tumble in the U.S., Britain, Europe, Australia and elsewhere, families are squeezed so hard that they have been forced to let the banks repossess them. Families who have no reserves are vulnerable to the sudden increases in gas and food prices because their lives were based in an environment with much cheaper cost of living. Think of the stress and distress of dealing with these kinds of problems. The many years of reckless spending, accumulation of debt with virtually no savings is now coming back to haunt many Americans and others. This will eventually have an impact on all nations. They are halting the spending which in turn is affecting every other economy in the world to one degree or another.

Source,

We are watching an incredibly important prophetic development that most people cannot comprehend. But we are told that those that are wise shall understand (Dan 12:10) and they will be ready because they are wisely taking steps to harmonize their lives with all the counsel of the Lord. What is the counsel of the Lord? What should God’s people do? The Spirit of Prophecy says in Country Living, page 26 that “To understand the will of God is a great thing.”

It is time to take careful stock of your situation and think about the coming difficulties. If you do not, you could be overwhelmed in the perfect storm that will break upon the world. Jesus told us about it so that we could prepare spiritually and temporally. So what should we do? The Spirit of Prophecy gives us plenty of counsel. Get the little book Country Living and read it.

Here is just one statement from page 20 that explains why we do not want to live in the cities. Here it is; “We are not to locate ourselves where we will be forced into close relations with those who do not honor God… A crisis is soon to come in regard to the observance of Sunday… The Sunday party is strengthening itself in its false claims, and this will mean oppression to those who determine to keep the Sabbath of the Lord. We are to place ourselves where we can carry out the Sabbath commandment in its fullness… If in the providence of God we can secure places away from the cities, the Lord would have us do this. There are troublous times before us.

It is in the cities where the greatest troubles will be. They will have serious problems including unprecedented violence as the shortages and economic problems mount. There could be lockdowns and other difficulties that we can hardly imagine right now. Think of the food shortages that are now likely; or even fuel shortages that would make it difficult to get food and other things to the stores. But it is also where the focus of Sunday Law enforcement will be. God’s people don’t need to be in the city. Remember that it is in the country where you can grow and preserve our own food best. If you live in the city, pray that the Lord will help you now to relocate. In the mean time, you can learn to can and preserve produce so that you will have it when you cannot buy or sell. It is a good practice anyway. If you live where you can grow a garden, even in the city, it will help you learn how, so that you can have things available to eat and you don’t have to purchase the high priced stuff in the stores.

God also gives us clear counsel about our finances. After we have secured our country property, we are to invest in the bank of heaven where moth and rust doth not corrupt. Matt 6:19-20 is a warning about what is going to happen to your wealth if you don’t put it in the service of God. “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

This important economic counsel is so very relevant today. This is not saying that you should not have a modest home on land where you can live. Nor does it mean that you should not have sufficient funds in the bank to pay your bills for six months or so. It is saying that we should not have unnecessary extras.

There is more counsel in the word of God. If you want the blessing of God during economic challenges, follow the financial counsel found in Malachi 3:8-10. “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”

These verses reveal the reason why we will suffer economic distress in times of trouble. It is because God sees our unfaithfulness in tithes and offerings. My friends, if you want to have economic survival and abundance, follow the counsel of God. Put your extra funds beyond your needs into the cause of God. Send it where the truth is being preached. And God will show you His power to sustain. Many have neglected to return a faithful tithe and offerings for one excuse or another. He tests us in this. He shows us our selfishness by requiring tithes and offerings. If we would trust God in this, He will make sure that we have more to give to His cause. He may not always send us cash. There is coming a time when commodities are going to be more valuable than cash by far. So be thinking and praying about these things.

Also, focus on learning to live a godly life. Your heart must be drawn out to God in prayer for His wisdom and guidance. Preserve your sacred influence so that you can help others come to the knowledge of the truth. Build your spiritual resources so that you can witness to anyone anywhere.

My friends, there is a much greater terror that is approaching the world than the economic problems we now face. God’s church needs to get ready. We are living in the time of anticipation. But the coming reality will truly surprise us. Keep your lamps burning. Let your life be hid in Christ. Take God’s counsel to heart in every area of life. Do whatever you have to do, but do it carefully in His wisdom. Let Christ rule your life so that He will empower you to stop sinning. That way you can hear His still small voice, and follow in all His ways.

Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we want to be like Jesus. Please send your Holy Spirit into our lives that we may reflect the character of Christ. Lead us and show us what we must do to get ready for the coming economic crisis. Help us recognize the signs of the times for what they are and may we heed the warnings that Jesus has given us. Thank you for your love and watch care. In Jesus name amen.

Music.

We hope you have received a rich blessing from this month’s message. Your prayers and gifts mean much to us. Thank you for your support. The song you have just heard is I Need Thee Every Hour, sung by Christian Berdahl. It is recorded on a CD with other beautiful hymns called Consecration, Hymns of Devotion. If you would like to have a copy of the CD, just send $16 post paid to U.S. addresses to cover the cost, and we will send you one. Please mention the¬ Consecration CD. Our international listeners should inquire the additional cost of shipping.

The following is our monthly Prophetic Intelligence Briefing, a feature that brings you current events in light of prophecy especially for those who love the appearing of Jesus Christ. We can see the signs of the times telling us that we are nearing the world’s great crisis. May the Lord find us faithful.

Our first item this month, Freedom of Speech Under Assault in Canada

“In 1999, reported the National Catholic Register July 6, 2008, the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal ordered Evangelical printer Scott Brockie to pay a $5,000 fine after he refused to print homosexual-themed stationary.

“In April (2008), Christian Horizons, a Christian ministry that cares for the severely disabled, was find $23,000 by the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal for dismissing an employee who had signed a declaration of Christian moral living as part of her employment contract, but who later assumed an active homosexual lifestyle.

The paper also reported that a Knights of Columbus chapter in British Columbia was fined $2,000 in December (2005) for declining to rent its hall to a lesbian couple for a same-sex ‘marriage’ ceremony.

Now, a priest who publishes a Catholic magazine is being investigated under the hate speech clause of Canada’s Human Rights Act, for publishing several articles “critical of homosexual activists attempting to redefine marriage to include same-sex unions. “Some of the allegedly hateful statements cited in the complaint were quotations from recent papal encyclicals and the Catechism of the Catholic Church,” according to Father [Alphonse] de Valk, the priest being investigated.

So far, “Canada’s human rights tribunals have a 100% conviction rate when investigating complaints filed against Christians by homosexual activists…”reported the Register. Under the Human Rights Act, section 13.1 defines hate speech as “’any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination. ‘Sexual orientation’ is one of the grounds of discrimination prohibited by the act.’”

Canada’s Human Rights Act is vaguely worded so that it is easy for homosexual activists and activist human rights tribunals to overzealously apply the law to restrict religious speech on some sincerely held beliefs. Speech that should be protected is now exposed to legal action in Canada which jeopardizes freedom of speech which is also a human right in Canada. Those that have to legally protect themselves from criticism by using a tortured definition of hate speech, have a very weak persuasive case. Could the Human Rights Act one day misconstrue the text of the book Great Controversy which identifies the Catholic Church as the anti-Christ as hate speech? Given time, and the right climate, it is entirely conceivable. Hate speech laws have been in the development state in a number of western countries for a long time. Now we are beginning to see their effect in restricting religious speech. Islamic countries often restrict speech against Islam or Mohammed in most intolerant ways and even brutal ways. Will western countries eventually adopt similar attitudes in restricting freedom of speech? Canada’s human rights law suggests that it is entirely possible.

Next: Churches Join Episcopalian Fight with Breakaway Churches.

Sixteen Protestant denominations, including the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, have “joined a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia in contesting a Reconstruction-era state law that governs church splits,” reported Christianity Today, July 2008. “The post-Civil War splintering of the Methodist and Presbyterian churches in 1867 prompted the Virginia law, which allows congregations to keep their property when seceding from a church or ‘religious society’ that’s dividing.

Eleven theologically conservative congregations left the Episcopal Church to join the Nigerian Episcopal Church sponsored Convocation of Anglicans in North America. This has resulted in multimillion-dollar battles over church property. The protestant amicus curiae brief argues that the law is unconstitutional in that it draws the government into fundamentally religious questions. The General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists along with some of the other protestants also argue that local congregations hold their property, including bank accounts, in trust for the hierarchical organization.

It hasn’t always been that way – at least in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Most Adventists don’t have a memory that goes back far enough to remember the time when local church property was held in a local trust. It was not held in the conference association or any other legal entity controlled by the conference. Many years ago, Conference officials argued that property could be lost if the local trustees were unfaithful and urged, then eventually required all church entities to place their property in the hands of a conference controlled organization. Never in their wildest imagination did members think that one day there could arise leaders who would take the church in a liberal direction both in theology and in practice just as has happened in the Episcopal church, thus placing all the property held by conference entities in control of liberals who take it in a direction away from truth and righteousness. If the Virginia court rules in favor of local congregations, this could jeopardize legal precedents in other places that have been hard won by the General Conference and other denominations. Hence they have a vested interest in the outcome of the Virginia case, which, according to Christianity Today, “is expected to take years to settle.”

Next: Overstepping Judges

The July 21, 2008 Forbes magazine ran an editorial that made an important observation. “For decades,” wrote the author, “judges in U.S. courts, high and low, have been behaving like legislators, making laws as they see fit. The Supreme Court , for example, recently ruled that Louisiana could not execute a man for raping his very young stepdaughter, thereby overturning similar laws in five other states. The Justices rationalized their ruling by saying that there is “a national consensus” against applying capital punishment to such a crime.”

Since when does “national consensus” become the determining factor in judicial decisions? What happened to the elected legislative bodies? More importantly, what happened to the constitution? Do judges now have the right to consult opinion polls before rendering decisions?

Here is the prophetic question. If a “national consensus” can be used as a basis for deciding questions of constitutionality or validity, then the United States is in big constitutional trouble. It is essentially nullified. Nothing is safe; not the right of free speech; not the freedom of the press; not the right of a trial by a jury of peers, not the right to hold private property; and the list goes on and on. Already the Supreme Court has ruled that the right of eminent domain can be used to take private property from one entity and give it to another private entity.

Most importantly, the constitutional principle of the separation of church and state is no longer guaranteed. Neither is freedom of conscience, if “national consensus” can trump the constitution and the bill of rights. When the “national consensus” pressures lawmakers to make a Sunday law, what is to stop judges from upholding it in spite of its unconstitutionality?

Next: California Judges Authorize Gay Marriage

If “consensus” drives some judicial decisions, activism drives others. The California Supreme Court on May 15, 2008 overturned a state law prohibiting same-sex marriages. The court elevated sexual orientation to the same kind of status as race and gender. Calling it a “suspect classification,” the court said that the “traditional marriage referendum” according to Christianity Today, “passed by more than 60 percent of Californians in 2000” was discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional.

The implications of this ruling are very broad. Gay couples quickly “tied the knot” as soon as the ruling went into effect. But the serious implications cover all sorts of areas. “’Together with the state’s Unruh Civil Rights Act,’ wrote Christianity Today quoting a law professor,’it would be hard to see how government or private business could make distinctions legally on the basis of sexual orientation in any area covered by Unruh – [including] public accommodation, housing, nonprofit groups, public agencies, retail establishments, hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, hospitals, barbershops, etc.

Next: Croatia Enacts a Sunday Law

On July 15, 2008 the Associated Press published a report from Zagreb, Croatia that “the Croatian parliament has passed a law forcing shops to close on Sundays in a concession to the Roman Catholic Church. The Church has campaigned for years for Sundays to be devoted to family or Mass in Croatia, which is almost 90 percent Roman Catholic. But Croatians have begun spending weekends in shopping malls that have flourished across the country in the past few years and remain open seven days a week.

The law goes into effect Jan. 1. It allows Sunday shopping over the summer and Christmas holidays. The law also allows stores in gas, bus and train stations to open on Sundays year-round, along with those in hospitals. Bakeries, newsstands and flower shops are also exempt from the ban.
While this is not the worst type of Sunday Law, it is a prelude to stronger and more comprehensive Sunday laws. One day these kinds of laws will lead to Sunday worship laws.

“In homage to the Papacy the United States will not be alone. The influence of Rome in the countries that once acknowledged her dominion, is still far from being destroyed. Maranatha, page 188.

Source

Next: New Jesuit Superior General

On Saturday, January 19, 2008 the Jesuit order, during its general congregation elected Father Adolofo Nicolas, S.J. as its 13th Superior General, succeeding Peter Hans Kolvanbach. Nicolas, a Spaniard, will preside over the entire congregation of more than 19,000 members, according to the Jesuit article on Wikipedia, as the “black pope” (as the position is often called). Pope Benedict XVI confirmed his nomination.

Nicolas earned a masters and doctoral degree in theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He worked for the society in Asia, particularly in the Philippines and Japan. For a period of time, he controlled the Jesuits in East Asia and Oceania which included Australia, China, Japan, Korea, Micronesia, Myanmar and East Timor as well as the Philippines.
It is interesting to note that the new General was elected on the Sabbath, perhaps of symbolic interest to Sabbath keepers. It is also interesting to note that the new General is a Spaniard. The people of Spain have always been very strongly Catholic, even though a secular government sometimes gets into cross purposes with the church. Being a European, Nicolas will no doubt assist the pope in bringing Europe back to its Christian religious roots. Father Paolo Molinari, Postulator General of the Society of Jesus stated: “In regard to his kind of formation and the service he has done, he seems precisely to respond to the indications of the Holy Father, Benedict XVI. Certainly he will help us to rediscover and reinforce the Christian roots of Europe and to witness to Christ in the whole world.” Father Molinari also said he was the “optimal choice” for the position as Superior General.
The Jesuits were founded by Ignatius Loyola in response to the Reformation. They very quickly became masters of the educational system of Europe. Today they are still strongly involved in Education around the world promoting Roman Catholic ideals, philosophy, teachings and power.

“Under various disguises the Jesuits worked their way into offices of state, climbing up to be the counselors of kings, and shaping the policy of nations.”
Great Controversy, p. 235.

Next: America bankrolls the Vatican

Religion News Service, on July 9, 2008 reported that: “No nation of Catholics gives their church more money than Americans do, a fact universally (though sometimes grudgingly) acknowledged in Rome. Yet Vatican finances have begun to suffer from America’s recent economic troubles.

“A cardinals’ advisory committee on Holy See finances released a report today showing that the U.S. was the top contributor nation ($19 million, or 29% of the total) to the Holy See’s charitable spending in 2007, and came in second (after Germany) in contributions to the support of the Holy See itself.

“But the Holy See was only €1.4 million in the black for 2007, compared to €13.7 million for the previous year, mostly on account of the feeble dollar (a currency in which the Holy See evidently holds a large position).”

The researchers' model involved 103 single mutations/recombinations, six double mutations, and a pair of triple mutations. In the short-term 45 of those were beneficial, 48 neutral, and 18 detrimental. Thirteen of the 45 beneficial steps gave rise to logic functions not expressed by the immediate parent. Fifteen of the 18 detrimental mutations made the offspring slightly less fit, or likely to propagate, than the parent. Two of the detrimental mutations cut in half the offspring's fitness. One of these very detrimental mutations, however, did produce offspring that one step later produced a mutation that in turn gave rise to the complex logic operation. 

This all looks very much like the evolution of complex software functions in computer code and many are quite convinced that the parallel is very close to what happens in the natural world.  However, there are several interesting constraints to this experiment. For one thing, the ultimate functional goal was predetermined as with Dawkins's "Methinks it is like a weasel" computer evolution experiment - except that there was a difference here in that each of the steps involved with Lenski's experiment were actually functionally unique. The problem is that these functions were predetermined by intelligent design to be functionally beneficial. Basically, the proper environment was a set-up for the success of a particular evolutionary scenario, which was already pre-determined via intelligent design.  Also, the types of mutations that were used were not generally point mutations, but were based on swapping large sections of pre-programmed meaningful bit code around. The researchers knew that with a relatively few recombinations of code such a logic function of "increasing complexity" would be realized. After all, the environment was set up to produce changes were the ratio of beneficial changes as compared to all other potential changes was very high. Like the evolution of antibiotic resistance this function was easy to evolve given the restraints used by the scientists because the neutral gaps were set up to be so small. Also, the success of the experiment was dependent on pre-established lines of code that were set up to work together to solve logical problems of a specific type. 

I suggest however that this particular setup would not be able to evolve other types of functions, like the ability to open the CD-drive or the ability to cause the monitor to blink off and on. The gaps involved would require different types of starting code sequences that could not be gained by the type of code recombination used in this experiment.  Point mutations would be required and very large gaps in function would need to be crossed before these other functions could be realized. 

In short, I think that this experiment was a setup for the success of a very limited goal and does not explain the evolution of uniquely functional systems beyond the most elementary of levels. It did end up producing some "unexpected" solutions to the problem, but that is only to be expected. There might be many different ways to interfere with an antibiotic's interaction with a target sequence that might not be otherwise expected. However, the functional ratio is what is important here and clearly it is very high as compared to the neutral sequences (40% beneficial mutations vs. 10% detrimental and only 43% neutral - Please! Give me a break!). Success was guaranteed by the way the intelligent designers set up their experiment.  They were able to sequentially define their own environment ahead of time in a very specified way.  The logic functions that were evolved were dependent upon the proper selective environment being set up ahead of time by ID. What if there was a gap between one type of logic function and another type of logic function? - such as between the NAND and the EQU functions that required the evolution of either the AND or the OR, or the NOR, XOR or NOT functions first? What if these functions were not recognized by a particular environment as being beneficial? Then, there would be a neutral gap created by that environment between the NAND and EQU functions. What are the odds that the "proper" environment that recognized at least one of these other functions as beneficial, would come around at the right time?  

You see, the random walk not only includes random changes in code, but also in environment. Without an intelligent mind directing changes in environment in just the proper way, the organic synthesis of many different compounds that are made in chemistry laboratories would not work. The order of the environmental changes is just as important as the order of the molecules in the "evolution" of new functions or compounds.  

Interestingly enough, Lenski and the other scientists thought of this potentiality themselves, so they set up different environments to see which environements would support the evolution of all the potentially beneficial functions - to include the most complex EQU function.  Consider the following description about what happened when various intermediate steps were not arbitrarily defined by the scientists as "beneficial".

"At the other extreme, 50 populations evolved in an environment where only EQU was rewarded, and no simpler function yielded energy. We expected that EQU would evolve much less often because selection would not preserve the simpler functions that provide foundations to build more complex features. Indeed, none of these populations evolved EQU, a highly significant difference from the fraction that did so in the reward-all environment (P = 4.3 x 10e-9, Fisher's exact test). However, these populations tested more genotypes, on average, than did those in the reward-all environment (2.15 x 10e7 versus 1.22 x 107; P<0.0001, Mann-Witney test), because they tended to have smaller genomes, faster generations, and thus turn over more quickly. However, all populations explored only a tiny fraction of the total genotypic space. Given the ancestral genome of length 50 and 26 possible instructions at each site, there are ~5.6 x 10e70 genotypes; and even this number underestimates the genotypic space because length evolves."

 Isn't that just fascinating? When the intermediate stepping stone functions were removed, the neutral gap that was created successfully blocked the evolution of the EQU function. Now, isn't this consistent with my predictions? This experiment was successful because the intelligent designers were capable to defining what sequences or functions were "beneficial" for their evolving "organisms." If enough sequences or functions are defined as beneficial, then certainly such a high ratio will result in rapid evolution - as we saw here. However, when neutral non-defined gaps are present, they are a real problem for evolution.  In this case, a gap of just 16 neutral mutations effectively blocked the evolution of the EQU function. (Just for those who are curious, listed with the references are the detailed "Experimental Conditions" listed by the authors).

The problem here is that without the input of higher information from the intelligent minds of the scientists, this experiment would have failed.  All specified systems of function of increasing complexity require the input of some sort of higher pre-established source of information - be that information stored in the form of a genetic code or a human scientist.  The reason for this is that left to themselves, the individual parts simply do not know how to arrange themselves in any particular orientation with other parts to create a specified function of high complexity.  Because of this, the best that the parts themselves can self-assemble, without the aid of a higher source of information, is a homogenous ooze or a homogenous crystalline structure.

Many people think that all changes in function are equal - that just any example of evolution in action can explain all other differences in function.  The fact is that there are different levels of functional complexity.  Some changes are much easier to achieve than others.  But all change costs something.  This price is called "entropy."  The entropy of a system is a description of that system's ability to do useful work.  In other words, it is a description of non-equilibrium or non-homogeny.  For example, consider two boxes A and B.  Both boxes contain gas molecules.  The molecules in box B are hotter and therefore move faster.  If allowed to mix, the disequilibrium creates a gradient that can be used to perform useful work.  For example, the motion of the gas from box B to box A could be used to turn a fan and create electrical energy.  However, when equilibrium is reached, the fan will no longer turn.  At equilibrium, the entropy of this system is said to be at it's maximum.  Statistically, it is possible for the gas molecules, by some random chance coincidence, to happen to bounce around just right so that they all end up back in box B, turning the fan as they go.  This is in fact possible, but is it probable?  Entropy is therefore a description of work probability.  A drop of water from a fishbowl might organize its molecular energy so that it stands up and walks right out of the fish bowl and jumps down onto the table below.  This event is statistically possible but it is very improbable that the molecules in that particular drop of water would just happen to act together in such a fashion - according to the laws of entropy.

So, according to the law of entropy, all mindless natural changes tend toward equilibrium - or the lowest state of probable work potential.  How then do living things seem to buck the system?  Living systems strive to maintain disequilibrium or a low state of entropy.  Living systems move and work constantly without loosing the ability to work.  In fact they often increase their ability to work the more that they work.  Does this not go directly against a fundamental law of nature?  It would seems that they do except for the fact that the work done by living things comes at an entropic cost to the surrounding environment or "system."  The entropy of the universe increases every time you scratch your ear or blink your eyes.  However, when a living thing dies, it no longer maintains itself in disequilibrium.  It can no longer buck the law of entropy.  The building blocks of the living system immediately begin to fall back into equilibrium with each other to form a homogenous ooze.  Living systems are fairly unique in that they are consistently able to take this same homogenized ooze and use it to form nonhomogenized systems capable of work.  How do living systems do this?  They are programmed to do this with a pre-existing code of information much like computers are programmed to buck entropy.    

Computers create non-homogeny just like living systems do.  They create order out of apparent chaos.  They can be programmed to organize disordered (homogenized) building blocks so that they will have a working function.  Of course there are many different types of workable systems that could be created given a particular set of building blocks.  The same building blocks could be used to build a house or a car.  Computers do not know this however.  They are programmed to use the building blocks to build only what they are told to build.  The same is true for living systems.  Living things build only what their DNA tells them to build.  The fact is that the same basic building blocks are used in all living things, but the individual cell only knows what its DNA tells it.  Once specialized, a single cell in the toe of a turtle only knows how to use the building blocks to make turtle toe parts. The question of course is, can computers or living things build ordered systems that go uniquely beyond or outside of their original programming? 

No one questions the idea that change happens.  Change is obvious. However, can a mindless natural law process that always tends toward equilibrium end up working against itself by contributing to the establishment of new and unique ways of reducing equilibrium?  Is there any known natural law process that would upgrade a computer's software and or hardware outside of intelligent human creativity?  We do know that the genetic make-up (software) of all creatures does in fact “change.”  The "software" programs of living things do in fact change. How does this happen?  These changes are surprisingly not part of the software package itself.  These changes are apparent accidents.  They are not based on the normal functions of life, but in the normal functions of natural law.  These natural law changes are referred to as "random mutations" in the software of living things.  If allowed to continue unchecked, these mutations tend toward non-functional homogeny.  By themselves, these mutations can in fact increase the specified order or functional complexity of the software package - but only in the most limited way.  In the same way a few molecules of water in a river may run uphill for a while, but not for very long and not in any significant way. Why is this?  Because they follow the natural law of entropy.  Mutations in any system generally tend toward random homogeny, disorder, nonfunction, or an inability to work.  Rarely one or two mutations may happen to come across a new and beneficial function of increasing complexity - but always these new functions are from the lowest levels of functional complexity.  For example, although very simple functions like antibiotic resistance and even the evolution of unique single protein enzymes (like the lactase or nylonase enzymes) have been shown to evolve in real time, no function on the higher level of a multi-protein system where each protein works together at the same time in a specified orientation to the other proteins has been observed to evolve.  Such multi-protein part systems are everywhere, to include such systems as bacterial motility systems (like the flagellum) and yet not one of them has been observed to evolve - period.  Just like the drop of water walking out of the fish bowl, it is statistically possible for hypermutation to create new and amazing systems of function of very high complexity, but it just never happens beyond the lowest levels of functional complexity.  Hypermutation follows the laws of increasing entropy just like the gas molecules in boxes A and B until equilibrium is reached.  Death is the ultimate end of hypermutation.  No living thing can tolerate hypermutation for very long.

   But, natural selection is supposed to come to the rescue - but does it?  Natural selection is a process where nature selects those software changes that produce more durable and reproducible hardware given a particular environment and discards the ones that do not.  In this way, the random mutations that would otherwise lead to homogeny are manipulated by the guiding force of natural selection toward a diversity of functions that go farther and still farther away from homogeny.  Natural selection is supposed to be an amazing power.  It is supposed to be able to subvert a fundamental law of nature by turning meaningless non-working, non-functional, homogenous ooze into more and still more diversely working systems.  How does natural selection do this?  Natural selection is said to rely on statistical probability.  For example, lets say that only one out of a million random software changes or mutations is beneficial.  If this benefit is detectable by nature, or any other selecting force, then things can be improved over time.  The statistics of random chance, when combined with a selective force, are bent in favor of higher order instead of disorder.  The question then arises, if natural selection works so well for the improvement of the software of living things, then why not use it to improve computer software as well?  This question does seem reasonable since both kinds of systems us a similar coded language.  If natural selection works with one alphabet, it should just as easily be able to work with the other alphabet.  And yet, this has not happened with either computers or the "software" of living things beyond the lowest levels of functional complexity.  Why not? 

It turns out that natural selection cannot read the coded language of computers or living things.  Natural selection does not see the alphabets of either system.  Natural selection is only capable of selecting hardware changes or changes in hardware function.  But isn't hardware function based in the software and wouldn't changes to the software change hardware function?  Yes and no.  Hardware function is completely based in the software, but this basis is dependent upon a specified arrangement of parts.  Not all arrangements will have the same function, much less any beneficial function at all.  Sometimes the functional meaning of a particular part is quite arbitrary - just as the meaning of a word is arbitrarily attached to a series of symbols called letters.  Without this arbitrary attachment, the letters themselves mean nothing and have no function.  The same is true for bit and bytes in a computer and for the genetic code in living things.  So, if the symbols change or get mutated to something that does not have a meaning or a function arbitrarily attached to them, then there is no recognized function.  There is no expressed phenotype.  Without a phenotype, they are invisible to the process of natural selection.  All subsequent changes to their underlying code are "neutral" and from here on out are dependent upon laws of random chance alone.  This always leads to lifeless homogeny.  So, what are the odds that random chance will buck the law of increasing entropy and "work"?  What are the odds that the drop of water will dance out of the fish bowl?

Still not convinced?  Lets take a closer look into the languages of computers and living things.  Computer language is set up using a system of “bits” and “bytes.”  A bit is either a zero or a one.  Eight bits in a series is a byte.  For example, the series 10101010 is a byte.  If a bit is comparable to a letter in the English language, then a byte is comparable to a word.  The computer assigns various meanings to the “byte words.”  This assignment of meaning or function is arbitrary, as it is in any symbolic language (and as it was with the Lenski experiment where various functions were arbitrarily defined as being "beneficial").  The same thing happens with genetic words in living systems.  Therefore, a single byte could be assigned an alphanumeric “meaning” such as the letter “A.”  For a series of eight bits, there are 256 different possible combinations.  This means that a computer byte could represent up to 256 separate defined functions.  Each of these words would have to have a separate recognized definition in the computer’s arbitrary dictionary of words. 

The same is true for any living system.  Every genetic word in DNA has an arbitrary definition assigned to it by the “genetic code.”  However, instead of there being eight letters per defined word, the genetic code only recognizes three-letter words called “codons.” ¹  Since there are four genetic letters in DNA instead of only two in computer language, there could be up to 64 different defined codons in the genetic code.  In reality, the genetic code gives several codons the same definition so that there is some redundancy, but it does in fact have the capacity to recognize up to 64 different definitions. 

So, if a computer’s code gave a separate functional definition to each one of 256 possible bytes in its dictionary, a single change in any given byte would yield a detectable change in function.  If this change was a desired change, it could be kept while other changes could be discarded.  Evolution would be a simple and relatively quick process.  The problem is that a computer needs more than 256 separate functions and even the simplest living system needs far more than 64 separate functions.  How are these needs met?  What if multiple words are used to code for other unique definitions?  What if two bytes were joined together and given a completely unique definition by the computer?  How many possible functions would there be now?  There would be 65,536 different possible defined functions that could be recognized in the computer’s dictionary. 

This is in fact what happens.  Computer codes assign arbitrary meaning to multiple bytes.  Likewise, the DNA language of living systems is translated into another language of living systems called proteins.  The protein language is based on an alphabet of 20 letters called amino acids.¹  A protein is put together in linear order as dictated by a linear codon sequence in the DNA.  This protein can be very long, hundreds or even thousands of amino acid "letters" long and yet it is assigned an arbitrary meaning by the particular system that it "fits" in with.  Because of the vast number of possible proteins of a given length, not every protein has a defined or beneficial function in a given life form or system of function as it acts in a particular environment.  Of course, this means that not every change in DNA and therefore protein sequencing will result in a beneficial change in system function.  The same is true for computers.  Because of the combination of defined bytes in computer language, some of the possible bytes or byte combinations will not be defined as "beneficial".  If these happen to “evolve” by random mutation, they will not yield a change up the ladder of functional complexity.   

To illustrate this point consider that in living systems each of 64 codons code for one of only 20 amino acids.  We can now draw a parallel and imagine a computer where the 256 bytes each code for one of the 26 letters of the English alphabet, a space, and a period to make only 28 possible characters.  Now, lets imagine a computer that defines functions according to English words or phrases averaging 28 characters in length.  How many different functional definitions would be available to this computer?  The answer is quite huge at 3 x 10⁴⁰.  To help one understand this number, the human genome contains only about 35,000 genes.²  That means that to create a completely functional human, it takes less than 35,000 uniquely defined proteins.  This is on the very small side of what is possible for recognized proteins.  If a given function required just one protein averaging only 100 amino acids in length there would be 1 x 10¹³⁰ different potential proteins that could be used (That is a 1 with 130 zeros after it).  However, human “systems” only recognize the smallest fraction out of all these possibilities.  The same is true for computer systems. 

Lets say then that our computer recognizes 1,000,000 separate written commands of a level of function that averages 28 English characters in length.  Starting with one recognized command, how long would it take to “evolve” any other recognized command at that level of function if a unique command was tried each and every second?  You see the initial problem?  It is one of recognition.  If the one recognized word is changed, it will no longer be recognized.  It will be functionless.  Without recognized function, there is no guidance or driving force in any future word changes.  The changes from here on out are strictly dependent upon random chance alone (so called "neutral" evolution).  The statistics of random walk say that on average it would take 3 x 10²⁶ years or one hundred trillion trillion years to arrive at another word that is recognized or “functional.”  Without a functional pathway each and every step of the way, this neutral gap blocks the power of natural selection to select and therefore this gap blocks the change of one beneficial phrase into any other beneficial phrase of a particular level of complexity. 

So far, computers have not been able to evolve their own software beyond the most simple levels of function (as described above) without the help of intelligent design from computer scientists.  Computers are always dependent upon outside programming for any changes in function that go up the ladder of complexity beyond the lowest levels of functional complexity.  A computer, as of today, cannot evolve brand new software programs or do much of anything beyond its original programming.   Why?  Because, if the selector can only select based on function, then, as one moves up the ladder of functional complexity, the selector will soon be blinded by gaps of neutral changes in the underlying code which give the selector no clue that the changes have even taken place much less which changes are "better" or "worse" than any other "neutral" change.

I propose that the same problems hold true when it comes to Darwinian-style evolution in living things.  Nature can only select based on what it sees.  What nature sees is function - not the underlying language code or molecular symbols in the DNA itself.  The statistical gaps between the recognized words in a living system’s dictionary are huge.  The gaps are so huge that, to date, the best evolutionary evidence demonstrated in the lab describes changes separated by only one, two or possibly three amino acid "letter" changes.³  Without experiments or good statistical arguments to explain these problems, evolutionary theories are in serious trouble when they try to explain the existence of complex computer or biological functions that rise above the lowest rungs on the ladder of specified functional complexity. 

In the last days of human history, the majority is going to be wrong. They are going to fall prey to a false system of worship that is sponsored by the dragon himself. And it’s not going to be a small movement, because the Bible says that all the world wonders after the beast. So in light of that, what happens to God’s people?

Well, in the verse that comes just before the passage we read, those people, God’s people are described as a remnant, a smaller group that is persecuted by the dragon. And we are told they have some very specific characteristics that set them apart from other people. Just listen to this. The Bible says (Revelation 12:13-17):

“And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.”

In the last days, the Bible teaches that God’s people are going to stand by faith. Even though the whole world turns to lawlessness and rebellion, even though the imaginations of people’s hearts are wicked all the time like in Noah’s day, these people stand on the commandments of God, and more than that, they actually have the testimony of Jesus Christ. They have a message for the world.

Don’t forget that Noah didn’t just build boats. He was also a preacher of righteousness, a man with an important message for his time. And just like it happened back in Noah’s day, God’s last-day people, according to the book of Revelation, those people whose hearts belong entirely to God, they have a message for their time, which you find just a few verses later in Revelation 14. Listen carefully to how the Bible describes these last-day people of God and the message they share with the world. It says (Revelation 14:5-7):

“And in their mouth was found no deceit, for they are without fault before the throne of God. Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth—to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, ‘Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come. And worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.’”

As it was in the days of Noah, our world is getting more and more wicked with each passing day. But God doesn’t simply destroy this world without a warning, because that’s not how a God of love operates. Before he makes a move, he sends out a global invitation to return to the God of creation. He raises up a prophetic movement that knows exactly what is going to happen, and through that prophetic movement of God’s people, he warns the world and calls everyone to step inside the ark.

The parallels are absolutely amazing. And if this were a longer show, we could dissect this story for hours and hours, and compare it to the passages in the Bible that deal with last-day events. But in the time we have left, I want to underline one simple fact that you find as the story of Noah unfolds in the Book of Genesis--a simple detail that a lot of people miss when they read the story. Here it is in Genesis, chapter 7 (Genesis 7:7, 10):

“So Noah with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, went into the ark because of the waters of the flood. And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the floor were on the earth.”

You see, it didn’t rain the first day Noah went into the ark. Even though God ordered him inside and the door of the ark was sealed, it didn’t start raining for an entire week. Now try to imagine what that was like. For maybe 120 years, you preached that the flood was coming. And then, for a moment, all the evidence pointed your way because the animals came out of the woods on cue, and the Lord Himself closed the door of the ark. It was finally time for the prophecy to come true, and then nothing. Seven days of sitting in the ark with a bunch of smelly animals while the laughter outside got louder and louder.

I’m convinced that God put that detail in the story for our benefit, because God’s people are about to face a moment where all the evidence seems to point in the wrong direction. For a while we have a lot to point to, clear signs that we are on the right track. And then it all dries up for a short period and our faith is tested to the limit. Take a look at this passage found again in Revelation, chapter 13. It says (Revelation 13:11-13),

“Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon. And he exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence, and causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. He performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.”

As the final crisis comes to its peak, there is more visible support for the wrong side than the right side. A second beast shows up to support the first one, and he has the ability to bring fire down from heaven. In the Old Testament, in the showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Baal, the fire was falling on God’s altar. But now in the last days, God warns us that the fire is going to fall in the wrong place in the last moments. Our eyes are going to deceive us. The visible evidence is going to suggest that we may have been barking up the wrong tree.

But to surrender in those last moments would be a terrible mistake, because just when things couldn’t possibly get worse, just when the devil pulls out all the stops and does his best to destroy God’s people, that’s when Jesus will raise his nail-scarred hand and say, “Enough.” At that moment, He will lead the armies of heaven back to this earth and vindicate his people. Here’s how the Bible describes it in the Book of Revelation (Revelation 19:11-15):

“Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And he who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called the Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed him on white horses. Now out of his mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it he should strike the nations. And he himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of almighty God.”

What exactly is the sword that comes out of Jesus’ mouth? According to Hebrews 4 and Ephesians 6, the sword is the Word of God. And in the final moments, that’s what’s going to be important. It won’t matter what public opinion was. It won’t matter what your friends or coworkers said. What’s really going to matter is what God said.

Listen, I know it can be tough to live a genuine Christian life in this world. Especially when even well-meaning Christians seem to be losing their grip on the simple authority of God’s Word. That problem is only going to get worse. But the promise of God to you is this: If you stick with Him, you are going to see the day where your faith will be vindicated. It might take seven days, but on the eighth day, the rain will come. In the meantime, God says, you build your ark, you make plans to get on board, and then you invite as many as you can to take advantage of the cross of Christ before the final moment comes.

Maybe today your faith is faltering just a little bit. Maybe it’s been a while since you’ve seen evidence for the faith you have in the Bible. I’m here to tell you today that your faith will be vindicated—God will come through. So why don’t we pray together?

    In spite of being marred by transgression, nature still bears an eloquent testimony to the love and power of a Divine Creator. After resting under the heavy curses of sin for almost 6,000 years, the incredible beauty of God's handiwork continues to amaze and enthrall. When we thank God for our blessings, we should never forget to mention these incomparable natural wonders that add so much meaning to every moment of our lives.
    What would this planet be like without its restful carpet of living green grass and foliage God did not have to clothe the ugly, bare soil with such a covering. Functionally, there needed to be no bright colors. Human beings could have survived on a bleak planet of gray ground and colorless plants. But they could not have survived as happily. The Creator Himself was not only a lover of beauty; He loved His creatures so much that He wanted them to be happy, too. That's why He draped the earth with a half-million varieties of contrasting blossoms and leaves. And hidden inside each tiny bud, God placed secrets that would challenge the genius of earth's greatest scientists.
    How strange it is that so many of those who wrestle with these mysteries do not recognize the Creative Power that produced them. Even though many naturalists stand in awe of the creature, few seem to recognize and honor the Creator. Breathing the marvelous blend of nitrogen and oxygen that makes it possible for them to live, evolutionists refuse to acknowledge that the precise 79 percent to 21 percent mixture of gases was provided by something other than blind chance. Looking through eyes so delicately arranged that no combination of scientific genius can even understand, much less duplicate, their operation, unbelievers deny the miracle which makes it possible for them to see. Through ears, which connect to a brain more complex than the largest computer on earth, doubters listen to lectures on humanism and evolution.
    Who are these people who scorn the record of God's creative power They are only a tiny fragment of finite humanity, whose very existence, breath by breath, depends upon the operation of laws over which they have no control. Rejecting the divine origin of that for which they find no empirical evidence, many scientists ascribe miraculous qualities to matter itself. They build up theoretical creeds in which they place absolute faith, even to the point of believing that blind, unintelligent "nature" created life out of non-life.

TWO
Is Chance Precise and Predictable

    What kind of faith is required to believe that all the orderly processes of nature were produced by chance Almost every plant and animal exhibits amazing adaptations that can only be described as "miraculous." If these highly complex functions had no intelligent Creator or Designer, then our reasoning powers are staggered by the millions of "coincidences" that operate with infinite precision to produce perfect beauty, function, and reproduction on the earth.
    Could they indeed be the products of accident or chance Every law of science on the subject decrees that undirected, random nature tends toward deterioration rather than order. Surely the most persuasive evidence in favor of creationism is that of nature itself. The Bible suggests that the animals and earth should be asked about their own origin. In Job 12:7–9, we read: "But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this" Job says if you want to know how God operated in the work of creation, ask these various forms of life, ask the earth, and the earth will explain how mightily God has wrought in these things.
    So that's exactly what we're going to do right now. What does the earth have to say to us concerning the great power of God Did you know there are miracles in every square inch of this earth From the towering mountains to the vast, restless ocean and throughout the limitless universe of God, there is the throb and hum of life. From the microscopic to the immense, we can discover the fingerprints of the mighty Creator who brought all things into existence.
    When I look at the universe and see the amazing fact that it is in perfect balance, that life in this world has been perfectly adapted to the conditions we find here, I know that some great intelligent power is behind it, making it operate in such an accurate manner. The Genesis account of the Bible has been completely vindicated by all the findings of true science. The writings of Moses have been found to be scientifically as well as historically accurate. In this booklet, we're going to look at the water and land in particular. By studying the mysteries of land and sea, we will see how wonderfully they support the biblical story of creation.

THREE
How Did Moses Know

    Let's go back to Genesis and take a look at the story as God gave it to Moses. Genesis 1:6 says, "And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters that are under the firmament from the waters, which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day." Long, long ago the waters that were over the earth were actually right down here upon the surface. We know that there is a vast ocean in space, suspended in the atmosphere. We'll find out just what purpose it serves in a moment, but at one time that water was resting right here upon the earth. God divided it and lifted a part of it up into the heavens while part of it remained here.
    Now look at verses 9 and 10. "And God said, Let the water under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas: and God saw that it was good." How did Moses know there would be several oceans or seas He had absolutely no human way of knowing there could be more than one body of water in the entire world. He never went around to see how many oceans were in the world, but God inspired this truth in Moses' mind. He said there were seas or oceans.
    Here's another good question to ask. How did Moses know that all these various bodies of water would be connected and would rest in only one bed Now, isn't that what he said "Let all the waters be gathered into one place and let the dry land appear."
    In the next verse, he says there were seas or oceans. It is a scientific, geographical fact that all the oceans of the world are joined together, and they do all rest in a common bed. Moses could not have known that of himself. He didn't say this of dry land. No, it was divided up into continents. Part of it would be over here and another big, discrete mass of it would be in another location. But concerning the waters, he said it would all be in one place, and yet it would be divided into oceans. I think it's tremendous that the Bible is so scientifically accurate as to reveal these things.

FOUR
Watering the Earth—God's Miracle

    Now let's see how intelligence and design came into the ratio of land and water. One-quarter of the earth's surface is dry land, and three-quarters is covered with water. In the United States alone we have three and three-quarter million square miles of dry land, and all of it has to be watered and cared for. In fact, if it weren't watered, there would be no vegetation and no growing grass or trees.
    Just imagine for a moment that the ratio of land and water was changed from what it is at present. The proportion of water and land determines the rainfall on the earth. Suppose the ocean was only half its present size. That would mean our rainfall would only be one-quarter of what we now receive. What would that mean for the three and three-quarter million square miles of land we have in these United States All of it would be turned into a vast, dry desert! But on the other hand, if half the present land were added to the ocean, there would be four times as much rainfall as there is now, and the entire United States would be turned into a vast marshland where human life would be almost impossible. Now suppose that mankind had to water this entire three and three-quarter million square miles of land. How could we ever spread out that water and irrigate the land effectively What a tremendous task that would be! "There's plenty of water in the ocean," someone might observe, "we could simply use it to water the dry land." Although it may sound reasonable, there are three problems connected with it. First, transportation. We'd have to get the water out of the ocean and spread it evenly over the land. The second problem is the salt it contains, which would kill all the green plants. The third problem is weight. Water is 800 times the weight of the atmosphere, presenting the challenge of how to transport and disperse it.

FIVE
God Solves the Weight Problem

    How has God solved the weight problem First, He uses heat. We know heat expands things and cold contracts them, and that water is the material most subject to expansion. In fact, when turned into steam, it becomes 1,600 to 1,700 times its original volume. Remember, though, this water is 800 times heavier than the atmosphere. But God simply sends down the warming rays of the sun, turning the water into a vapor that is 900 times lighter than water. Now it is one-eighth times lighter than the atmosphere. So this vapor is easily lifted up out of the ocean, carried into the sky—perhaps miles into the air—and formed into great cloud masses.
    The second problem is deadly salt, but God simply evaporates the water and leaves all the mineral deposits and impurities behind. Taken up into the clouds, the water is sweet and soft, perfectly adapted to irrigate the earth.

SIX
No Sprinkler System Like This

    What about the third problem—transportation The water that is lifted up is still hanging over the ocean, which doesn't need any more water. God sends along winds to blow the clouds and spread them out over the dry land area where it is needed. But how to get all the water down out of the clouds Here is another wonderful miracle. Cold will contract, of course, so when the clouds pass over the mountain peaks, the cold air reaches up and begins to cool those clouds, turning the vapor into a condensation of moisture.
    Now consider what would happen if the clouds gave up all the water they contain at one time—it would flood the entire surface of the earth with three feet of water! Therefore, the cooling process must be gradual. For example, if the temperature of the cloud is lowered by 9 degrees, it will drop half its water! So God arranges for a gradual cooling process to let the rain come down in gentle to vigorous showers to provide the amounts needed to revive the earth. What an incredible process! Of course, some of it rains back into the ocean, but it is needed there to provide the necessary amount of oxygen for fish living in salty ocean beds.
    Did you know that these great facts of nature were all known and understood long before the scientists and naturalists discovered them Ecclesiastes 1:7 is a most interesting verse. "All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full." Why not The text continues to give the answer. "Unto the place from whence the river comes, thither they return again."
    The Bible says the reason the seas do not overflow is that the water is taken up again and returned to where the rivers come from. And so there is a constant movement of water going up from the ocean in vapor form, carried as clouds over the land, and brought down again as rain, which forms rivulets that find their way back to the sea. Even though the great naturalists felt they had made a new discovery when they found out about the cycles of clouds, they could have known it all by reading the Scriptures.

SEVEN
Why Clouds Don't Break

    Another text with scientific information is Job 26:8. "He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; and the cloud is not rent under them." This is a beautiful text, explaining that the clouds don't break and spill all their water at once, even though millions of tons of water are drawn up from the oceans into the clouds. And, of course, Job was correct. We've just found that God has a process of gradual cooling that releases the water little by little as it is needed to irrigate the surface of the earth. God revealed it to Job long before mankind figured it out.
    I'm sure all of us know that water has weight, and that its pressure increases dramatically as the depth increases. Certain fish that exist in the very bottom of the ocean are especially engineered by God to withstand this tremendous pressure. If brought quickly up to the surface, they practically explode. The pressure that God put into their muscular structure is still there on the inside when they are brought up where the pressure is not exerted from the outside.
    This is a wonderful fact, but do you realize that we, too, live in the bottom of an atmospheric sea, which also has tremendous weight At sea level we are living down at the bottom of a very heavy, dense covering. As the ocean is to the fish, so the atmosphere is to us. Every moment we live, a pressure of 14 pounds per square inch is exerted upon our body structure, and that's pretty heavy. We think a man is strong if he can carry 200 pounds on his back. In fact, the strongest man that ever lived put only 415 pounds over his head. Yet, every single form of life in this world, whether it's a 90-pound woman or a burly man, has a constant pressure of over 15 tons at sea level pushing and pressing upon them from every direction. That's 30,000 pounds!     Even the filmy, gauzy insects have been designed by God to withstand their proportion of this pressure. That little gnat, so light and frail that it seems anything could crush it, is built by God to withstand the weight of the atmosphere. Can you think this happened by mere chance Consider Job 28:25. "To make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure." The Bible says the wind has weight.
    The air, in other words, is heavy. The atmosphere has weight. If you climb a mountain, the higher you climb, the thinner the atmosphere becomes, and you feel distressed and uncomfortable. Why Because the pressure is not as great. You see, God has built in a certain amount of pressure that balances that on the outside at sea level. If you went high enough, you would be just as stressed as the fish brought up from the ocean depths. How wonderful that God has designed each living creature to be perfectly comfortable in its own environment.

EIGHT
Lucky Accident or Design

    Now consider another, even greater, miracle. The atmosphere around us is made up of two main ingredients—nitrogen and oxygen—whose mixture is always the same, whether at the highest mountaintops or in the deepest caves. The perfect balance is 79 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen. You might ask, "Why is it this way" Is there some particular reason for it Is it important that we have this exact mixture of nitrogen and oxygen" Yes, I can assure you it is most important. If the nitrogen were increased, our life processes would slow down and we would die. If the oxygenwere measurably increased, our life processes would be rapidly increased. Our pulse rate would just run away and soon we would wear out and die. But God made it just right.
    Suppose, for example, it was two-thirds nitrogen and one-third oxygen. If that proportion prevailed, and an electrical reaction caused the elements to combine, do you realize that the whole world would be turned into laughing maniacs Everybody would be laughing because that would produce the laughing gas, N₂O, the same kind dentists sometimes use when extracting teeth. Or suppose it was divided half and half. That would produce nitric oxide, which is quickly fatal to all forms of life.
    Was it just a lucky accident that it came out like this Did some blind happenstance of nature produce this exact mixture that is necessary for life support Or was there an intelligent design This world would become chaotic if this atmospheric mixture slipped out of control for just a single instant. We would see one of the most tremendous of all explosions, because nitrogen is the basic component of gunpowder; and oxygen, of course, makes for rapid combustion. It would be "Goodbye, world!"
    And yet some day, apparently, there is going to an explosion like this. Some day the elements are going to melt with fervent heat, the Bible says. Peter tells us in 2 Peter 3:10 that "the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat." I don't know how God will arrange that, but I do know that some great fire one of these days is going to burn, and the earth will be purified by this strange fire of God. And the elements will be involved in it because the elements are going to melt. Maybe God is going to change just very, very slightly the present proportion of nitrogen and oxygen, causing this great conflagration to take place. I do know this—we must be ready for that day when it comes. The Bible indicates it is near at hand.
    Another of the mysteries of nature was described in the Bible long before it was investigated by science. We read about it in Job 38:8–11. "Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it, And brake up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed"
    What beautiful, poetic language we find here to describe the creation of the ocean. It speaks of it as being born and coming forth from the womb. God says that the cloud was the garment of it and a thick darkness was a swaddling band placed around the ocean at its birth. But then God added, "Here ye may come but no further; here shall thy proud waves be stayed."
    The scientists of this world have been amazed in learning the secrets of the tidal actions. They still don't understand all the deep, underwater cataclysmic actions that affect the tides and wave patterns. No naturalist on the face of the earth has figured out all the secrets of these swift tidal waves as they move to and fro in their own mysterious ways.

NINE
God's Heating System—The Gulf Stream

    By the way, these tides and movements of water have been in perfect balance to contribute to mankind's comfort. I think of the mighty Gulf Stream, for instance. We don't know everything about it, but we do know life in the United States would be almost impossible were it not for the fantastic influence of this great stream. It comes out of the Gulf of Mexico, goes along the eastern seaboard, and up into the northern sections of the world. It is like a river, flowing through the midst of the sea, and can be seen distinctly from high above because of its different color.
    In fact, this river is about 70 miles wide and nearly 3,000 feet deep. When it leaves the Gulf of Mexico, the water temperature is 840, and off the coast of the Carolinas it is still a warm 800. This warming influence actually makes the northern coastal regions of America and Europe inhabitable; otherwise, they would be frozen wastelands.
    Now notice what happens as this warm river reaches the entrance of the Arctic region at Baffin Bay, where it meets a frigid polar stream that is rushing southward. As a result of the titanic collision of these two giants, the polar stream is forced to dive down thousands of feet, where it continues its southward course, coming up finally in the West Indies during their hottest season, thus cooling down the terrible tropical heat. The Gulf Stream gets deflected eastward, going up along the British Isles, making these habitable.
    It was in God's plan for this to happen. I don't believe for a moment that all this happened by chance or accident. Without that deflection of the Gulf Stream, some of those northern lands would be locked in eternal winter. Surely God was behind the entire plan.

TEN
Goggles and Bifocals

    Let's hurry along now and take a quick look at the creatures of nature and see how intelligence and design came into the picture. Think for a moment of the fish that inhabit the oceans. They are constantly subject to attack from their enemies from above—like the gulls that swoop down to make their meals off marine life. Do you know that fish have specially constructed eyeballs enabling them to look almost instantly in any and all directions They see behind, below, above and on the sides; furthermore, their eyes are designed to take into account the refraction of light.
    Yes, fish can see 30 percent farther than other visual instruments because God designed the eyeball of the fish to take into consideration the refraction of light. We tend to think it's a wonderful accomplishment when the oculist manufactures special goggles for divers that compensate for refraction in the water, yet God did it for fish long before. Goggles could never have come into existence by chance, yet evolutionists contend that a fish's specialized eyeballs just happened.
    In the waters of Malaya lives a fish with bifocal lenses built right in its eyes. This little sardine-sized fish is prized for food by the seagulls especially. They are constantly swooping down to gobble up this little fish if they can. So the little fish has to watch carefully for this approaching danger. It must have good far vision, but since it feeds on the microscopic larvae that abound in the water, it must have very good near vision as well. And do you know the Creator provided a little membrane that comes halfway up on its eyes, giving it bifocal vision That little fish can look up and see the gulls coming or look down and see those nearby bits of life that it can feed on!
    We think it wonderful that the skilled optometrist and oculist can perfect glasses permitting us to see near and far away, yet here is a fish that has been around for thousands of years—and God made it that way from the beginning. It did not just develop blindly; it had to be created. Intelligent design was behind it.

ELEVEN
Birds and Bees

    Now let's examine two Pacific coast water birds. I can find no stronger evidence of design in nature than with the Ousel, a very friendly little bird that lives near mountain streams. It can usually be found where the water is swift-flowing and splashy. This buoyant bird will be floating along, apparently weightless, and then suddenly sink to the bottom like a piece of lead. There he walks around picking up bits of food on the streambed. After taking his fill, he goes over to the bank, shakes himself, and mysteriously sets himself afloat again like a wisp of smoke.
    It has been discovered that this strange bird has some special equipment—a muscular apparatus that can instantly exhaust every bit of air from its body, letting it sink down; then when it walks out, it can take in air again and float off once more. Now, that's special creation, isn't it The evolutionists would say, "Well, it needed to have this bit of apparatus, so nature provided it." Of course, they don't say what nature is, but maintain that it just grew by some accidental development. The truth is that God provided it. He made this particular bird as He did because He saw that it needed this for survival.
    Another kind of bird found on the Pacific coast lives on a diet of large worms that live in holes in the sand. Because this worm is down at the very bottom of its hole, the bird must go down to get the worm out. It so happens that, although its beak is exactly the right length to reach into the hole, the narrow hole keeps the beak squeezed shut. What a predicament—to be able to see and reach a luscious worm but not be able to open his beak to pick it up! Do you know what God arranged for this particular bird He created a tiny flap much like a surgeon's forceps at the bottom of the beak. With this special organ the bird can pick up the worm, back out of the hole, and gobble it down!
    Isn't it wonderful that God thought of a little bird and made something special so it could get its food conveniently If He so loves the little birds and provides the things to make their existence comfortable, don't you think He's willing to provide everything that we might need He loves us even more. Remember, He knows when the sparrows fall.
    Some years ago, a scientific magazine published an article by a clever biologist who did not believe in evolution. In Evolution Goes to Pieces on a Bee's Knee, the author first reviewed the evolutionist's teaching that when the need for a certain organ develops in any creature, the organ is produced in response to that need. Nature itself, or some blind chance, supposedly comes along and produces the necessary organ to fit the creature for survival. Then he cited the example of the bees. When bees crawl into pollen-filled blossoms, their breathing apparatus gets all stopped up with pollen. In fact, they can't even breathe while they are inside gathering their pollen.
    Now it so happens that every bee has a special brush located on its knees—a stiff brush—that it uses to clean out its breathing apparatus when it comes out of the flower so it doesn't suffocate. This biologist noted that if it were true that these insects develop special equipment in response to a need, the very first bee to exist did not have those brushes on its knees. When it went into the flower, it would have suffocated; consequently, the whole bee family would have become extinct right then and there. No, rather than these brushes developing slowly through the ages in response to a need, they were provided by God to meet the need and save the very first bee that was made.
    The conclusion is that God anticipated the needs of His creatures and made them with every necessary apparatus. How thankful we ought to be that God can supply all our needs in advance. The Bible says the fool hath said in his heart, "There is no God." Only a God of love and power could have made the marvels we see about us. And if He cares for the tiny animal world, He cares for us, too. He loves us even more than He loves that little bird out on the West Coast, and He wants to save us. He wants to take us at last to a place where nature will be in perfect balance again and where all of the curse of sin will be forever removed.

TWELVE
And He Loves Me

    Can we doubt the love of God, who makes such infinite provision for everything He created Nothing has been left alone to suffer extinction or deprivation. Only man's bungling interference with the delicate balance of nature has brought sorrow and tragedy. If God cares for the needs of the tiniest cell of the smallest plant or animal, don't you think He loves us enough to care for us
    One of the most thrilling facts I learned about the miracles of nature concerned the lowly cocklebur. Surely it is one of the most despised of all plants due to its clinging, pricking nature. Yet consider the marvel of its reproduction. Every pod of the cocklebur has two seeds inside to guarantee its survival. But during the first year only one of the seeds will begin to grow. The other seed waits till the second year to start growing in order to perpetuate two seasons of growth. But if something happens to the first seed so that it does not grow and produce, the second seed begins to grow immediately instead of waiting for the next year. What built-in wisdom of God communicates to that waiting seed that it should begin to grow when the first seed is destroyed No evolutionist has been able to harmonize miracles like this with their theories of naturalism and chance.
    Surely we can see that God's care extends to the meanest and lowest order of growing things. Are we not more precious to Him than the cockleburs If He works miracles to safeguard a clinging, contrary cocklebur, will He not guide the ways of those for whom He gave His life May God open our eyes to the wonder and wisdom of His great work of creation. Tonight when you kneel to pray, remember to thank God for the landscape of beauty that always lies beyond the manmade mess of human obstruction.

Chapter 1   Faithful Paradox

     For me, the controversy raging over the display of the 10 Commandments is not really about legality or the constitution. No. It really seems to be all about irony.
     As the news reported daily of this battle, I soon began to wonder if anyone else was finding the whole thing paradoxical. As this huge outcry for for the 10 Commandments to be displayed in schools, courthouses, and in other public places reached a feverish pitch in Internet chat rooms, on talk-radio shows, and in newsmagazines, I understood that most Christian churches in the country still teach that all or a part of them were nailed to the cross. (A belief that teaches the Commandments and/or their penalties are no longer in force for Christians.)
     Proponents of that stance say that America should have them on display because they are a part of our Judeo-Christian heritage, even as they also say that Christ did away with the Commandments when He died. In fact, some also say He left just two new commandments with which believers should concern themselves.
     Yet this is confusing: If the Commandments are no longer in effect, why are they, as Christians and Americans, trying to force them on every other citizen by displaying them as a government-sanctioned artifact Also, if Jesus did away with them, can they really be part of a common Judeo-Christian heritage Wouldn’t the most correct course of action be to post the two new covenant commandments of Jesus for a Christian nation
     On the other hand, if the 10 Commandments were so important to this nation’s Founding Fathers, why should we not be compelled to obey them implicitly—every one of them, with or without the benefits of grace—if America is to return to its glorious roots If the Founding Fathers established this nation on the pillar of the 10 Commandments, might they have reasonably expected them to be followed to the letter by likeminded Christian citizens

Chapter 2   America’s Purpose

     Some might label me unpatriotic because I feel it necessary to point out a fundamental flaw in the reasoning of the many Christians who want to see the 10 Commandments displayed in government institutions. Although my purpose is not to argue the details of why this nation was founded, I do believe that the United States plays a pivotal and wonderful role in God’s plan of salvation. As such, I love this nation as the gift from God that it is. My heart always soars with joy when I hear our national anthem.
     Yet whether or not “Christian” leaders established this country as a “Christian” nation is not the issue. Of course, the ideals of Christianity and Judaism should be the moral compass that guides the hearts of our leaders. Christianity offers freedom to every human being, just as the United States has a strong record of fighting for freedom throughout the world.
     However, I don’t think America is responsible for spreading God’s end-time message to the world. Rather, America is here to protect His church, so she can take the gospel to every people and nation. I believe this is why America has acquired such undisputable power, unprecedented in the history of the world. Its economical and political influence protects God’s last-day church from tyrant governments and unwanted political intervention, enabling it to freely spread the good news to people all around the world. God would surely bless such a nation.
     Some Christians boldly claim that they want the Commandments displayed as a way to get God back into America, in addition to prayer in schools and in Congress. But is that really safe Is the government the right power to tell us what is right and wrong morally Surely we are blessed that our laws reflect the basic principles of God’s Commandments; that’s a very real comfort to even non-Christians. But by separating church and state, we are assured that no religious power will have the authority to override the conscience of those who might believe otherwise, suppressing the religious beliefs of another church. Yet well-meaning but misguided Christians who want to smash the wall of separation of church and state will turn the blessings of this country on their head and lead America into a terrible disaster.

Chapter 3   The Heart of the Matter

     Frankly, this nation hasn’t lost its way because the government or strident humanists seek separation of church and state, forbidding the government display of Commandments; it’s lost its way because more and more of her people’s hearts are seeking separation from God in their everyday living. It’s not secular government that’s sending this nation down the sewer of moral decay; it’s secularized hearts!
     Make no mistake; everything about the 10 Commandments speaks of religion. It just cannot be displayed as mere history, because any person who sees it, Christian or heathen, will understand its towering religious significance. It is so powerful that an atheist will feel its influence in a chamber of justice on the other side of the building and truly believe he has no fair shot because of his or her beliefs. And Christians need to understand this about God’s law: It is not just a statue to display in public, like a costume from a famous movie. It affects everybody’s lives, even the unbelievers’, whether they want it to or not.
     Likewise, every Christian acknowledges that the Commandments come directly from the hand of God. “And he gave unto Moses … two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God” (Exodus 31:18). They are religious laws, period. The government of man has no real power or mandate to enforce them—they are enforced solely by God’s omnipresence, universal power, and wisdom. And yet far too many Christians are secularizing their own hearts to God’s Commandments, believing the government plays a part in the task He has given to each individual. We should not attempt to use the government to spread God’s message—we should be using our own voices and the example of our lives. What example Reflecting the spirit of the 10 Commandments.
     So as some clamor about the separation of church and state, they still yet deny with their hearts and mouths the ultimate authority of God’s law. They lift up the Commandments without any intention of honoring them completely—the very definition of a form of godliness without power.
     Shouldn’t Christians in this country be more concerned about obeying those Commandments than making them a historical display on the walls in our halls of justice Shouldn’t we stop treating God’s law as an idol of government, but instead as the living, fulfilled testimony of Jesus Christ
     The answer to these questions is yes, yes, yes! And here is why.

Chapter 4   Indisputable Facts About the 10 Commandments

     Any healthy debate among Christians about God’s law must begin with how God Himself defines the terms. Without this step, it’s impossible to find a biblical consensus. Yet by letting God define our terms in this discussion, it won’t take long to realize that the evidence compelling us to obey His Commandments today, in the new covenant faith, is overwhelming.
     Here are 10 indisputable facts, or definitions, about the 10 Commandments from the Old and New Testaments—two witnesses, or dictionaries, of God’s message to humanity.

Chapter 5   Why the 10 Commandments Came First

     Most if not all highways in the country have speed limits posted to warn drivers of the laws governing traffic in their jurisdiction. These speed limit signs tend to be very specific. Drivers are repeatedly warned that exceeding 70 mph on the highway is a violation of the law, and if caught, they will be subject to fees and other penalties.
     Now imagine if after several years, even as new drivers are getting licenses, the government begins to take down these very specific signs and replace them with “Drive Safely” signs.
     Here’s how it could happen: Drivers have been complaining for years that traffic laws are too confusing to understand and too restrictive to obey, though they are truly inspired when a new governor issues a proclamation saying, “Very specific traffic laws are a reflection of an even greater traffic law: drive safely.”
     Years later, a new government decides the governor really meant that imposing specific speed limits is impossible for the average citizen today to reasonably obey while trying to get to work, get their kids to soccer games, and other everyday realities. (Even advanced safety features in cars seemed to make those laws archaic.) So they replace 70 mph speed limits with the “Drive Safely” signs and remove the penalties for exceeding them. Right below the new sign, they post, “Suggest 70 mph,” because most traffic engineers agree that 70 mph is the safest limit.
     What happens Some drivers believe 70 mph is in fact the safest, but others think safety is reasonably possible at 85 mph. Still others think that getting there faster is more important, and without having to worry about fees, they travel at speeds of 100 mph or faster! (Perhaps worse yet, some believe 20 mph is safest—as much as keeping in the left lane at all times.) In short, chaos rules the highways! More people actually die, and everyone fears for their lives.
     That might be silly to imagine, but that is how Christians today are treating the 10 Commandments, a very specific set of rules based on two greater laws. Jesus said, “ ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ ” (Matthew 22:37–39).
     If He had stopped there, I would understand a little more how someone could believe the Commandments were no longer an issue. But He didn’t stop there, and I think He added His next statement to ensure no one would deny the laws’ eternal purpose. He says, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
     The specific speed limits hang on the greater commandment of drive safely, and without them a “Drive Safely” law would be useless to govern people. Anarchy would prevail! Why Because humans can’t be trusted to figure out right and wrong in our selfish conditions. To paraphrase one modern-day philosopher, “Why are people who go faster than us dangerous and those who go slower than us annoying” Right would always be what we wanted, and wrong would always be what we did not want. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but the ends are the ways of death” (Proverbs 14:12).
     Let’s reverse the scenario. What would have happened if God instead issued the two great commandments to Moses on the mountain without offering the 10 Commandments The Bible tells us: “He that trusts in his own heart is a fool” (Proverbs 28:26). The world, influenced by sinful hearts and the deceptions of Satan, would quickly crumble. Sadly, much of the problem would be genuine believers foolishly thinking they could determine right and wrong without God’s explicit direction. In essence, it’s the same outcome if the 10 Commandments were ditched entirely for the two greater commandments.
     There is only one way to unify a group of believers from all different backgrounds and beliefs—one common creed. That creed is God’s plan for the universe, His Word, and that emphatically includes His 10 Commandments.
     Some well-meaning Christians also argue that the 10 Commandments should be displayed as “helpful suggestions,” and not laws that require penalty if broken. However, the problem is exactly the same! Without the danger of lawbreaking, and therefore the threat of a penalty, most people would freely violate the greater law. As mere guidelines, they are useless to create order—which is why the government will never remove specific speed limits. It is also why God has not done away with the 10 Commandments either. They still have a very legal and compelling interest in our lives.
     You can also look at it this way: If you break the law that forbids lying, you have broken both of the greatest commandments. How By lying, you cheat another human being. And you also show you have little faith that God can handle your crisis with truth.
     Can it be any clearer Break a 10 Commandment and you automatically break the greater commandments! This shows we are still under the obligation to keep the 10 Commandments, which are the two greater commandments in detail. (It also should be no surprise that Jesus in fact hung more details on the 10 Commandments, calling lust adultery and hate murder!)
     Many Christians utterly forsake God’s 10 Commandments but cleverly veil their disobedience behind these two great commandments. As such, men and women on their own define what it really means to commit adultery, what it really means to steal, what it really means to bear false witness, what it really means to honor the Sabbath, and what it really means to murder. Without the 10 very specific Commandments, it is much easier for “God’s people” to do terrible things in His name. It’s a slippery slope that can only be avoided by committing ourselves to His Commandments as recorded in the Holy Bible.
     Some Americans are concerned about the real threat of moral relativism—the notion that there are no moral absolutes—infecting the nation today. For example, euthanasia, legalizing illicit drugs, homosexual marriage, and abortion are the results of a people who have lost sight of God’s eternal principles. But by doing away with either the Commandments or the penalty surrounding them, they are far down the road to moral relativism, because they rely on humans feelings, and not God’s written law, to ensure morality.
     God wrote His Commandments, which are called eternal, for a reason: that there would be no doubt in our minds and hearts what it meant to obey Him.

Chapter 6   The Danger of Grace: Disobedience

     Now imagine if a country wants to export several varieties of their tasty fruit into the United States, yet for reasons of public safety, our government decides that poor health conditions in that country are too dangerous to permit it.
     So unable to legally transport their fruits into a willing-to-buy U.S. market, they begin to smuggle in their goods, and before long, their amazingly tasty food becomes a sensation.
     Unfortunately, the government’s refusal to legalize the imports shows real wisdom. Soon people start to get strange illnesses traced to the fruit, and some even begin to die. What’s worse, the fruit begins to infect genes and harm unborn babies.
     But strangely, the desire for the fruit continues to soar—people eat it ravenously despite the laws against it and the health effects. The government decides to take decisive action, and soon creates an amazing serum from a very rare blood type that sustains the lives of people who eat the fruit as long as they continue to inject the serum.
     To spread the word, the government offers the serum free of charge to anyone willing to take it. The only catch is that serum receivers are asked to evangelize about the dangers of this poisonous fruit. Even though the law still considers it illegal to buy, sell, or consume the fruit, they give a blind eye to those who spread the word.
     Sounds suspect, right Who in their right mind would willingly continue to eat the fruit knowing that it destroys their body and their children’s lives And most Americans who respect our laws would be outraged by such willing defiance and would not tolerate it.
     Unfortunately, these Americans treat God’s law the same way. Is it right to willingly eat the fruit even with the serum Of course not, but some Christians think that because we have a serum, called “grace,” our sins are covered in even willful disobedience. Does it really make sense to continue to sin because we have His grace God wants to blot out sins not only in our lives, but also from the universe—might we consider cooperating by committing to obedience
     We must remember that there is a very fine line between admitting that we cannot overcome sin on our own and willful disobedience. Someday, the former will lead to the latter if we do not trust our Lord’s promises that He can help us obey God’s law (Revelation 3:21). The amazing thing is that the Bible says if we cling to Jesus, we will have victory. So I think the real question should not be, “Why are the Commandments so hard to obey,” but rather “Why am I finding it so hard to trust God’s promise” Too often the phrase, “We can’t keep them,” really means, “God will forgive me anyhow.” That is presumption, and it is a dangerous game to play with the Almighty.
     That’s why one of the most passionate arguments fired against “Commandment keepers” is the same argument that convinces me that obeying them is really a matter of loyalty to Jesus. It’s been said that all we can do is believe, for we as sinful beings are unable to obey the law anyway.
     But this is really a chilling argument when you unfold its ultimate conclusion. It’s as if they are saying that all of those Bible verses about relying wholly on Jesus for salvation are actually saying we must instead be puppets possessed by Jesus. He must either overlook our sins with His blood or actually take over our bodies, choosing for us. But puppets don’t love Jesus, nor do puppets care or choose. Why should they If we are puppets, why care about the law at all—or even Jesus—who is the Commandments, the Word, in flesh
     Of course, the argument about simple belief is countered in the Bible. “You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble!” (James 2:19, emphasis added). Even the devil believes in the saving power of Jesus, but the Bible says he will not be saved. Which means it must require something that the devil and the demons don’t do!
     What could that be It’s acknowledging God by choosing to live the pure lives He meant for us. He wants His people to be active participants in His plan for their lives. This surely begins with belief, a crucial step. But it must not end there. What does faith really mean without commitment “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26)!
     Should we treat something He came to die for so carelessly Some say, “Even if I don’t want to sin, but do, it is covered under God’s blood.” Should we be so dispassionate and neglectful I think the heartfelt plea is, “I will commit my heart to God’s Commandments as a testimony of His grace in my life. Should I stumble, He will lift me up.” But if we don’t do our best, should we expect Jesus to continue paying the price
     The Word of God sums it up best as always: “Little children, let no man deceive you: he that does righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that continues in sin is of the devil; for the devil sins from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God does not continue in sin; for his seed remains in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God” (1 John 3:7–9).

Chapter 7   The Sabbath Conundrum

     There are some supporters for posting the 10 Commandments who do agree that obeying them is indeed a part of the Christian experience. But for many, this leads to another irony.
     If the government summons you to court at a certain time, it expects you to be there—not three days earlier or a day after. If it asks you to testify at a trial, it expects you to answer questions and not read a sports magazine. Neither does it want you to show up late or leave early. It also considers you in contempt of court, a lawbreaker, if you ignore the judge while he or she is trying to speak with you.
     I have no doubt that most sincere Christians citizens would be angered by such disrespect for the institution for justice, yet these same Christians do not respect God’s government regarding time with Him in His chamber. They don’t show up when asked, and if they do, it’s often on another day and they don’t do the things asked of them.
     Many Christians exclude the fourth Commandment from the other nine as a law meant only for the Jews. Others say that it is still a Commandment to obey, but one that Christians should practice on the first day of the week instead of the last day. Others still argue that it doesn’t matter what day, as long as time is given to God. Yet can you ever imagine finding a judge who orders a trial on Wednesday to accept: “I showed up on Thursday! As long as I show up, does it really matter” Of course, God will accept praise any day and time, and He will bless you for it. But this Commandment asks for your presence at a particular place and time!
     Why is it then that when a judge tells us to show up, we know we are breaking the law when we don’t and will suffer the penalty—but if the Judge of the universe asks us to show on a certain day, it’s really just our call By ignoring or altering the fourth Commandment, it is no longer a relevant part of the 10 Commandments as written in the Bible—the inspired Word of God. Indeed, if it can change on the whims of a person, why not the others But Jesus Himself emphatically said this would never be the case. “Think not that I come to destroy the law … but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17,18). He also said not one part of it would change, not even if the earth and its people passed into history. It’s for all time and for all creation! In addition, He said the wording of the law would never change (Luke 16:17), which is what exactly has to happen if we are to accept that the first day is the Sabbath. Can you imagine changing a court summons date and passing it off as lawful
     Many are surprised to hear that neither Jesus nor the New Testament writers ever tell Jewish converts to worship on the first day of the week. You might guess that many Jews would be put off by such a statement—after all, the Commandments are an essential part of their lives (their ancestors were stoned for not following it!) and they had heard with their own ears Jesus tell them to keep the Commandments. Public defenders would be outraged if a judge told them one day to be ready for trial on Thursday, then suddenly moved it to Wednesday to appease the prosecutors without telling the defense! Yet we hear about no such controversy regarding the Sabbath in the Bible.
     This becomes even more problematic when Paul puts a stop to the practice of circumcision, replacing the commitment, or altering it, with baptism (Colossians 2:11). His act of transforming the circumcision ceremony created a deep division in the church, yet we are to believe the transformation of the Sabbath did not Many claim the fact that Jesus doesn’t vocally reinforce the Sabbath in the New Testament proves, from silence, that He must have not considered it important. But since He did observe the Sabbath, and because we see no Jewish outcry, the argument from silence works best the other way around. Indeed, Jesus often mentions a Commandment to add more meaning to it. It isvery possible that the light on the Sabbath in the Bible is sufficient, so He saw no reason to mention it. Of course, Jesus does mention the Sabbath while defending it from legalists (Matthew 12:1–12), and He honored the Sabbath by going to the synagogue, as “was his custom” (Luke 4:16).
     Would you consider yourself loyal to the government if you didn’t show up to a trial where your testimony could convict a terrorist Why then would you consider yourself loyal to God if you failed to show up on a day He specifically asks of you

Chapter 8   Legalism: The Real Danger

     You wouldn’t call a police officer a legalist if he or she gave a motorist a ticket for going the posted speed limit in a blizzard. Some traffic laws might even seem strange, yet we know deep down there is a reason for them: public safety. Somehow, somewhere, somebody died or was injured, and the law was put in place. (Likewise, the details of the fourth Commandment might seem strange, we might not understand them completely, but it is a law from God.)
     Yet Christians who proclaim the importance of obeying all of the Commandments are often called legalists. And even before the discussion about grace can begin, they are said not to understand grace and are labeled Pharisees. The debate ends, and the confusing rhetoric provides more heat than light.
     Still, this is an important concern, because the Pharisees treated God’s law in such a way that changed its nature, and Jesus rebuked them for it. They added religious pomp and circumstance to not only gain favor or merit with God (in fact, they really seemed to merit favor with people), but also to control the religion itself and His people (Matthew 23:15).
     But the Jews, or even Jesus, never questioned the Pharisees’ zeal for the 10 Commandments themselves, only that they had altered their purpose; loyalty to God’s law was a must for any Jew. In fact, Jesus told His followers that the standards set by the Pharisees was in fact too low to enable human access to heaven (Matthew 5:20).
     He told the Pharisees that their outward obedience to the Commandments did not hide the sins in their hearts. Our outward show of obedience to the Commandments cannot disguise from God the filthy rags we wear beneath our legalistic robes—God sees the filthy rags of lust, deceit, and murder in our hearts. Jesus said that how the Pharisees behaved was altogether different from their hearts, but that their outward behavior was, in fact, appropriate. In this sense they followed the letter of the law, but forsook its spirit (Matthew 23:27).
     The Pharisees changed God’s law from a measuring stick to show us our need of God’s empowering grace into works that could get us into heaven. But this is not a real representation of what God meant for the Jews, who were always to be saved by grace in Jesus Christ. The New Testament tells us that it wasn’t works that made Abraham righteous; it was his faith in God’s promises. If he didn’t believe that God would do as He promised, his obedience would have been for nothing. Yet his works are considered a sign of his faith. Had he no works, no obedience, would he be remembered as the “father of the faithful”
     Was the New Testament calling Abraham a legalist (James 2:21–22). No. It was calling him a Christian—an early version, perhaps, but still a trusting, obedient Christian.

Chapter 9   The Real Power of Grace

     God has given His people the power to rebuke immorality with His law, but we should place this charge in perspective. We should not force His law on anyone—nor should any government power. Our first cause is to convince others of their personal need of Jesus, and in doing so, teach them the judgment is coming quickly.
     Some believe that our relationship with God’s law changed with Jesus. But He came to cleanse us of our sins and give us the power to overcome them—not give us a free pass to sin more. Grace has always been God’s powerful gift, from Adam to the end of time. We should not take it for granted so easily, so cheaply.
     What sense would it be for Jesus to come and explain the purpose of the law, to keep it, to die because humans broke them, only to say that the laws were no longer in effect after His death The equation is simple: If there is no law, there is no sin. If there is no sin, there is no judgment needed. The final judgment, which all Christians believe in to some degree, makes it logically necessary to have a law! If Jesus did away with the law, at the very least those living today would not be sinners. But the Bible says we are sinners (Romans 3:23). We are all judged by a common standard; the righteous and the lost will be weighed by it. The difference: the righteous are thus because Jesus made them that way by His empowering grace.
     Sometimes I am told that I don’t understand grace because I choose to obey the Commandments as they are written. But my testimony is a life utterly transformed by God’s grace, which has in turn made me recognize the astounding beauty and necessity of God’s moral law. How could the Holy Spirit convict me of my desperate need to repent and accept God’s grace without His rules spelled out in detail It’s not a long-gone artifact of faith, but an eternal testament to God’s righteousness!
     Realizing that my sins had been washed away, my love for God blossomed (1 John 4:19). Yet the more I studied His Word, the more I saw that sin devastated God’s heart. It was an unavoidable conclusion. I didn’t want to hurt Him any longer, or treat His law so lackadaisically. Grace has not only made me clean before the Father, it has enabled me to honor His Commandments so long as I cling to Jesus and His promises.
     When we show God our real desire to stop sinning, real change begins. We experience true character-building—a real goal to reach for—a real purpose for living; something that grace without real responsibility won’t give us. (If you give a jobless person a job and a living wage, you will see real passion! But what happens when all you do is give money and walk away) And that is why I am so passionate for God. His law, His government, has given me purpose to live, to work, and to die for.
     God loves us. God has mercy. I count on that love and have faith in that mercy. I am aware of my sinful condition, but I have assurance that He is willing to forgive and that He will complete His work in me (Philippians 1:6). But I also believe He has a big problem with those who willfully defy His Commandments and pick and choose the details they will acknowledge. Can God allow someone into heaven who continues to recklessly defy Him I think God would never want us to conclude that we love Him so much that we won’t worry about keeping His Commandments.
     “So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty” (James 2:12).

Conclusion

     Thus, God-fearing Americans don’t need the government to enforce the 10 Commandments, or have schools with prayer time. For all their days, the Jews had posted His moral law everywhere, and yet they still disobeyed and their nation crumbled. They were lost because their hearts rejected His laws, not because they didn’t display them. That should tell us something: A plaque in a government hall doesn’t honor God; that method was tried, and it failed.
     Of course, there is a big difference between that and forbidding biblical teaching in the public domain; this is the real issue Christians should fight for. Ensuring religious liberty does not mean forbidding expressing our faith; sharing our faith is a Christian duty! Yet nor does religious liberty mean forcing the faith on someone who doesn’t want to hear it. It is a sad fact that God’s influence is dying in the land, but the government can’t fix that. Only God can through the agency of His church.
     Most Americans appreciate the safety and freedom afforded to a people living under the rule of law. By obeying the laws of our government, we contribute to the public peace. The laws of our government are a lot of “thou shall nots,” but very few people, only anarchists, grumble that they are restrictions. Why then do Christians, good Americans, treat God’s government as if it is currently void of the rule of law—as if He doesn’t expect future citizens of His kingdom to keep them Why do we grumble about keeping them, as if they were terrible If we keep them, to us they are a “law of liberty!”
     Instead of a Christian-governed nation, I believe there is an even a better way to promote peace, love, and Jesus in our country. Instead of raising an alarm when they are removed from government buildings, I believe we should hang the 10 Commandments in our own homes and on our hearts. If we honored them by our actions, it wouldn’t matter what the government did, because the hearts of unbelievers would be touched dramatically. Think of the stories of Joseph, Daniel, and of course our perfect example, God’s Commandment Keeper, Jesus. His life of love, grace, and perfection changed the course of history—no earthly government required.

We Can Believe In God

Jim once asked an atheist if he had ever wrestled, even for a few moments, with the thought that maybe God does exist.

"Absolutely!" the atheist said, to Jim's surprise. "Years ago when our first child was born I almost became a believer in God.

"As I looked down at that miniature-but-perfect little human being in the crib, as I watched the flexing of those tiny fingers and saw the dawning of recognition in those little eyes, I went through a period of several months during which I almost ceased to be an atheist. Looking at that child almost convinced me there had to be a God."

1. Everything Designed Has A Designer

The design of the human body demands the existence of a designer.

Have you ever pondered all that's involved in the simple act of seeing? Scientists tell us that the delicate engineering of the eye's cornea and lens make the most advanced camera seem like a child's toy by comparison. The tiny rods and cones in the eye change light into electro-chemical impulses through processes the most sophisticated laboratory can't reproduce. And brain cells transform these electrical impulses into the miracle of perception-something no high-tech computer can come close to doing.

Engineering, chemistry, information processing-all are involved every time we open our eyes. Charles Darwin once stated that the thought of the eye, and how it could possibly be produced by natural selection, made him ill. Here's why.

The human eye could not have evolved over long periods of time, because it is absolutely useless unless complete. The lens, which focuses light, would be useless without the retina, which senses light. And all the light received would serve no purpose without the nerve fibers which carry signals to the brain.

Vision involves a complete system of organs-all interrelated, all thoroughly designed. That's the way it is with the whole human body. Lungs and heart, nerves and muscles, all perform incredibly complicated tasks that depend on other incredibly complicated tasks. No wonder the Psalmist concluded that the human body speaks loud and clear of a wonderful Creator:

"I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."-Psalm 139:14. (Unless otherwise noted, all Scriptural texts in the DISCOVER guides are from the New International Version of the Bible [NIV].)

We don't have to go far to find the "works" of God. The evidence right in our own bodies points to an infinitely skillful designer.

If you were to mark ten coins from one to ten, place them in your pocket, shake them around, and then pull each one out and put it back in your pocket one by one, what is the likelihood you could do so in exact numerical sequence? By mathematical law you have only one chance in ten billion of taking them out in order from one to ten.

Now consider the chances of a stomach, brain, heart, lungs, arteries, veins, kidneys, ears, eyes, and teeth all developing together and beginning to function at the same moment in time. What is the most reasonable explanation for the design of the human body?

"Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness,' . . . SO GOD CREATED MAN IN HIS OWN IMAGE, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."-Genesis 1:26, 27.

The first man and woman could not just have happened. The Bible affirms that God designed us in His image. He is the great Engineering Intelligence who thought us up and brought us into being.

2. Everything Made Has A Maker

But evidence for God is not confined to the design of our bodies; it's also spread across the heavens.

Leave the lights of the city and go out into the country. Look up into the night sky. That milky cloud beyond the stars that we call the Milky Way is really a galaxy, or island universe, of billions of blazing suns similar to our sun. In fact our sun and its planets are a part of the Milky Way.

Now look at the Andromeda star group. See that hazy oval of light. Under a telescope it becomes another spiral galaxy, and like our Milky Way it is composed of billions of giant suns. Andromeda is but one of an estimated one hundred billion island universes that can be seen through giant telescopes. Astronomers tell us that some of these island universes are actually moving through each other at an incomprehensible speed, all perfectly balanced in space. Somehow all this motion is synchronized. All the orbits within orbits proceed on track, on time. No wonder the psalmist concluded that the stars speak of a glorious Maker:

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard."-Psalm 19:1-3.

What may we reasonably conclude by looking at the intricate design and vast size of the universe?

"[God] is before all things, and in him all things hold together."-Colossians 1:17.

The Weymouth translation is even clearer: "He is before all things, and in and through Him the universe is one harmonious whole."

All creation boldly testifies:

"God designed! God created!" From the perfect balance of proton and electron in the atom to the whirl of planets around the sun we find evidence of a master plan, a master thinker, of God the Master Designer and the Infinite Creator.

When an anthropologist, digging in the sands of New Mexico, comes across a triangular-shaped stone, he examines it carefully. If he sees markings on the stone that suggest it has been chiseled into shape, he immediately concludes that an American Indian created the object. He will even attempt to assign a date to the arrowhead, and determine which Indian tribe it belonged to.

No anthropologist worth his salt ever argues that arrowheads got there by chance. No one has attempted to explain that lightning or wind and water could have shaped these objects. It seems perfectly obvious to everyone that a human being made them.

Yet when many scientists dig up fossils, evidence of living things from the past, they make a very different assumption. They don't see the hand of a Creator; they assume these creatures must have been produced by the blind forces of nature, that they just naturally evolved. The animal fossils we discover, even those buried deepest in the geologic layers, represent creatures infinitely more complex than any arrowhead. So why not draw the obvious conclusion: someone had to create them? The Bible suggests a logical answer to the question of origins:

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."-Genesis 1:1.

In these simple words, "in the beginning God," we find the answer to the mystery of life. The first doctrine recorded in the Bible is that there is a God; in fact, this first verse in the Bible tells us of His mighty act of creation. Dr. Arthur Compton, Nobel Prize-winning physicist, commenting on this verse of Scripture, once said:

"For myself, faith begins with a realization that a supreme intelligence brought the universe into being and created man. It is not difficult for me to have this faith, for it is incontrovertible that where there is a plan there is intelligence-an orderly, unfolding universe testifies to the truth of the most majestic statement ever uttered-`In the beginning God.'"

Many great scientific minds today believe in God. The book Behind the Dim Unknown, edited by John Clover Monsma (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons), contains twenty-six chapters, each chapter written by a scientific researcher who is both a specialist in his field and also a Christian. Each author emphasizes the same fundamental truth-God exists.

In the words, "in the beginning God," we find the foundation of all existence. The Bible does not attempt to prove God-it declares His existence. That God exists is proved by our own existence and also by the existence of the things we see around us. Every effect must have an adequate cause. There is design in this world, hence there must be a designer. There is mathematical plan in the universe, so there must have been a planner. All things, then, must have been created by some being, and that being is God.

Dr. Arthur Conklin, once a biologist of Princeton University, wrote: "The probability of life originating from an accident is comparable to the probability of an unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a print shop."

We know that human beings can't create something from nothing. We may construct things, invent things, put things together, make things work, but with all our wisdom, we have never brought into being from scratch even the smallest spear of grass or the tiniest toad or the simplest flower.

Who, then, did make all things? Who created them in the beginning? Who started them? There is only one satisfactory answer-God.

The things about us cry out that God designed, God created, God sustains. Only life-or its ultimate Source-produces life. The only plausible answer to the origin of the universe, this world, and human beings-is God.

3. God Comes Into Personal Relationships With People

The God who designed the starry heavens, who created the universe, comes into personal relationships with people. Deep in the mind and heart of every individual, God has revealed a knowledge of His existence. He is "the true light that gives light to every man" (John 1:9).

The Bible asserts that our Creator seeks personal relationships with us. Abraham "was called God's friend" (James 2:23). "The Lord would speak to Moses . . . as a man speaks with his friend" (Exodus 33:11). And God will enter into a personal relationship with you and become your Friend. Jesus promised those who follow Him: "You are my friends" (John 15:14).

Human existence itself supports the idea of a personal God. We all know it to be a fact that personality exists here on this earth. We are persons, our friends are persons. Since there is personality, there must be a personal God as its cause. It is impossible for human beings to exist without a personal Creator back of them. Since there is individual personality, it is logical to conclude that a God who is also a Person is responsible for creating personalities.

About 2500 years ago a group of Greek philosophers discussed the question, "What is the briefest possible definition of man?"

Plato suggested: "Man is a two-legged animal."

Another philosopher, however, exposed this definition's limitations by fetching a rooster. He held it up and said, "Behold Plato's man!"

They pondered in silence a few moments until one of the thinkers exclaimed, "I have it! Man is a religious animal."

That's it in a nutshell. Humanity is incurably religious. We alone feel a sense of need for a Higher Power. All of us, whether atheistic or devout, have wrestled with the idea of God. We're distinguished from animals by our imagination and reason, and by our will to choose right or wrong. No animal ever builds an altar for worship. Yet everywhere you find men and women, you find them worshiping. Deep within every human heart is a desire to worship, "a consciousness of God."

God has placed within all of us a desire to come into companionship with Him. When we respond to our longing and find God, there is no longer a doubt about His existence and our need. During the 1990s millions of atheists in Russia renounced atheism and turned to God. A university professor in St. Petersburg whose field is astronomy made a statement that typifies the comments made by many transformed atheists in the former Soviet Union:

"I have searched for a meaning to life in my scientific research, but found nothing to have confidence in. The scientists around me feel the same vacuum. As I looked at the vastness of the universe in my study of astronomy, and the emptiness of my soul, I felt there must be some meaning. Then, when I received the Bible you gave me and began reading it, the vacuum in my life was filled. I have found the Bible to be the only source of confidence to my soul. I have accepted Jesus as my Saviour and have found true peace, comfort, and satisfaction in life."

A Christian believes in God because he or she has met Him and discovers that He satisfies the heart's deepest needs. The God whom Christians have joyfully found to exist, gives us a new perspective, new meaning, new motives, new purposes, and new joys.

God doesn't promise a life free from trouble and conflict, but He does assure us that He will guide and sustain us if we come into a personal relationship with Him. And millions of Christians will testify that they would give up everything rather than go back to life without God.

This is the greatest wonder of all-that the Almighty God who designed all creatures and created and sustains the galaxies also desires a personal relationship with every man and woman, boy and girl. David marvelled at this, when he wrote: "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him?"-Psalm 8:3, 4.

Our Creator is "mindful" of each one of us. He takes as personal an interest in you as if you were the only being He had created.

So we can believe in God:

1. Because of the intricate design in everything He created about us.
2. Because of the longing for God within us that leaves us restless till we find our rest in Him.
3. And because when we seek and find Him, God satisfies our every need and longing-to the full!

Now, it's only reasonable that a personal God would want to reveal Himself to His created beings just as a father desires that his children know him. And God reveals Himself to us in the Bible. (Guide 2 will give evidence that the Bible is a reliable Book given to us by the God who created us.)

4. What Kind Of God Is He?

In the Bible God tells us who He is and what He is like.

What pattern did God use for creating men and women?

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."-Genesis 1:27.

According to Scripture, we are made in God's image. This is why we can have a personal relationship with Him. Our abilities to reflect and feel, to remember and hope, to ponder and analyze-all are derived from Him.

Although God is a Spirit, He also has a bodily form (see Exodus 31:18 and 33:11). Since God has a personality, what is His dominant trait?

"God is love."-1 John 4:8.

God relates to human beings out of His own heart of love. There is nothing He has done or ever will do which is not motivated by a selfless, sacrificial love.

5. How Jesus Reveals What God Is Like

What family member gives us an idea of what God is like?

"Have we not all one Father? Did not one God create us?"-Malachi 2:10.

In the Bible God repeatedly speaks of Himself as a father.

Some of the father images we see today are anything but desirable. There are neglectful dads, dead-beat dads, abusive dads. God is not like that. Rather, He is a caring, sensitive Father. He is the kind of Dad who loves to spend time with his son or daughter, the kind of Dad who charms his kids by telling wonderful bedtime stories.

God, our loving Father, wanted to do more than reveal Himself through the words of Scripture. He knew that a person we live with is much more real to us than someone we only hear about or read about in a book. So He decided to enter our world as a real, specific individual.

God came down on our level-He became like us-so He could teach us how to live and be happy, and so we could see what God is really like.

How did God visit the world as a person?

"[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God."-Colossians 1:15.

God came down to our world in the person of Jesus.

A small boy and his older brother, were standing before a large portrait of their father who had died when the younger boy was a mere babe.

"Tell me," the younger brother said, "just what was Father like?"

The older boy attempted to tell his little brother something about their father. He described his strength. He said he was a good man, kind and handsome. He was friendly, and people liked to be with him. He was always gentle with Mother. He made people happy.

In spite of all the older brother could say, the small boy could not form a satisfying picture of his father. He wanted so much to know what his father was like. At last he interrupted his brother with the question, "Tell me one thing, Henry, was Father anything like you?"

The older boy hesitated a moment, then said: "Well, friends of ours who knew Father best say that I'm the living image of him. And even Mother says the same."

With his heart all aglow, the small boy walked away, saying: "Now I know exactly what my dad was like. He was just like my brother Henry."

Jesus came to our world as God in human flesh. Jesus is "the Son of God" (Mark 15:39)- God made visible, the thought of God made audible. Jesus Himself said, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). So if you have seen Jesus, you have seen God Himself. Whenever you want to know what God is like, then look at Jesus as the Bible reveals Him.

As you read the story of Jesus in the four gospels, the first four books of the New Testament, you will discover a fascinating portrait of our Heavenly Father. Rough,self-sufficient fishermen dropped their nets to follow Christ, and small children flocked to receive His blessing. He could comfort the most devastated sinners and disarm the most self-righteous hypocrites. He healed everything from blindness to leprosy with the quiet assurance of a doctor prescribing a couple of aspirin. His two-word command: "Be still!" forced a violent storm to calm down like a naughty child brought suddenly to its senses. In all His actions Jesus demonstrated that God is love! He met human need in a way no one had ever done before Him-or has since!

Jesus' final glorious revelation of what God is like happened at the cross. That's where He died for us so that we would not have to die forever ourselves.

How do we benefit from Christ's death?

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life"-John 3:16.

Jesus died not only to give us a happier life now, but also to give us eternal life. Jesus is God's "one and only Son"-He is unique, one of a kind. He is the one and only being who is both wholly God and wholly man.

For long ages people wondered, and hoped, and dreamed about God. They saw His handiwork in the sky and in the beauties of nature. Many thought to themselves, "If only God were like this!" or, "If only God were like that!" But the beautiful, self-sacrificing life of Jesus and His death on the cross revealed God more clearly than ever. People found themselves looking into the very face of God, seeing Him as He really is-love, eternal and immortal love!

You can discover God right now as Jesus reveals Him. That discovery will lead you to make a very personal affirmation: "Father, I love you!"

By Randy Feldman

You have acted illegally. You have committed a crime — not a civil infraction — but a crime. In fact, you are illegal. Pretty heavy stuff, the word “illegal.” Illegality is most often associated with immorality. Moreover, our society is based on the rule of law. Laws matter. People’s obedience to law gives us all the ability to enjoy a shared liberty. The words are even stated on the outside of the Worcester Courthouse.

Pundits, from Lou Dobbs’s daily diatribes on TV to Jay Severen on the radio, bemoan the invasion of poor immigrants whose willingness to work cheap in the U.S. is supposedly costing the rest of us our jobs, our tax money, our language and our culture. All of this is due to the brazen illegality of these lawbreakers. However, immigration violations are civil infractions — not criminal offenses like traffic tickets. For good reason, immigration infractions more resemble traffic tickets than crimes because their actions are not morally offensive.

Unauthorized workers are not illegal because they committed a crime against another; they are simply interested in finding work. The old myth that these people are looking for government handouts such as welfare does not stand up at all. If immigrants wanted a subsistence lifestyle they would stay in their country where they have family, friends and nice weather. Immigrants come here to work.

Immigrants gladly take jobs that Americans aren’t qualified for or don’t want. Both legal and undocumented immigrants take jobs in skilled and unskilled fields as professors, doctors, nurses, software engineers, cooks, nurses’ assistants, factory workers, office and house cleaners, lawn cutters, landscapers and caregivers in our homes with our own children and parents.

Immigrants are not hired because they work cheaper, but because they often work harder than native-born Americans. Immigrants work harder than most Americans not because they are morally superior but because their early years in America are the first time they’ve ever had the opportunity to make enough money to be able to save some and send it to family members back home. Although immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, may sometimes make a little less than Americans for similar work, employers mostly appreciate them because immigrants take the kind of responsibility for their job usually exhibited only by the owners themselves. Hence, because employers do not want to lose these most valuable employees, they are most often paid a wage equal to their U.S.-born co-workers.

Just as our Medicaid system has increasingly become our de facto national heath insurance system (especially in Massachusetts), by lack of enforcement of our immigration laws, our illegal immigration system has become our immigration system.

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan made a deal with a Democratic Party-led Congress to fix the immigration system. However, he and his fellow Republicans felt they were “taken” in the deal. They were correct. President Reagan believed that a system of sanctions or fines on employers who hire unauthorized workers would de-activate the magnet of jobs drawing people to the U. S. President Reagan wanted and received a new requirement called “employers’ sanctions.” It required employees to show employers proof of legal status to work in the U.S. For the first time, workers were required to provide documents to demonstrate legal employability.

In return for support among Democrats for employer sanctions, President Reagan went along with a huge amnesty program wanted by the Democratic Party to forgive people who were in the U.S. “illegally.” Millions of people, (unfortunately including many with fictitious paperwork demonstrating their eligibility through a seasonal agricultural program) qualified for amnesty. The main ingredient President Reagan and the Republicans bargained for: the requirement of showing proper documentation to work in the U.S. — has been subverted by undocumented immigrants showing fraudulently created documents. This needs to be corrected.

The immigration non-system we now have does “work” in that it matches workers from abroad to available jobs in the U.S. However, it requires the under-funded immigration service to look the other way if the only thing an undocumented worker does wrong is live and work in the U.S. without authorization. An effective and comprehensive immigration system would cost much more to administer than our present non-system to obtain a similar result — the matching of available jobs to available workers. However, a comprehensive immigration system would provide a major benefit; it would uphold the rule of law.

Returning to what President Reagan intended, an organized immigration system would look like this: There would be much greater funding to enforce employer sanctions whereby employers can already be fined up to $10,000 per illegally hired person, but rarely are; there would be more interior (not just at the border) enforcement to catch and remove illegal workers; there would be more money spent on detention centers on the borders and near major airports to prevent the release of people caught without papers simply because there is no space to hold them; people who are allowed to go free while awaiting deportation would be required to wear electronic monitoring devices that would be used to identify where they are if they abscond; people who re-enter the U.S after already being deported from the U.S. before would be detained and prosecuted instead of simply being returned again to their home country to attempt another re-entry; a national I.D. card or I.D. system would be created with employers having an easy-to-use inquiry method to check the authenticity of an employee’s work eligibility documents.

Concurrent with greater enforcement of our laws, we would provide fairer and better legal opportunities to live and work in the U.S. A guest worker program, such as President Bush has proposed, would be created to allow workers and jobs to be matched. Further, substantially more immigrant visas should be allocated annually for permanent residents and citizens trying to bring their spouses and children to the U.S. legally so they will no longer have to wait the unbelievably long 4-15 years often necessary to see their sponsored relatives legally arrive here. Keep in mind, these are relatives of U.S. citizens and permanent residents whom the immigration service has already determined have the right to come to the U.S. to join their legal family members living here.

Just as President Reagan recognized, we should also allow earned legalization, amnesty or registry (call it what you like) for immigrants who have been in the U.S. for five years or more without papers but who have not committed crimes and have a good work record. We could combine this legalization opportunity with a broad-based taxpayer compliance program.

Unbeknownst to most Americans is the fact that the vast majority of undocumented immigrants already pay taxes because federal and state taxes are deducted from their paycheck. Because undocumented immigrants generally cannot file a tax return without a social security number they cannot collect any refund money owed to them at the end of the year. The smaller number of undocumented immigrants who do not pay taxes because they work off the books should be made to pay back taxes as part of any earned legalization program.

Any earned legalization or amnesty also should, and obviously will, exclude people who have committed morally reprehensible crimes. By and large, immigrants overwhelmingly earn their keep in America every day. Other than driving their cars without a license, the overwhelming majority of immigrants live a crime-free life. This is because immigrants are most often very good people. Further, the last thing undocumented immigrants want to do is draw attention to themselves and their undocumented status.

The need for security checks may also be self-evident. However, the ability to use our immigration system to enhance border security against terrorism is very overrated. If a terrorist intends to attack he could simply find his way over the hundreds of thousands of miles of un-patrolled border between Canada and the U.S. The most efficacious defense against terrorism is a matter of intelligence gathering, mostly abroad, not immigration visa enforcement inside the U.S. As the Sept. 11 report made clear, efforts such as the recently enacted toughening of standards of the Real ID law limiting undocumented immigrants’ ability to obtain drivers licenses would have done nothing to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks. The perpetrators simply and legally would have shown their passports to obtain entry onto the planes they used as weapons.

Legalization or amnesty is needed. In fact, within our present immigration system we already have four forms of forgiveness or amnesty for “illegality.” These programs are called Registry, Cancellation of Removal, the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) and the Haitian Immigrant Refugee Adjustment Act. Registry laws state that all people who have been in the United States since 1972 and who are not otherwise inadmissible for having committed crimes or other such misdeeds are to be given permanent legal status in the U.S. Cancellation of Removal eligibility is for foreigners who have been in the U.S. for at least 10 years and have a U.S. citizen or permanent resident (green card-holding) child, spouse or parent. NACARA is for those people who came to the United States in the early or mid 1990s fleeing the civil wars and/or brutal dictatorships of El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, or Eastern Europe. In 1994 to early 1998 and again in late 2000 to early 2001, we also forgave “illegality” for people without legal documentation if they had a family-based sponsor or employment-based sponsor who could prove no U.S. qualified worker wanted the same job they did and would pay a $1,000 fine in addition to paperwork filing fees.

The point is, we already have an immigration system that allows people who are suffering in their country, but who have been in the U.S. “illegally,” to be forgiven and benefit from their hard work in — and contribution to — our country. We have this system because we as a society recognize that humanitarian factors and our own self-interest come together to protect and welcome newly arrived people into the U.S. We now need to expand the categories of people we allow to legally immigrate at the same time we expand and enforce the law to let immigrants know we will no longer tolerate a non-system, or “illegality” to make up for an inadequate immigration system.

What is needed now is an update of the 1986 agreement that delivers for both sides. To control borders and return to the rule of law we need much more significant enforcement of the laws already on the books, coupled with an immigration system that responds to our need for workers in some industries and fields. The foreign workers who fill these needs deserve to have legal status and the full protection of our laws. We also need a system where it does not take so many years to be re-united with loved ones who have been sponsored by their relatives already legally living in the U.S. o

Attorney Randy Feldman specializes in immigration issues and practices in Worcester. Comments? E-mail editorial@worcestermag.com.

Without a doubt, it’s the hardest thing that life has to offer. And for all of us, the clock started ticking the moment we were born. All that remains to be determined is when, where and how. But one thing is certain: Everybody’s going to face it and your turn is coming. So how do you deal with the fact that you’re eventually going to die?

A little while ago I was sitting in a restaurant when I overheard a conversation that wouldn’t have normally caught my attention, but for some reason this one got me thinking.

There were four women at a table across the room from me. And one of them suddenly said, “Did you hear that Peter Jennings passed away today?” Well, it turns out it wasn’t true, at least not that day. Peter Jennings was still alive at that time. The real news story of the day was that Peter Jennings had announced that he had lung cancer. And as bad as that news was, he was still very much alive for the time being.

But it started me thinking about something that maybe you’ve thought about, too. Why is it that we pay such close attention when a prominent person dies? I suspect it has a lot to do with the sense of loss we feel when celebrities will no longer be a part of our everyday lives. But that doesn’t really explain our morbid fascination with death.

Let’s admit it. Even though a large part of us is repulsed by the subject, we’re also irresistibly attracted to it. Even though it’s ghastly and the thought of death is something we’d rather not deal with, we still like to contemplate it, like the people on the freeway who can’t help themselves when they see a terrible car accident. They just have to slow down and take a look, even though a big part of them doesn’t really want to see what happened.

Why do we mark the passing of neighbors, friends and relatives with such morbid interest?

Is it because subconsciously it’s a big reminder that our turn is coming? Is it because every time we hear of someone dying, it’s like the ticking of a big cosmic clock that marks the days, minutes and hours until our turn comes?

You know, thousands of years ago an inspired writer made this observation, found in the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter nine. Listen carefully to what he says (Ecclesiastes 9:5):

“For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.”

Now, did you catch it? The Bible says that the living know they’re going to die. And we really do know it, don’t we? Oh, maybe we didn’t know it when we were five or 10 years old, and maybe even not when we were a little bit older, but at some point, that not so funny sense that life is short kicks in. And we began to subconsciously scratch marks on the walls of our minds as the years pass by. And, quite frankly, most of us find the thought a little disturbing. Even though we know the world once existed without us, we still have trouble trying to imagine a world that will continue to exit once we’re dead. Because we experience everything in the universe from our own point of view, it’s hard to picture that the world could go on from someone else’s point of view without us. And yet that happens every single day, all over the world, to more than 150,000 people who die.

And to put things in an even more sobering perspective, you’ve never even heard of most of those people. You weren’t aware that they were alive to begin with, and your life went on just like normal even though they died. The disturbing reality is that one day we’re going to punch the cosmic time clock and call it quits. And I suppose the question I’d really like to address today is this: How are we supposed to feel about that?

Now, I’ve heard some people say that we’re supposed to embrace death, that we should just accept it as part of a natural cycle. But frankly, I’m not very happy with that, because I’m not convinced that it is part of the natural cycle. If it were, then why in the world do we spend so much time and so many resources trying to defeat it?

You see, instinctively, we know there’s something wrong. We have this irresistible urge to do something about death, to find cures for diseases, and to find ways of prolonging human life. If death really is the natural order of things, then why do we spend so much time trying to upset that natural order?

Well, the evolutionists will tell you that it’s because we have an overwhelming and inbred instinct for self-preservation; that we try to preserve our lives at any cost because evolutionary progress is based on the survival of the fittest. But that answer has never really satisfied me because it doesn’t really explain why.

Why do we have an instinct to survive? If our ancestors really did crawl out of the muck billions of years ago, why did they do it? And if they really did mutate and develop profitable new body parts, why did they do that?

Do you see what I’m getting at? In the evolutionary perspective, there’s no good reason for survival. There’s absolutely no reason that evolution should lead to improvements or make things better with each passing generation.

And outside of the fact that the Bible clearly contradicts and rejects the macro-evolutionary theory, that’s probably my number one reason for personally rejecting it. It just doesn’t make sense.

Without God in the picture, there’s no reason we should look for patterns or improvements in the universe, or develop a strong sense of self-preservation. So, when it comes to death, that can’t be it.

We don’t struggle against death because of an accidental sense of self-preservation. I think we struggle against it for much deeper reasons. I think we struggle against it because we instinctively know that death isn’t supposed to happen.

And, according to the Bible, it’s not—at least not in God’s original plan. Death came about because of a dramatic separation between the Creator and His creation. But your iniquities, the Bible says, have separated you from your God. And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear. Here’s how it works:

When the human race lived in perfect harmony with God, we had an eternal lease on life. We had a direct link to the Creator that sustained us indefinitely and death was not a part of the picture. But when we deliberately chose to drive a wedge of self-direction and rebellion between ourselves and God, we essentially cut ourselves off from the Source of Life. It’s kind of like unplugging an electric fan. At first, the blades have enough momentum to keep it spinning for a while, but without a constant source of power to keep them moving, they’re going to quit. And the same thing holds true for God’s creation. When we unplugged ourselves and set ourselves outside of God’s will, we essentially unplugged the fan.

We might have enough momentum to seek out a short existence on planet Earth, but without a direct connection to the source of power, the energy is going to run out and we’re going to die. That’s why the book of Romans says that (Romans 6:23):

“The wages of sin is death.”

And that brings me back to the topic I really want to explore. Knowing what we know about death, how are we supposed to feel about it? Clearly, if death is a consequence of a ruined relationship with God, we shouldn’t be too quick to embrace it, because that would be a little like enjoying a traumatic divorce and the horrible consequences that go with it.

Now, I’ve heard some fine, upstanding church people suggest that death isn’t a problem for the Christian, and shouldn’t give us any reason for grief. But I’m not entirely convinced about that, either. Because, the way I read the Bible, I’ve found that lots of God’s people have had a big problem with it.

Let me give you an example. In the book of Ecclesiastes, we find a remarkable passage where the wisest man who ever lived laments the fact that he’s going to die. Here’s what it says (Ecclesiastes 1:2-4):

“Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities: all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever.”

“What’s the point?” he says. “You can spend your life any way you want to and in the end everybody gets the same thing. You can be rich or poor, wise or foolish, selfish or selfless, and you’re still going to die.”

Now, that doesn’t sound like a man who was comforted by the thought of death. It sounds more like a man who was disturbed by the thought. Let me give you another example. In the book of Isaiah, there’s a story about a good and godly king named Hezekiah who found out that he was going to die. And he didn’t exactly rejoice when he heard the news. Listen to what the Bible says (Isaiah 38:1-3):

“In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came unto him, and said unto him, ‘Thus saith the Lord, set thine house in order: for thou shalt die, and not live.’ Then Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall, and prayed unto the Lord, and said, ‘Remember now, o Lord, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight.’ And Hezekiah wept sore.”

I hope you caught the significance of this passage. When Hezekiah found out he was going to die, he didn’t say, “Well, that’s the natural order of things and I’m glad my time has finally come. I know God and I’ve had a long and meaningful relationship with Him, so this death thing isn’t a real problem.”

That’s not what happened, instead the Bible says that he turned his face again and began to weep. He understood quite clearly that death is not a good thing. He didn’t think of it as a stepping stone to an improved situation or a relief from the monotony of everyday life. Just like you and me, he hated the thought of dying.

Now, compare that story to some of the stories found in ancient Greek literature and you’ll notice a remarkable contrast. When the philosopher Socrates found out that he was going to be forced to drink poisoned hemlock, he embraced it and assured his students that death wasn’t a big problem. Nowhere do we read that he turned his face or wept sore, like Hezekiah, because he thought of death as an escape from the material world and his entrance into a better plan of existence.

What I find really interesting is that a God-fearing man was heartbroken by the thought of dying. And a man who grew up completely outside the faith of the Bible had no problem with it. To me that seems to fly in the face of the idea that Christians shouldn’t have any problem with death. And when I consider the example of Jesus, I know for sure that we’re supposed to be troubled by it.

In the eleventh chapter of John, Jesus stands outside the grave of one of His best friends, and He does the same thing you and I would do. He cries. And if Jesus wept, that tells me that heartfelt sorrow is an entirely appropriate response.

You see, for the Christian, death is a horrible reminder of just how far we’ve managed to separate ourselves from God. Everyday, as more than 150,000 people draw their last breath, we’re reminded of the helplessness and desperation of the human situation.

You know, sometimes at funerals you’ll hear people encouraging you not to cry. And I know what they’re trying to say, but I’m not sure it’s entirely appropriate counsel. According to the Bible, you have a perfect right to cry. The soil you walk on was not originally created for burial plots. The sharp loneliness and painful sense of loss you feel when you suddenly lose a close family member were never in God’s original Out ofprints. You’re supposed to feel bad about it.

Let’s take the example of Jesus just a little bit further. Now, to be honest, we can’t really compare the death of Jesus to our own, because it’s a little like comparing apples and oranges. When Jesus died, He did it under the weight of everyone’s sins. The Bible says that He died under a curse, absorbing the full cup of God’s wrath against sin. His death was more than just the cessation of life. It was utter separation from God the Father.

You and I have the hope of the resurrection and eternal life in the presence of God. But when Jesus faced the cross, He did it like somebody who didn’t have that hope. At one point, when He couldn’t see past the gates to the tomb, He actually cried out, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

So, to compare Jesus’ death to our own isn’t really a fair comparison. But at the same time, the Bible reminds us that Jesus became a human being, just like us. He had a real body of flesh and bone and He had real feelings.

And so, to some tiny degree, there is a comparison to be made. And the Bible says that when Jesus faced the prospect of His own death, He found it exceptionally troubling. And He was withdrawn from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and prayed (Luke 22:42-44):

“Saying, ‘Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.’ And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”

Now, again, I want to stress that Jesus was facing more than you and I will ever face when approaching the grave, because He did it like a lost sinner who had no hope. But at the same time you’ll notice that He didn’t face it with a relaxed, easygoing attitude. He understood what the grave represents. It is the ultimate consequence of sin. It is a complete reversal of the natural order of things. It is the tragic destruction of God’s once perfect creation. And, quite frankly, the closer you get to God, the more painful sin and its consequences become.

Christians, above all other people, should be more troubled by the grave than anybody else. In one way, at least, because like a painful, ugly scar, it serves as a permanent reminder of something we did to bring pain to the heart of God. But at the same time, the Bible asks us to find comfort. If you think about it, that’s quite a bit different than asking us to be happy about it.

Let me read you an interesting passage from one of Paul’s letters that sheds a lot of light on how the Christian is supposed to relate to the subject of death. It’s found in first Thessalonians, chapter four. And here’s what he writes (1 Thessalonians 4:13):

“But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.”

Now, let me stop right there for a moment, because Paul appears to say that we’re not supposed to sorrow over those we lost. But if you read it carefully, he actually says that we’re not supposed to sorrow as the rest. In other words, we’re not supposed to experience the sorrows of death in the same way other people do. Why? Well, he continues and explains (1 Thessalonians 4:14-17):

“For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall no prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

Now, that’s the great hope we have as Christians. Because Jesus died in our place, the grave doesn’t need to be a place of fear anymore. We might sorrow over it, or grieve the loss of loved ones, or even feel a sense of regret when our turn comes, but in spite of all that, we have a hope that transcends all fear. Jesus is coming back, and when He does, the graves will be opened and the tragedy of death will be completely reversed. Paul ends this passage in verse 18 by saying (1 Thessalonians 4:18):

“Wherefore comfort one another with these words.”

And that’s exactly where we ought to be as Christians. We have a right to feel sorrow and we have a right to hate the consequences of sin. But God asks us not to be afraid. And there’s a huge difference between lamenting the grave and being terrified of it. “Listen,” says God, “I’ve taken all the sting out of death and one day I’m going to turn it all around.” Listen to His promise in the closing chapters of the Bible (Revelation 21:4):

“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”

Now, you’ll notice that the Bible doesn’t say that God’s people won’t shed tears. I think they’re going to shed plenty of them, the same way angels must weep when they have to witness the painful predicament we’ve created for ourselves here on planet Earth.

Tears are definitely going to be a part of our Christian experience. But one day God is going to wipe them away. In fact, it’s a promise that God makes twice in the book of Revelation, both in chapter 21, which we just read, and then back in chapter seven, beginning in the 16th verse (Revelation 7:16-17):

“They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”

Here is the secret to the Christian’s response to death: Just like everybody else, Christians sorrow over it. Frankly, for anybody in a close relationship with the God of love, it would seem strange not to sorrow over it, because all through the Bible God Himself weeps over our predicament. It’s perfectly all right to hate the thought of dying. It doesn’t mean that your faith isn’t strong enough, it just means that you’re human and you understand what a terrible thing dying really is.

But, at the same time, God asks you to find comfort in knowing that it’s not going to last forever. He’s asking you to trust him with both your life and your death.

You know, there’s an interesting passage in the book of Psalms that used to bother me, until I put it in its proper perspective. It’s found in Psalm 116, verse 15. It says (Psalm 116:15):

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”

Now, when you first read it, it seems a little strange. How in the world could God enjoy anybody’s death, when it causes such pain and suffering here on Earth? But, when you read it carefully, that’s not what it is saying. In fact, it says just the opposite. Hidden beneath the psalmist’s words is the startling realization that God Himself suffers at every gravesite.

Think about it for a moment. When the Bible says that the death of the saints is precious in God’s sight, what does that actually mean? It means that not all deaths are alike for God. Something is different about those who die in a meaningful relationship with Him. Those who refuse to trust Him with their life and death go to their graves without hope and the heart of God’s sorrows, because they’ve chosen to remain separated from Him forever.

But when a saint dies, someone who has a meaningful and trusting relationship with Him, it’s a little different. Instead of suffering the eternal loss of one of His children, God Himself can take comfort in the hope of the resurrection and reunion.

You see, the return of Jesus isn’t just the ultimate hope for Christians. It’s also the ultimate hope for God—because He feels a keen sense of separation from us, just like we feel a keen sense of separation from Him.

We’re not the only ones who are suffering while we patiently wait for Jesus to return. And the heart of God longs for the second coming as much as you do, so that both your tears and His can be wiped away.

I know the chances are pretty good that you’ve suffered in this life. If you haven’t felt the sting of death yet, it’s going to come. And I want you to have the profound sense of peace and comfort that comes from knowing God. Will your grave be a hopeless one, or will you be one of those funerals that God Himself can take comfort in?

One of the most hopeful promises of the Bible is found in 1 Corinthians 15:26, where it says:

“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”

If you think about it, that’s pretty remarkable. One day soon, the last funeral will be conducted, and the last coffin lid will be closed. And we will never have to say goodbye again.

So, let me ask you, are you planning to be a part of that world? Why don’t we bow our heads right now and pray?

PRAYER:
Heavenly Father, sometimes the sting of the grave is almost impossible to bear. We’re tired of shedding tears over pain and suffering, and we look forward to the day that you completely turn it all around. We accept the death of Christ in our place, and we claim the life that He promises. Lord, cover our sins with the blood of Christ and thank you for taking the consequences of our rebellion on yourself. Above all, come quickly, Lord, so that we can rejoice in your presence forever. For in Christ’s name we pray it, Amen.

Scriptures Used in “The Living Know”

“For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.”
—Ecclesiastes 9:5

“The wages of sin is death.”
—Romans 6:23

“Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities: all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever.”
—Ecclesiastes 1:2-4

“In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came unto him, and said unto him, ‘Thus saith the Lord, set thine house in order: for thou shalt die, and not live.’ Then Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall, and prayed unto the Lord, and said, ‘Remember now, o Lord, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight.’ And Hezekiah wept sore.”
—Isaiah 38:1-3

“Saying, ‘Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.’ And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”
—Luke 22:42-44

“But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.”
—1 Thessalonians 4:13

“For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall no prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
—1 Thessalonians 4:14-17

“Wherefore comfort one another with these words.”
—1 Thessalonians 4:18

“And God shall wipe away all tears form their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”
—Revelation 21:4

“They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”
—Revelation 7:16-17

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”
—Psalm 116:15

“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”
—1 Corinthians 15:26