Friday, December 25, 2009

The final movements will be rapid ones


We are living in the time of the end. The fast-fulfilling signs of the times declare that the coming of Christ is near at hand. The days in which we live are solemn and important. The Spirit of God is gradually but surely being withdrawn from the earth. Plagues and judgments are already falling upon the despisers of the grace of God. The calamities by land and sea, the unsettled state of society, the alarms of war, are portentous. They forecast approaching events of the greatest magnitude. {9T 11.1}

The agencies of evil are combining their forces and consolidating. They are strengthening for the last great crisis. Great changes are soon to take place in our world, and the final movements will be rapid ones. {9T 11.2}

The condition of things in the world shows that troublous times are right upon us. The daily papers are full of indications of a terrible conflict in the near future. Bold robberies are of frequent occurrence. Strikes are common. Thefts and murders are committed on every hand. Men possessed of demons are taking the lives of men, women, and little children. Men have become infatuated with vice, and every species of evil prevails. {9T 11.3}

The enemy has succeeded in perverting justice and in filling men's hearts with the desire for selfish gain.

Testimonies for the Church, vol. 9, p. 11.
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No more 'Pope on a rope', says the Vatican



Frances Gibb, Legal Editor

It is one of the most recognised images in the world — the Pope, hand held aloft in blessing. Increasingly, however, the Pope’s name or image is found in less traditional contexts — from soap products and snowstorms to endorsing tomato paste. In a move to control this growing use or misuse of the papal brand, the Holy See has announced that in future anyone wanting to use the face or name of the Holy Father or Supreme Pontiff must obtain Vatican approval.

Robin Fry, a copyright lawyer from the London firm Beachcrofts, said: “Popes throughout history have been plagued by their image being reproduced, whether as little trinkets, or, recently, mechanical dolls. There has even been a Pope soap on a rope. But like any other business, the Vatican needed a clear intellectual property programme so that it may control uses of its key expressions — not for commercial purposes, but simply to retain the integrity of the words.


"This declaration is a brave attempt to control use of the imprimatur and image of His Holy Father, but this can only realistically be done through registration of trademarks.

“Without this, the Vatican’s jurisdiction extends legally only to the 110 acres of the Vatican City and any new laws it announces cannot be enforced elsewhere, unless other countries adopt the same rules."


There are only a handful of relevant trademarks but none had been registered by the Vatican: they include Holy See, Pontiff, The Vatican and the Pope.

An application for “Pope Benedict pretzel” was refused as a European mark in 2006. But the Pope Food Group in New Jersey had a registration for “Pope” for tomato paste and there was an European Community trade mark for “Cuvee du Vatican”, a wine from Chateauneuf-du-Pape or Cotes du Rhone.

As far as monitoring was concerned, all it needed to do was to set up an enforcement or monitoring body. “Then if someone stepped out of line and the normal religious and spiritual pressures don’t operate effectively then at the end of the day, lawyers can step in and take action,” said Mr Fry.

The Vatican’s declaration says: “Recent years have witnessed a great increase of affection and esteem for the person of the Holy Father.

“There has also been a desire to use the Pope’s name in the title of universities, schools or cultural institutions, as well as associations, foundations and other groups.

“In light of this fact, the Holy See hereby declares that it alone has the right to ensure the respect due to the Successors of Peter, and, therefore, to protect the figure and personal identify of the Pope from the unauthorised use of his name and/or the papal coat of arms for ends and activities which have little or nothing to do with the Catholic Church.”

Occasionally, it adds, attempts have been made to attribute credibility and authority to initiatives by using ecclesiastical or papal symbols or logos.

A spokesman for the Catholic Church in England and Wales said: “This is not about financial gain or commercial interests.

“It is simply an attempt to preserve the integrity of the Pope’s image at a time when there is a plethora of new media and there may be concern that it is used inappropriately.”

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Related:

Vatican Announces Copyright On Papal Related Branding
AHN - Ayinde O. Chase - ‎Dec 22, 2009‎
Vatican City, Vatican (AHN) - The Vatican announced it will strictly monitor the use of papal names, photos and the word "pontifical. ...


Blogs

Vatican Announces Plans To Protect Their Copyrights, Overall Image
IndyPosted (blog) - ‎Dec 22, 2009‎
The Vatican this week announced that they would more closely monitor copyright issues associated with the use of certain Vatican properties, including the ...


The Papal figure is copyrighted
ScienceBlogs (blog) - ‎Dec 21, 2009‎
The Vatican made a declaration on the protection of the figure of the Pope on Saturday morning. The statement seeks to establish and safeguard the name, ...



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PETA Agrees With Pope That Environment Should Be Taken Seriously and Calls On His Holiness to Lead by Example


For Immediate Release:
December 22, 2009

Contact:
Bruce Friedrich 757-622-7382

Washington -- This morning, PETA sent a letter to Pope Benedict XVI commending him for his statement in which he linked world peace to preserving the environment and urging him to lead by example by going vegan and serving only vegan meals in Vatican City, including at the papal residence. The pope's statement for the World Day of Peace, which will be observed on January 1, called for "[moving] beyond a purely consumerist mentality." In the letter, PETA points out that raising animals for food is the leading source of greenhouse-gas emissions, that eating meat, eggs, and dairy products has been conclusively linked to leading killer diseases, and that meat production has a more devastating impact on the environment than any other human activity.

"The pope was right when he said that humans consume too much, but in particular, people consume too much meat," says PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich. "The best thing that anyone can do for the environment--not to mention for animals and their own health--is to go vegan."

For more information, please visit PETA .org or PETA's blog.

PETA's letter to Pope Benedict XVI follows.

December 21, 2009



His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
Apostolic Palace
Vatican City

Most Holy Father,

On behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and our more than 2 million members and supporters worldwide, we applaud your strong exhortations for environmental protection, and we urge you to consider the fact that the most effective action an individual can take to fight climate change is to go vegan (which means not consuming poultry, fish, meat, eggs or dairy products).

In light of the overwhelming scientific evidence showing that human consumption of animal products is degrading the environment, we urge you to go vegan and only serve vegan meals in Vatican City and at all Papal events.

As you may know, in the groundbreaking 408-page report, Livestock's Long Shadow, UN scientists concluded that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse-gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, ships, SUVs and planes in the world combined. The report also points out that the meat industry is "one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global". A 2009 report by long-time World Bank agricultural scientists contended that the total greenhouse-gas emissions of animal agriculture are far higher than the UN reported. According to these scientists, raising animals for food constitutes a majority - 51 per cent - of global greenhouse-gas emissions. The official handbook for the global Live Earth concerts, which Al Gore helped organise, states that not eating meat is the "single most effective thing you can do" to reduce your climate change impact.

Of course, a global shift toward plant-based diets would also have major benefits for humans - vegans have lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer than meat-eaters do, and tens of billions of animals would be spared the horrors of being intensively confined on filthy factory farms, mutilated without any pain relief, and slaughtered while still conscious.

Going vegan and serving only vegan meals at the Vatican would help ensure a bright future for all. Please don't hesitate to contact me to discuss this further. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,



Bruce Friedrich
Vice President
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The EU Must Keep Sunday, Says Catholic Church


The EU Must Keep Sunday, Says Catholic Church

The Catholic Church wants Sunday observance enshrined in EU law. The European Parliament has debated changes to its Working Time Directive. Some Parliament tabled an amendment saying that the minimum rest period “shall in principle include Sunday.” The Brussels-based Commission of Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE) agreed, recommending the directive should say “the minimal weekly rest must include Sunday.” But the proposal texts were not good enough. Now five Parliament members have put forward a new declaration. Accordingly this declaration now introduced into parliament calls on the Member States and on the EU institutions to “protect Sunday, as a weekly rest day, in forthcoming national and EU working-time legislation in order to enhance the protection of workers' health and the reconciliation of work and family life”.

In order to be adopted, it is now necessary for the Written Declaration to be signed by a majority (394) of MEPs before 7 May 2009.

Here you have the exact text:

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
2.2.2009

WRITTEN DECLARATION
pursuant to Rule 116 of the Rules of Procedure by Anna Záborská, Martin Kastler, Jean Louis Cottigny, Patrizia Toia and Konrad Szymański on the protection of a work-free Sunday as an essential pillar of the European Social Model and a part of the European cultural heritage
Lapse date: 7.5.2009

0009/2009
Written declaration on the protection of a work-free Sunday as an essential pillar of the
European Social Model and a part of the European cultural heritage
The European Parliament,
– having regard to Article 137 of the TEU,
– having regard to Rule 116 of its Rules of Procedure,
A. whereas a work-free Sunday is an essential pillar of the European Social Model and a part
of the European cultural heritage,
B. whereas a EUROFOUND survey shows that the likelihood of sickness and absenteeism in
establishments that work on Saturdays and Sundays is 1.3 times greater compared with
establishments that do not require staff to work at the weekend,
C. whereas, according to EU law, Sunday is the weekly rest day for children and adolescents,
D. whereas the European institutions, bodies and agencies have not worked on Sundays
since their creation and do not intend to do so in the future, despite the diversity of
religious, cultural and ethnic backgrounds of EU officials and decision-makers,
1. Calls on the Member States and the EU institutions to protect Sunday, as a weekly rest
day, in forthcoming national and EU working-time legislation in order to enhance the
protection of workers' health and the reconciliation of work and family life;
2. Instructs its President to forward this declaration, together with the names of the
signatories, to the Council, the Commission and the parliamentary committees for social
affairs of the national parliaments.

If EU will make a specific day, Sunday as a day of rest, then they will enforce a lifestyle change on its subjects. Then the people in alle the member states will be forced to follow a state religion – Catholicism. The enforcement of Sunday worship will be the mark of a powerful Vatican-allied European superpower.

In our magazines like THE ELITE TIGHTENS THE GRIP we have for many years ago warned about this developement, like this: ”It appears as a master plan that the religious dimension, as a gathering point, should come last. In this way it appears to be a point of less wait or importance. This is a clever strategy, since once they have acquired unity in the economical, political and military dimensions, unity in the area of religion naturally follows.”…” As we have read in Revelation 17: 14 it says that it is these world powers which war against the Lamb, Christ, and all that stand on His side. This is the final war in a nutshell. All of the world's destroying powers will come together - for what? What is it we are waiting for? Yes, just as they have implemented common standardized regulations in the political arena, they will also implement religious regulations. They will implement the beast's mark.”

The Catholic Church itself claims to have a mark. They claim Sunday as the mark of their authority, and that others acknowledge the church's authority by Sunday observance (From Thomas, Chancellor of Cardinal Gibbons and the Douay Catechism, p. 59). The church therefore says plainly that their mark of authority is their implementation of Sunday, the Biblical first day of the week, as the day of rest, in place of the Sabbath, which is kept from sunset on Friday until sunset on Saturday (Mark 15:42-47, 16:1-6l; Leviticus 23:32; Nehemiah 13:15-21). The Bible speaks of only one day of rest in the week, which is the Sabbath. This is the only day of rest, which God has hallowed and blessed, from creation onward. In the Ten Commandments we are instructed to keep the seventh day, the Sabbath, as the day of rest (Gen. 2:1-3, Ex. 20:8-11, Acts 18:4).

Mark the following statements:

CATHOLICISM SPEAKS:

”Sunday is a Catholic institution, and its claims to observance can be defended only on Catholic principles…From beginning to end of Scripture there is not a single passage that warrants the transfer of weekly public worship from the last day of the week to the first.” - The Catholic Press, Sydney, Australia, August 1900

”It is well to remind the Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists and all other Christians, that the Bible does not support them anywhere in their observance of Sunday. Sunday is an institution of the Roman Catholic Church, and those who observe the day observe a commandment of the Catholic Church.” - Priest Braby, in an address, reported in the Elizabeth, N.J. ”News”, March 18, 1903

”Question: Have you any other way of proving that the (Catholic) Church has power to institute festivals of precept (to command holy days)?
Answer: Had she not such power, she could not have done that in which all modern religionists agree with her: she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday, the seventh day, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority.” - Stephan Keenan, A Doctrinal Cathecism, page 176

”Reason and common sence demand the acceptance of one or the other of these alternatives: either Protestantism and the keeping holy of Saturday, or Catholicism and the keeping holy of Sunday. Compromide is impossible.” - The Catholic Mirror, December 23, 1893

Conclusion: The Catholic Church openly admit that it is they that by law has changed the day of worship from Sabbath to Sunday in 336 BC. They also admit that if we shall follow the Bible, we have to keep the Sabbath holy, not Sunday.

PROTESTANTISM SPEAKS:

Anglican:
”And where are we told in the Scriptures that we are to keep the first day at all? We are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first day.” - Isaac Williams, Plain Sermons on the Catechism, page 334, 336

Baptist:
”There was and is a command to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath day was not Sunday. It will however be readily said, and with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week, with all its duties, privileges and sanctions. Earnestly desiring information on this subject, which I have studied for many years, I sak, where can the record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New Testament-absolutely not. There is no scriptural evidence of the change of the Sabbath institution from the seventh to the first day of the week.” - Dr. E.T. Hiscox, author of the Baptist Manual

Methodist:
”It is true that there is no positive command for infant baptism. Nor is there any for keeping holy the first day of the week. Many believe that Christ changed the Sabbath. But, from His own words, we see that He came for no such purpose. Those who believe that Jesus changed the Sabbath base it only on a supposition.” - Amos Binney, Theological Compendium, page 180-181

American Congregationalist:
”The current notion that Christ and His apostles authotitatively substituted the first day for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament.” - Dr. Layman Abbot, in the Christian Union, June 26, 1890

When we are talking about what is happening about this subject in the very near future:
”Fearful is the issue to which the world is to be brought. The powers of earth, uniting to war against the commandments of God, will decree that "all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond" (Revelation 13:16), shall conform to the customs of the church by the observance of the false sabbath. All who refuse compliance will be visited with civil penalties, and it will finally be declared that they are deserving of death. On the other hand, the law of God enjoining the Creator's rest day demands obedience and threatens wrath against all who transgress its precepts.
With the issue thus clearly brought before him, whoever shall trample upon God's law to obey a human enactment receives the mark of the beast; he accepts the sign of allegiance to the power which he chooses to obey instead of God. The warning from heaven is: "If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation." Revelation 14:9, 10.
But not one is made to suffer the wrath of God until the truth has been brought home to his mind and conscience, and has been rejected. There are many who have never had an opportunity to hear the special truths for this time. The obligation of the fourth commandment has never been set before them in its true light. He who reads every heart and tries every motive will leave none who desire a knowledge of the truth, to be deceived as to the issues of the controversy. The decree is not to be urged upon the people blindly. Everyone is to have sufficient light to make his decision intelligently.
The Sabbath will be the great test of loyalty, for it is the point of truth especially controverted. When the final test shall be brought to bear upon men, then the line of distinction will be drawn between those who serve God and those who serve Him not. While the observance of the false sabbath in compliance with the law of the state, contrary to the fourth commandment, will be an avowal of allegiance to a power that is in opposition to God, the keeping of the true Sabbath, in obedience to God's law, is an evidence of loyalty to the Creator. While one class, by accepting the sign of submission to earthly powers, receive the mark of the beast, the other choosing the token of allegiance to divine authority, receive the seal of God.
-Ellen G. White: In the book The Great Controversy, page 605
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The Dangers of Eating Pork Exposed





PORK
� OR THE DANGERS OF PORK-EATING EXPOSED

By J. H. KELLOGG M.D.
GOOD HEALTH PUBLISHING COMPANY
BATTLE CREEK, MICHIGAN
1897
Retypeset from the original 1897 edition.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Harvey Kellogg was born in l852 in Livingston County, Michigan, to John P. Kellogg, a prominent member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Growing up in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, J.H. Kellogg was, quite naturally, interested in proper diet and health. This interest would not only lead to a degree in medicine, but a desire to travel around the world to learn from the best medical men of the day. But J.H. Kellogg developed another keen interest: he shunned many of the medical remedies of the time and sought to find natural cures for man's ills. This, in turn, led to his understanding about preventive medicine. His unique program of preventive medicine and natural cures soon made Dr. Kellogg quite famous around the world: "Rich and poor, high and low, including royalty, came from far and near to be treated by him."1

Besides his advocacy of natural cures, Dr. Kellogg promoted vegetarianism. This led to his development of the corn flake and other breakfast cereals that still bear his name. "In addition to being an able physician and a famous surgeon he was also a great writer. He wrote more than 50 books, most of them large scientific works . . . He was also an interesting instructive lecturer on health and temperance and a good preacher."2

As a lifelong seventh-day Sabbath-keeper, Dr. Kellogg was well acquainted with the Old Testament and undoubtedly took very seriously the admonition of God not to eat pork. Additionally, he obviously understood the old addage that "you are what you eat." After reading the results of Dr. Kellogg's research, few thinking individuals would want to have pig meat as a part of their bodies!3


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1Information and quotes from The Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia, Revised Edition, Vol. 10, 1976, pp. 722-724. Dr. Kellogg was also an inventor, chiefly of medical machinery and instruments. Many of his inventions are still in use in hospitals around the world.

2ibid. By agreement, Dr. Kellogg's brother, Will Keith, took over the manufacturing of Kellogg's Corn Flakes and became known as the "Cornflake King." Becoming tremendously successful, Will Kellogg made the name Kellogg's Corn Flakes a household word, literally, around the world.

3Dr. Kellogg remained a Sabbath-keeper all his life, but left the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1907. He died in Battle Creek, Michigan, on Dec. 14, 1943.

PORK -- OR THE DANGERS OF PORK-EATING EXPOSED

Pork-raising has come to be one of the great industries of this country; and since the supply is wholly regulated by the demand, it may be taken as a proper index of the prodigious quantities of swine�s flesh which are daily required to satisfy the gustatory demands of the American people. No other kind of animal food is so largely used as pork in its various forms of preparation. The Yankee makes his Sunday breakfast of pork and beans, while the same article is a prominent constituent of at least two meals each day during the remainder of the week. Pork and hominy is almost the sole element of the Texan farmer; while in the Western States pork and potatoes constitute the most substantial portion of the farmer's bill of fare. The accompanying dish may be hominy, beans, or potatoes, but the main reliance is pork in each case.

In the case of no other animal is so large a portion of the dead carcass utilized as food. It seems to be considered that pork is such a delicacy that not a particle should be wasted. The fat and lean portions are eaten fresh, or carefully preserved by salting or smoking, or both. The tail is roasted; the snout, ears, and feet are pickled and eaten as souse; the intestine and lungs are eaten as tripe or made into sausages; black pudding is made of the blood; the liver, spleen, and kidneys are also prized; the pancreas and other glands are considered great delicacies; while even the skin is made into jelly. In fact, nothing is left of the beast, not even the bristles, which the shoemaker claims. Surely it must be quite an important matter, and one well deserving attention, if it can be shown that an animal which is thus literally devoured, and that in such immense quantities, is not only unfit for food, but one of the prime causes of many loathsome and painful maladies. Let us examine the hog a little, and see what can be determined respecting his real nature, and his office in the economy of nature, if he has any.

A Live Hog Examined

Look at that object in a filthy mud hole by the roadside. At first, you distinguish nothing but a pile of black, slimy mud. The dirty mass moves! You think of a reptile, a turtle, some uncouth monster, reveling his Stygian filth. A grunt! The mystery is solved. The sound betrays a hog. You avert your face and hasten by, sickened with disgust. Stop, friend, admire your savory ham, your souse, your tripe, your toothsome sausage in its native element. A dainty beast, isn�t he!

Gaze over into that sty, our pork-eating friend. Have you done so before? And would you prefer to be excused? Quite likely; but we will show you a dozen things you did not observe before. See the contented brute quietly reposing in the augmented filth of his own ordure! He seems to feel quite at home, doesn't he? Look a little sharper, and scrutinize his skin. Is it smooth and healthy? Not exactly so. So obscured is it by tetter, and scurf, and mange, that you almost expect to see the rotten mass drop off as the grunting creature rubs it against any projecting corner which may furnish him a convenient scratching-place. As you glance around the pen, you observe that all such conveniences have been utilized until they are worn so smooth as to be almost inefficient.

Rouse the beast, and make him show his gait. See how he rolls along, a mountain of fat. If he were human, he would be advised to chew tobacco for his obesity, and would be expected to drop off any day of heart disease. And so he will do, unless the butcher forestalls nature by a few days. Indeed, not long ago a stout neighbor of his was quietly taking his breakfast from his trough, grunting his infinite satisfaction, when, without a moment's warning or a single premonitory symptom, his heart ceased to beat, and he instantly expired without finishing his meal, much to the disappointment of his owner, who was anticipating the pleasure of quietly executing him a few hours later, and serving him up to his pork-loving patrons. Suppose his death had been delayed a few hours, or rather, suppose the butcher had got the start of nature a little, as he generally contrives to do!

But we have not yet finished the examination of our hog. If you can possibly prevail upon yourself to sacrifice your taste in the cause of science, pork-loving friend, just clamber over into the reeking sty, and take a nearer view of the animal that is destined to delight the palates of some of your friends, perhaps your own. Make him straighten out his fore legs. Now observe closely. Do you see the open sore or issue, a few inches above his foot on the inner side? Do you say it is a mere accidental abrasion? Find the same on the other leg; it is rather a wise and wonderful provision of nature. Grasp the leg high up and press downward. Now you see its utility, as a mass of corruption pours out. That opening is the outlet of a sewer. Yes, a scrofulous sewer; and hence the offensive, ichorous matter which discharges from it. Should you fill a syringe with mercury or some colored injecting fluid, and drive the contents into this same opening, you would be able to trace all through the body of the animal little pipes communicating with it.

What must be the condition of the body of an animal so foul as to require a regular system of drainage to convey away its teeming filth? Sometimes the outlet gets closed by the accumulation of external filth. Then the ichorous stream ceases to flow, and the animal quickly sickens and dies unless the owner cleanses the parts, and so opens anew the feculent fountain, and allows the festering poison to escape.

What dainty morsels those same feet and legs make! What a delicate flavor they have, as every epicure asserts! Do you suppose the corruption with which they are saturated has any influence upon their taste and healthfulness?

Perhaps you are thoroughly disgusted now, and would like to leave the scene. Pause a moment. Now let us look at the inside of this wonderfully delicious beast!

A Dead Hog Examined

Do you imagine that the repulsiveness of this loathsome creature is only on the outside? That within everything is pure and wholesome? Vain delusion! Sickening, disgusting, as is the exterior, it is, in comparison with what it covers, a fair cloak, hiding a mass of disease and rottenness which grows more superlatively filthy as we penetrate deeper and deeper beneath the skin.

What Is Lard?

Just under the foul and putrid skin we find a mass of fat from two to six inches in thickness, covering a large portion of the body. Now what is this? Lard, says one; animal oil; an excellent thing for consumptives; a very necessary kind of food in cold weather. Lard, animal oil, very truly; and, we will add a synonym for disease, scrofula, torpid liver. Where did all that fat come from, or how happened it to be so heaped up around that poor hog? Surely it is not natural; for fat is only deposited in large quantities for the purpose of keeping the body warm in winter. This fat is much more than is necessary for such a purpose, and is much greater in amount than ever exists upon the animal in a state of nature. It is evidently the result of disease. So gross have been the habits of the animal, so great has been the foulness of its body, that its excretory organs--its liver, lungs, kidneys, skin, and intestines--have been entirely unable to carry away the impurities which the animal has been all its life accumulating. And even the extensive system of sewerage with its constant stream, which we have already described, was insufficient to the task of purging so vile a body of the debris which abounded in every organ and saturated every tissue. Consequently this great flood of disease, which made its way through the veins and arteries into the tissues, and there accumulated as fat! Delectable morsel, a slice of fat pork, isn�t it? Concentrated, consolidated filth!

Then the fatter the hog, the more diseased he is? Certainly. A few years ago, there were on exhibition at the great cattle show in England a couple of hogs which had been stuffed with oil cake until they were the greatest monsters of obesity ever exhibited. Of course they took the first premium; and if a premium had been awarded to the animals which were capable of producing the most disease, it is quite probable that they would have headed the list still.

Lard, then, obtained from the flesh of the hog by heating, is nothing more than extract of a diseased carcass! Who that knows its character would dare to defile himself with this "broth of abominable things?"

Disgusting Developments

Now let us take a little deeper look, prepared to find disease and corruption more abundant the deeper we go. Observe the glands which lie about the neck. Instead of being of their ordinary size, and composed of ordinary gland structure, we find them surrounded by large masses of scrofulous tissue. Perhaps tuberculosis degeneration had already taken place. If so, the soft, cheesy, infectious mass is ready to sow broadcast the seeds of consumption and premature death. For, according to some excellent authorities, tuberculosis disease is capable of communication by means of tubercles. If the animal is of sufficient age, the further process of ulceration will have occurred.

Now take a deeper look still, and examine the lungs of this much-prized animal. If he is more than a few months old, you will be likely to find large numbers of tubercles. If he is much more than a year old, you will be more likely than not to find a portion of the lung completely consolidated. Yet all of this filthy, diseased mass is cooked as a delicious morsel, and served up to satisfy fastidious tastes. If the animal had escaped the butcher�s knife a few years, he would have died of tuberculosis consumption.

But what kind of a liver would you expect such an animal to have? Is not excessive fatness one of the surest evidences of a diseased and inactive liver? infallible! Then a fat hog must have a dreadfully diseased bile manufactory. Make a cut into its substance. In seventy-five cases out of a hundred you will find it filled with abscesses. In a larger percentage still will be found the same diseased products which seem to infest every organ, every tissue, every structure of the animal. Yet these same rotten, diseased, scrofulous livers are eaten and relished by thousands of people who cannot express their contempt for the Frenchman who eats a horse or the China man who dines upon fricasseed puppy.

Now just glance at the remaining contents of the abdomen. In every part you notice evidences, unmistakable, of scrofula, fatty degeneration, and tuberculosis masses.

Where Scrofula Comes From

The word scrofula is derived from the Latin scrofu, which means a sow. The ancient Romans evidently believed that scrofula originated with the hog, and hence they attached the name of the beast to the disease. Saying that a man has scrofula, then, is equivalent to saying that he has the hog disease. After we have seen that the hog is the very embodiment of scrofulous disease, can any one doubt the accuracy of the conclusion of the Romans who named the disease?

Origin of the Tapeworm

We shall attempt to trace the history of this horrid parasite only so far as concerns its introduction into the human system.

With this end in view, let us glance again at the diseased liver. It will be no uncommon thing if we discover numberless little sacs, or cysts, about the size of a hemp seed. These do not present a very formidable appearance, certainly; but as soon as they are taken into the human stomach, the gastric juice dissolves off the membranous sac, and liberates a minute animal, which had been lurking there for months, perhaps, awaiting this very opportunity. This creature, although very small, is furnished with a head and four suckers, attach themselves firmly to the wall of the intestine, and the parasite begins to grow. In a short time an addition to its body is produced posteriorly, attached like a joint. Soon a duplicate of this appears, and then another, and another, until the body attains a length of several yards. Not infrequently tapeworms measuring thirty to one hundred feet in length are found in the intestines of human beings.

Under some circumstances the eggs of the tapeworm find entrance into the body, when the disease is developed in another form. The embryonic worms consist of a pair of hooklets so shaped that a twisting motion will cause them to penetrate the tissues after the fashion of a corkscrew. Countless numbers of these may be taken into the system, since a single tapeworm has been found to produce more than two million eggs. By the boring motion referred to, which seems to be spontaneous in the young worm, the parasites penetrate into every part of the body. Penetrating the walls of the blood vessels, they are swept along in the life-current, thus finding their way even to the most delicate structures of the human system. They have been found in all the organs of the body, even the brain and the delicate organs of vision not escaping the depredations of this destructive parasite.

When this lively migrating germ gets fully settled in the tissues, it becomes enveloped in a little cell, and remains quiet until taken into the stomach of some other animal, when it is liberated, and speedily develops into a full-grown tapeworm, as already described. But although quiet, the imprisoned parasite is by no means harmless. The cysts formed often attain such a size as to endanger life. When developed in the eye, they occasion blindness; in the lungs or other organs, they interfere with the proper functions of the organs; in the liver, which is the frequent rendezvous of these destructive creatures, a most serious and fatal disease known as hydatids is occasioned by the extraordinary development of the cysts, which are originally not larger than a pea, but by excessive growth assume enormous proportions. The same disease may occur in any other part of the body in which the germs undergo development.

The germs of these dreadful animals are found not only in the liver, but in other organs as well. Pork containing them is said to be "measly." Sometimes the condition is discovered; but that such is not always the case is evidenced by the fact that tapeworm is every year becoming more frequent. It has long been common in Germany. In Iceland it has become extremely common. In Abyssinia the occurrence of the worm has become so frequent, owing to the bad dietetic habits of the people, that it has been said that every Abyssinian has a tapeworm. In this country the parasite is most common among butchers and cooks.

Some time since, we received from a friend in the South a specimen of pork which was so densely peopled with the germs of this dreadful parasite that every cubic inch of flesh contained more than a score of them. The writer has in his microscopical cabinet specimens of the embryonic worms taken from hydatid tumors of the liver of a patient who died of the disease in Bellevue Hospital, New York.

The poor victim who is forced to entertain this unwelcome guest suffers untold agonies, and finally dies, if he cannot succeed in dislodging the parasite.

The Terrible Trichina

Now, my friend, assist your eyesight by a good microscope, and you will be convinced that you have only just caught a glimpse of the enormous filthiness, the inherent badness, and the intrinsic ugliness of this loathsome animal. Take a thin slice of lean flesh; place it upon the stage of your microscope, adjust the eyepiece, and look. You will see displayed before your eyes hundreds of voracious little animals, each coiled up in its little cell, waiting for an opportunity to escape from its prison walls and begin its destined work of devastation.

An eminent gentleman in Louisville has made very extensive researches upon the subject, and asserts that in at least one hog out of every ten these creatures may be found. A committee appointed by the Chicago Academy of Medicine to investigate this subject reported that they found in their examinations at the various packing-houses in the city, one hog in fifty infested with trichina. Other investigations have shown a still greater frequency of the disease.

A few years ago I obtained a small portion of the flesh of a person who had died from trichina poisoning. Upon subjecting it to a careful microscopical examination with a good instrument, I discovered multitudes of little worms. Each individual presented the appearance shown in the accompanying accurate engraving. The animal is there seen enclosed in a little cyst, or sac, which is dissolved by the gastric juice when taken into the stomach. The parasite, being thus set at liberty, immediately penetrates the thin muscular walls of the stomach, and gradually works its way through the whole muscular system. It possesses the power of propagating its species with wonderful rapidity; and a person once infected is almost certain to die a lingering death of excruciating agony.

In Helmstadt, Prussia, one hundred and three persons were poisoned in this way, and twenty of them died within a month.

It is doubtless not known how many deaths are really due to this cause; for many persons die of strange, unknown diseases, which baffle the doctors' skill both as to cure and diagnosis. Trichinosis very much resembles various other diseases in some of its stages, and is likely to be attributed to other than its true cause. It is thought by prominent medical men that hundreds of people die of the disease without suspecting its true nature.

Pork Unclean

Have we not seen that a hog is nothing better than an animated mass of physical defilement? Few who have seen the animal will dispute that his filthiness is a most patent fact. How wise and sanitary, then, was the command of God to the ancient Jews: "It is unclean unto you. Ye shall not eat of their flesh nor touch their dead carcass."

Although it may not be said that this law still exists, and is binding as a moral obligation, it is quite plain that the physical basis upon which the law is founded is as good today as at any previous period. Could it be proved that the hog had kept pace with advancing civilization, and had improved his habits, we might possibly feel more tolerance for him; but he is evidently just as unclean as ever, and just as unfit for food.

Adam Clarke, when once requested to give thanks at a repast of which pork constituted a conspicuous part, used the following words: "Lord, bless this bread, these vegetables, and this fruit; and if thou canst bless under the gospel what thou didst curse under the law, bless this swine�s flesh."

The Mohammedans, as well as the Jews, abstain entirely from the use of pork. Such is also the case with some of the other tribes of Asia and Africa.

Evil Effects of Pork-Eating

At the head of the list we place scrofula. How almost universally it abounds. How few are entirely untainted by it. How do chronic sore eyes, glandular enlargements, obstinate ulcers, disfigured countenances, unsightly eruptions, including the long list of skin diseases, all proclaim the defilement of the blood with this vile humor. So, too, do the vast army of dwarfed, strumose, precocious children tell the same story.

Erysipelas, too, a dreadful scourge, owes more to pork than to any other predisposing cause.

Leprosy, that terrible disease, so common in Eastern countries, and now beginning to show itself upon our own shores, is thought by many to be largely attributable to pork-eating.

"Biliousness," a name which covers nearly every bad condition for which no appropriate name can be found, is notoriously the result of pork-eating. This is the main reason why so many people complain of biliousness in the spring, after gorging themselves with fat pork all winter. The liver is overworked in attempting to remove from the system such a mass of impurity as is received in the eating of pork. It consequently becomes clogged, congested, torpid. Then follow all the ills consequent upon the irritating effects of the accumulation of biliary matters in the blood. The skin becomes tawny and jaundiced. The kidneys are overworked. Perhaps fever results. A partial clearing out then occurs, which enables the individual to pass along for a time again until some epidemic or contagious disease claims him as its lawful victim.

Consumption is another disease which is not easily separable from pork-eating. In fact, scrofula is its great predisposing cause. The narrow chests, projecting shoulders, thin features, and lank limbs of so many young boys and girls are evidence of a consumptive tendency, of which a scrofulous diathesis is the predisposing cause.

Dispepsia, that malady of many forms, frequently results from the use of pork, especially when fat and salted or smoked pork, one of the most indigestible of foods, is used. Pork requires between five and six hours for its digestion, while wholesome food will digest in half that time. This is the reason for the notion that salt pork is an excellent thing to "stick by the rib."

Tapeworm, we have already mentioned as the result of eating measly pork. It is a very difficult disease to cure, and often baffles the best medical skill for many years. Few ever detect the cysts in the flesh of the hog unless their attention has been directed to the matter.

Trichinae produce in man an incurable disease. No remedy can stay the ravages of the parasite. All pork-eaters are in constant danger; for the worm is too small to be seen without the aid of the microscope. However, this disease is not nearly so formidable as the others named; for it is not so common, neither does it entail any weight of suffering upon posterity.

Apologies For Pork-Eating Examined

On every hand we are met by all sorts of excuses for continuing to make swine's flesh an article of diet in spite of the striking evidences of its dangerous character. Let us examine a few of the most common of these apologies, and test their value.

Pork is Necessary as a Heat-forming Food in Winter � Are there not plenty of more healthful animals than hogs to supply all the animal fat necessary? Certainly there are; and, better still, we have the various grains and farinaceaous vegetables, which are abundantly sufficient to furnish all the heat required by man in any latitude.

Our Fathers and Grandfathers Ate Pork, and yet Lived to very Old Age � Ah! yes, my good friend, and you are suffering the penalty of their transgressions. You may not be aware of it yet; but more than likely your old age will not be so free from ills as was theirs. And quite as probably you may even now see in your children the results of your own, as well as your fathers, disregard of the dictates of sound sense in feasting upon the hog. Their frequent sore eyes, sore mouths, tetter, crysipelas, and other eruptions, are all evidences of the scrofula which they have inherited.

Neither can you urge the plea, "Pork does not hurt me." No man ever became a drunkard who did not make the same excuse for liquor. You may not feel it now; but the future will expose your delusion.

The Hog is Cleanly if You Give Him a Chance to Be so � It is surprising to us that any one who knows anything of the real nature of a hog can make such an assertion. Who has not seen hogs wallowing in the foulest mire right in the middle of a green, fragrant clover pasture? The dirty creature will turn away from the nicest bed of straw to revel in a stagnant, seething mud hole. If one of his companions dies in the lot or pen, he will wait until putrefaction occurs, and then greedily devour the stinking carcass. The filthy brute will even devour his own excrement, and that when not unusually pressed by hunger.

The hog is by nature a scavenger, and is especially adapted for that purpose. Let him pursue his natural hunger.

Sufficient Heat Will Kill the Trichinae and Incipient Tapeworms � Surely, dead worms cannot kill any one; but it must be delightful for the pork-eater to contemplate his ham or sausage with the reflection that he is partaking of a diet of worms. The Frenchman sometimes eats earthworms; the African relishes lizards; and one philosopher so far overcame his natural prejudices as to eat spiders. "How disgusting!" you say, and you shut your eyes and swallow a million monsters at a meal, because they are cooked and so cannot bite. The louse-eating Patagonian cannot equal that. But it should be remembered that in order that the parasite should be killed, every part of the meat must be subjected to a heat of at least 2l2 (degrees) which is quite difficult to do, and is seldom accomplished. A whole family was poisoned by eating pork-chops, which were well cooked upon the outside.

What Shall We Do With the Hog?

Stop raising him. Turn him loose. He will soon find his place, like the five thousand which ran down into the sea in the days of Christ. If he must be raised, use him for illuminating our halls and houses. Lubricate our car and wagon with his abundant fat. Do anything with him but eat him. It would be dangerous to adopt the principle that we must devour everything which is in the way, or which cannot be otherwise utilized. Adam Clarke thought of one appropriate use to make of the hog. He said that if he was going to make an offering to the devil, he would employ a hog stuffed with tobacco.

Reader, what will you do? Can you continue to use as food such an abominable article as pork, and in so doing run so many risks as you must do? And if you decide that the animal is unfit to claim a place upon your own table, can you conscientiously raise and sell him to your neighbors' injury?

Cases of Trichina Poisoning

The reported cases of death from this terrible cause have become so frequent that we are no longer startled by them. Ten years ago the description of the death of a person literally infested with worms, and tortured to death by their inroads upon the system, would have excited feelings of the deepest horror; but these accounts have now become so common that little interest is shown in them, and death from this cause is one of the regular causes of additions to the mortuary list. Nevertheless, the disease is divested of none of its real horrors by its common occurrence. No one is safe; any one who uses swine's flesh as food in any form is liable to the disease. Salting, smoking, and the other ordinary means of curing pork do not destroy the parasite.

A few years ago, Dr. Germer, health officer of Erie, Pa., was sent for in haste to see a patient who was supposed to be suffering from the cholera. He hastened to the bedside, and found a whole family sick with the symptoms much resembling those of cholera, though the season was then midwinter. Suspecting the possible cause, he secured a specimen from the pork barrel, and hastened to his office. Upon making a careful microscopic examination, he found myriads of the loathsome parasites in every part of the flesh examined. The writer prepared numerous microscopic specimens of the worm in various aspects from a portion of the infected meat kindly furnished by the doctor. These have been shown to hundreds of persons who were skeptical respecting the existence of such a pest.

In this case the hog had been fattened on the premises, having been purchased when quite young by the owner, a German, from a drove of hogs which passed through the city. It was known that, previous to the purchase of the hog, two of the drove had died on the road, and had been devoured by their scavenger companions. No doubt the deaths were the result of trichinosis; and by devouring the victims the whole herd became infected. It would be difficult to estimate what an amount of suffering and death was entailed by the consumption of this great herd of trichinous hogs. Several members of the German family died, together with several of the neighbors. Those who survived the acute stages of the disease escaped only to linger out a painful existence in the chronic and incurable state of the malady.

Some three years later the writer received a specimen of pork from a gentleman in Wisconsin who requested an examination of the same, stating that he procured it from the pork barrel of a neighbor whose family were suffering from a disease which the doctors called cholera infantum. Several of the children had died, and other members of the family were still dangerously ill. The pork had been suspected and examined, but no trichinae were found by the observers, though several physicians had inspected it. Upon making a careful microscopical inspection of the specimen, it was found to be alive with young trichinae.



Slow-moving storm batters the Midwest

(Associated Press / Hannah Foslien )

Snow and ice cover highways, ground flights
By Patrick Condon
Associated Press / December 25, 2009

MINNEAPOLIS - A blustery storm spread snow and ice across the heartland yesterday as Americans rushed to get home for the holidays, grounding flights, stranding drivers on white-knuckle highways, and forcing churches to cancel Christmas Eve services.

“I don’t think God wants anyone to get killed or break a hip or break a knee or something,’’ said the Rev. Joseph Mirowski of the Greek Orthodox Church of the Transfiguration in Mason City, Iowa, where up to a foot of snow and sleet was expected.

A foot or two of snow was forecast in parts of the Plains and the Midwest by today. Blizzard warnings were issued for Minnesota, North Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wisconsin, and drivers were encouraged to pack emergency kits before setting out during what is normally one of the busiest travel periods of the year. The storm was also expected to cover highways in the East with ice today.

Slippery roads were blamed for at least 14 deaths this week as the slow-moving storm made its way across the country from the Southwest. Since Tuesday, icy roads have been blamed for accidents that killed at least seven people in Nebraska, four in Kansas, one each in Minnesota and Oklahoma, and one near Albuquerque.

High winds blowing snow across icy roads were a concern elsewhere. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol closed eastbound Interstate 40 in El Reno after numerous accidents, and the state’s National Guard was activated to rescue motorists stranded by collisions or spinouts along the H.E. Bailey Turnpike, which runs to the Texas state line.

Governor Rick Perry of Texas activated military personnel to help drivers, while Governor John Hoeven of North Dakota placed additional state troopers and the National Guard on standby.

Winds gusted to 40 miles per hour in central Kansas, and up to 60 miles per hour were forecast in Oklahoma. “The wind is killer, especially when you’re empty,’’ trucker Jim Reed said during a stop in Omaha, Neb. “Anything that’s boxed, like a refrigerator trailer like I have, becomes like a giant sail in the wind.’’

Tony Glaum of Leavenworth, Kan., was traveling with his wife and daughter to his parents’ home north of Manhattan. He said they were thinking about staying overnight rather than making their usual Christmas Eve trip back home.

Still, he said, he is looking forward to a white Christmas: “I think snow would be pretty nice.’’

Nearly 100 flights from the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport were canceled by midday. By late afternoon, though, a spokesman said most flights were getting out. The Oklahoma City airport shut down one of its three runways and canceled nearly 30 flights. Two-hour-plus delays were reported at Houston’s Hobby Airport, and Chicago’s O’Hare had hour-long delays and more than 30 cancellations.

Traditional Christmas Eve services were also put off.

The Rev. Roger Claxton canceled services at Grace Memorial Episcopal Church in Wabasha, Minn., after the area got at least 8 inches of snow. Claxton feared his congregation’s senior citizens would feel compelled to attend.

“I’d rather have people stay home than do their funerals in a couple weeks,’’ he said.

The Rev. Mark Kelm told parishioners to stay home if they didn’t feel safe, though he planned to hold services even if he was the only one there at St. John in the Wilderness Episcopal Church in White Bear Lake, a suburb of St. Paul, Minn.

“If I have to make it on cross-country skis, I’ll be here,’’ Kelm said. “The best way I can explain it is, it’s just like a pregnant woman - if the baby is coming, the baby is coming. For us, the Christ child is going to be celebrated.’’

Karen Scholten said her family would conduct a mini-service at home after the Eagle Grove, Iowa, church she has attended since 1965 canceled its Christmas Eve service for the first time she could recall.

“I’m sure we will read the Christmas story and listen to some Christmas hymns,’’ she said.

Source: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2009/12/25/slow_moving_storm_batters_the_midwest/

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Thursday, December 24, 2009

Indigenous delegates ask Pope to repudiate Doctrine of Discovery


By Gale Courey Toensing

Story Published: Dec 21, 2009

Story Updated: Dec 18, 2009

MELBOURNE, Australia – While indigenous delegates from around the world were sidelined at the 15th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, the collective voice of indigenous peoples at the 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions was heard calling on the Pope to repudiate the Christian Doctrine of Discovery.

The Doctrine, a fundamentally racist philosophy from the 15th century, continues to allow powerful nation-states to dehumanize people and devastate the living earth in their endless search for resources and markets, the delegation said.

Indigenous peoples from around the world, including a Haudenosaunee delegation, attended the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Australia Dec. 3 – 9.

The Parliament is an interfaith organization formed in 1893 “to cultivate harmony among the world’s religious and spiritual communities and foster their engagement with the world and its guiding institutions in order to achieve a just, peaceful and sustainable world.” It meets every five years.

While the delegates came from diverse geographies and cultures, they easily unified around the intersecting themes of the Christian Doctrine of Discovery, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and climate change. The delegates articulated their concerns in a document called “An Indigenous Peoples’ Statement to the World Delivered at The Parliament of the World’s Religions Convened at Melbourne, Australia on the Traditional Lands of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation December 9, 2009.”

The seven point statement calls for immediate action on climate change; the protection of earth-based religions and sacred sites both within and outside their territories; strengthening and protecting indigenous cultures and languages, repatriation of the ancestors’ remains and sacred items, and the support and implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The final item is “To call upon Pope Benedict XVI and the Vatican to publicly acknowledge and repudiate the papal decrees that legitimized the original activities that have evolved into the dehumanizing Doctrine of Christian Discovery and dominion in laws and policies.”

“Overall the trip was very successful in bringing forward the idea of rescinding the papal bulls,” said Jake Swamp, Wolf Clan sub-chief of the Kahniakehaka, Mohawk Nation, author, and founder of the Tree of Peace Society, an international organization promoting peace and environmental conservation.

“I think that’s the most important thing in our time is to finally attack the roots of the oppression experienced by indigenous peoples worldwide.”

The papal bulls were 15th century documents issued by the popes of the Roman Catholic Church giving permission to the kings of Spain and Portugal to conquer and claim “undiscovered” lands, enslave or skill their non-Christian populations, and expropriate their possessions and resources. The English monarchy followed suit with “charters” to explorers such as John Cabot to colonize “the New World.”

The Doctrine of Discovery, which these documents formulated, was a principle of international law – a kind of early trade agreement that whichever Christian European country “discovered” lands populated by non-Christians could claim those lands and resources.

The Doctrine concerns indigenous people all over the world, because it continues to negatively affect people everywhere, said Philip Arnold, associate professor of indigenous religions in the Department of Religion at Syracuse University, and a member of the Haudenosaunee delegation.
Arnold, who is married to a Mohawk woman, participated on a panel with some members of the Haudenosaunee delegation where he discussed how the Doctrine even affects his own family.

The Doctrine justified the establishment of the notorious boarding schools in the 19th and 20th centuries that aimed to “civilize” Indian children by removing them from their families and stripping them of their language, traditions, and culture, Arnold said.

“My wife’s family suffered through boarding schools, so I was able to talk about the Doctrine and how it negatively impacts us. In those boarding schools, everything was stripped out of these kids, so even though it was more than 100 years ago that my wife’s grandfather was in a boarding school, we still deal with that legacy every day with our children, trying to help them understand what was done and why they don’t participate in Long House ceremonies, for example, because their clans were taken from them by this ‘civilizing’ process.”

He said the panel presentations by the Haudenosaunee delegation were effective in stimulating interest.

“There were a lot of Christians from a variety of denominations and they got very active and wanted to know what they could do to help bring awareness about the Doctrine of Discovery and we encouraged them to do that within their own denominations. There was a Catholic priest who was very animated about this.”

A movement to repudiate the Doctrine is gaining steam among Christian churches since the Episcopal Church issued a resolution renouncing it and urging support of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples at its national meeting last summer. Last September, the Indian Committee of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends made a similar commitment.

Arnold said members of the Haudenosaunee delegation will continue to work to raise awareness of the Doctrine in the hope of gaining a critical mass of grassroots support the Vatican will not be able to ignore.

“The Doctrine maps a cultural attitude – our arrogance – toward the indigenous peoples and the earth. The whole colonial project, which is the legacy of America, is based on these principles, which are directly antagonistic to Native peoples, but also antagonistic to the life systems of the earth. So this idea of Discovery just can’t hold up.”

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Melbourne 2009 - Parliament of World Religions


Melbourne Parliament of Religions bridges the world

Friday, 11 Dec 2009

by Mark Brolly


The Parliament of the World's Religions ended on 9 December with a gesture of solidarity with another international gathering on the other side of the world, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

Adherents of many of the 220 religious and spiritual beliefs from more than 80 countries represented at the Parliament gathered on a new footbridge over the Yarra after the closing plenary session to send a message to delegates in the Danish capital: "Protect The Only Earth We Have."

It was a simple but striking end to the six-day Parliament at the new Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre at South Wharf. The theme of the Parliament, which first met in Chicago in 1893, was "Make a World of Difference: Hearing Each Other, Healing the Earth".

The Dalai Lama was the key attraction on the final day, appealing to religious and spiritual adherents to promote the importance of the inner person and compassion to help solve the world's problems. He said the world had made great material advances but a great moral crisis was damaging both people and the planet.

Archbishop Freier gave the Christian Blessing at the closing ceremony, from the Beatitudes, capping the contribution of local and international Anglicans to the five-yearly gathering, which was attended by more than 5000 people.

Dr Freier and Bishop John Harrower of Tasmania celebrated Sunday Eucharist on 6 December as part of the morning observances held on each day of the Parliament. The archbishop was also a panellist on the role of religion and spirituality in the public discourse and at a seminar with Melbourne youth.

The Revd Professor Gary Bouma chaired the board of management for the Melbourne Parliament, Archdeacon Philip Newman, whose responsibilities are for Christian unity and relations with the world's religions, was active in promoting the event, while local Anglicans such as the Vicar of Holy Trinity East Melbourne, Fr John Stewart, hosted pre-Parliament forums and was a volunteer guide during the event itself.

International Anglicans, such as the Revd Dr Marcus Braybrooke, President of the World Congress of Faiths and patron of the International Interfaith Centre in Oxford, and Bishop Geoffrey Davies, coordinator of the Southern African Faith Communities' Environmental Institute, were speakers, panellists and moderators.

The senior elder of the Wurundjeri people, Joy Murphy Wandin, played a prominent role in both the opening and closing plenary sessions, offering the Welcome to Country and presenting the Dalai Lama and other religious leaders with traditional gifts.

Local and overseas indigenous representatives were prominent participants throughout the Parliament, which included 662 programs, the screening of 37 films and 42 off-site events. There were 1500 presenters, performers and exhibitors, while other events included a communities night on 4 December, in which local adherents of many faiths hosted visitors at venues around Melbourne.

Chicago Muslim leader and president of a foundation that runs a daily Islamic radio station, Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, succeeded American Lutheran scholar the Revd Bill Lesher as chair of the Parliament's board of trustees.

Imam Mujahid, in a speech resembling that of an evangelical preacher, launched PeaceNext.org, a social network enabling interreligious dialogue in cyberspace between five-yearly meetings of the Parliament.



Voices of faith at the Parliament of Religions

A couple of days ago I returned from Australia, where I attended the 2009 Parliament of World Religions. The event was held in Melbourne from December 3-10.

I spent those last couple of days trying to think how to describe the Parliament to those not there. I explained the experience to a few friends and a few folks from Patheos -- and each time it came out quite differently.

How could it not? We flew 15,000 miles to spend 7 days in a massive building with 5,000 people representing over 200 faiths. We saw a few of the 1,000 presentations and panel discussions, wandered the halls where the costumes of countless traditions and the languages of countless nations could be experienced in large, greedy gulps. And we heard the ideas and opinions of lots and lots of folks. That is pretty hard to describe.

Within the context of the overall Parliament, I had the chance to talk to a lot of people. A dozen of them I talked to on camera -- and I asked them the same 4 questions each:

- What does it mean to be a in today's world?- With the "shrinking" of the world through technology, how does that impact you and your tradition?- When you interact with others, from different traditions, what aspects of your tradition do they find it easiest to understand or accept -- and what aspects to they find it more difficult to understand or accept?- What do you hope comes out of gatherings like this one in Melbourne?

I asked that of some of the traditions we DON'T hear as much about -- even at Patheos so far. The Patheos team of regular contributors includes people that are Christian (Catholic, Mainline Protestant, Evangelical Protestant, and Mormon), Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Atheist and "Non-Affiliated". So I specifically sought out other voices, and interviewed a Jain, a Soka Gakkai, a Scientologist, a Quaker, a Hindu, a Baha'i, a Sikh, a Gnostic, a Zoroastrian, a Wiccan, a Hare Krishna, and a Unitarian-Universalist.

Their video interviews are here.

To be fair, these aren't random adherents (although, at the Parliament, you always get people who have a pretty active role in their traditions) -- they are instead teachers or spokespeople for their tradition.

As you watch the videos, you start to notice some things. The voices and accents and garb and cultural heritage of the speakers varies wildly. The context of their tradition colors their answers.

But beyond all of that, the utter sameness of so much of what they are saying starts to sink in. That they are proud of their tradition. That they think at the core it is about a few fundamental human truths. That they believe their is a lot of good that their tradition can do in the world. That they are trying to do some real, practical good. And that you don't have to be a member of that tradition to join with them to help make it a better place.

Some of you will notice that and will be surprised, and some of you will notice that and not be surprised. But notice it, either way.

There are some huge problems out there in the world. And although it is clear that the solutions to these problems must involve the world's religious traditions, it isn't clear that many of the religious institutions will be able to get out of their own way in order to do so. I'll have a lot to say about some of those things in upcoming blogs.

By Leo Brunnick December 15, 2009; 3:30 AM ET

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There'll be nowhere to run from the new world government

'Global' thinking won't necessarily solve the world's problems, says Janet Daley

By Janet Daley
Published: 7:24PM GMT 19 Dec 2009



The committee to save the world: Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, Gordon Brown and other leaders at the Copenhagen climate talks Photo: AFP/GETTY


There is scope for debate – and innumerable newspaper quizzes – about who was the most influential public figure of the year, or which the most significant event. But there can be little doubt which word won the prize for most important adjective. 2009 was the year in which "global" swept the rest of the political lexicon into obscurity. There were "global crises" and "global challenges", the only possible resolution to which lay in "global solutions" necessitating "global agreements". Gordon Brown actually suggested something called a "global alliance" in response to climate change. (Would this be an alliance against the Axis of Extra-Terrestrials?)

Some of this was sheer hokum: when uttered by Gordon Brown, the word "global", as in "global economic crisis", meant: "It's not my fault". To the extent that the word had intelligible meaning, it also had political ramifications that were scarcely examined by those who bandied it about with such ponderous self-importance. The mere utterance of it was assumed to sweep away any consideration of what was once assumed to be the most basic principle of modern democracy: that elected national governments are responsible to their own people – that the right to govern derives from the consent of the electorate.

Given the global ambitions of the terrorists, British casualties in Afghanistan are not disproportionateThe dangerous idea that the democratic accountability of national governments should simply be dispensed with in favour of "global agreements" reached after closed negotiations between world leaders never, so far as I recall, entered into the arena of public discussion. Except in the United States, where it became a very contentious talking point, the US still holding firmly to the 18th-century idea that power should lie with the will of the people.

Nor was much consideration given to the logical conclusion of all this grandiose talk of global consensus as unquestionably desirable: if there was no popular choice about approving supranational "legally binding agreements", what would happen to dissenters who did not accept their premises (on climate change, for example) when there was no possibility of fleeing to another country in protest? Was this to be regarded as the emergence of world government? And would it have powers of policing and enforcement that would supersede the authority of elected national governments? In effect, this was the infamous "democratic deficit" of the European Union elevated on to a planetary scale. And if the EU model is anything to go by, then the agencies of global authority will involve vast tracts of power being handed to unelected officials. Forget the relatively petty irritations of Euro‑bureaucracy: welcome to the era of Earth-bureaucracy, when there will be literally nowhere to run.

But, you may say, however dire the political consequences, surely there is something in this obsession with global dilemmas. Economics is now based on a world market, and if the planet really is facing some sort of man-made climate crisis, then that too is a problem that transcends national boundaries. Surely, if our problems are universal the solutions must be as well.

Well, yes and no. Calling a problem "global" is meant to imply three different things: that it is the result of the actions of people in different countries; that those actions have impacted on the lives of everyone in the world; and that the remedy must involve pretty much identical responses or correctives to those actions. These are separate premises, any of which might be true without the rest of them necessarily being so. The banking crisis certainly had its roots in the international nature of finance, but the way it affected countries and peoples varied considerably according to the differences in their internal arrangements. Britain suffered particularly badly because of its addiction to public and private debt, whereas Australia escaped relatively unscathed.

That a problem is international in its roots does not necessarily imply that the solution must involve the hammering out of a uniform global prescription: in fact, given the differences in effects and consequences for individual countries, the attempt to do such hammering might be a huge waste of time and resources that could be put to better use devising national remedies. France and Germany seem to have pulled themselves out of recession over the past year (and the US may be about to do so) while Britain has not. These variations owe almost nothing to the pompous, overblown attempts to find global solutions: they are largely to do with individual countries, under the pressure of democratic accountability, doing what they decide is best for their own people.

This is not what Mr Brown calls "narrow self-interest", or "beggar my neighbour" ruthlessness. It is the proper business of elected national leaders to make judgments that are appropriate for the conditions of their own populations. It is also right that heads of nations refuse to sign up to "legally binding" global agreements which would disadvantage their own people. The resistance of the developing nations to a climate change pact that would deny them the kind of economic growth and mass prosperity to which advanced countries have become accustomed is not mindless selfishness: it is proper regard for the welfare of their own citizens.

The word "global" has taken on sacred connotations. Any action taken in its name must be inherently virtuous, whereas the decisions of individual countries are necessarily "narrow" and self-serving. (Never mind that a "global agreement" will almost certainly be disproportionately influenced by the most powerful nations.) Nor is our era so utterly unlike previous ones, for all its technological sophistication. We have always needed multilateral agreements, whether about trade, organised crime, border controls, or mutual defence.

If the impact of our behaviour on humanity at large is much greater or more rapid than ever before then we shall have to find ways of dealing with that which do not involve sacrificing the most enlightened form of government ever devised. There is a whiff of totalitarianism about this new theology, in which the risks are described in such cosmic terms that everything else must give way. "Globalism" is another form of the internationalism that has been a core belief of the Left: a commitment to class rather than country seemed an admirable antidote to the "blood and soil" nationalism that gave rise to fascism.

The nation-state has never quite recovered from the bad name it acquired in the last century as the progenitor of world war. But if it is to be relegated to the dustbin of history then we had better come up with new mechanisms for allowing people to have a say in how they are governed. Maybe that could be next year's global challenge.
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Source:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/janetdaley/6845967/Therell-be-nowhere-to-run-from-the-new-world-government.html
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The Coming of Elijah the Prophet: Who? And How?


The Next Great Event on God's Calendar:

The Coming of Elijah the Prophet: Who? And How?

by Robert J. Wieland


The prospect intrigues thoughtful people worldwide. Elijah was the man who single-handedly confronted apostate Ahab and wicked Queen Jezebel during gross apostasy in Baal worship. When the nation’s rulers tried to kill him he had to hide in an unknown spot by the Brook Cherith, and later as a guest of a widow in the heathen land of Sidon. And Elijah is not dead: he was translated without seeing death, a type of those living today (do I dare say, “us”?) who will welcome Jesus at His second coming in glory. We must read the great promise as it is word for word in Malachi 4:5, 6:

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet

Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.

And he will turn

The hearts of the fathers to the children,

And the hearts of the children to their fathers...”

Why hasn’t God’s promise yet been fulfilled? What is Elijah going to do when he comes? Why has God chosen to send him rather than say Enoch, who was also translated without seeing death? In all the 6000 years of human history, only these two people have escaped the ravages of death. Enoch was translated before the flood of Noah, obviously has had more experience watching earthly events.

Elijah must be someone special for he was chosen to accompany the resurrected Moses to visit with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17) and encourage Him as He faced the horror of His cross.

Elijah is a live human being, never tasted death, and he must possess a glorified body. Where he is in the universe no one knows. Is Elijah being forced to hide in some modern “Brook Cherith” or as a guest of some foreign “widow of Zarephath” who is outside “Israel”? You remember, when Ahab and Jezebel tried to kill him and Elijah found refuge in Sidon, Jesus cited that fact to the acute embarrassment and anger of the true church of that day. What made them angry were these words of Jesus:

“I tell you truly, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was great famine throughout all the land; but to none of them was Elijah sent except to Zarephath, in the region of Sidon [a pagan land]. . . All those in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath...” (Luke 4:26, 28).

This promise of sending us Elijah is sure.

Jesus promises, “I will come again,” and we believe that one; that’s why we are Seventh-day Adventists. We must believe this promise, too! It’s the next great event on His calendar. We make much of the terrible things coming—religious persecution, for example, and we publish our magazine LIBERTY—which is very good. But do we have a magazine devoted to “Elijah’s” work and his message?

Actually, Elijah is good news and he encourages our children, whereas the frightening political situation is bad news. And what the Lord wants to tell the world is good news. He wants a New Covenant motivation to replace our time-honored Old Covenant one.

The common perception some have of “Elijah” is of a fiery-tempered reformer who specializes in chopping heads off religious leaders with whom he disagrees—that is, prophets of Baal. But that is not a balanced view of Elijah’s ministry. True, he arranged for 450 of them at Carmel to be taken down to the Brook Kishon for that to be done to them.

And the Lord may appoint Elijah to do the equivalent to modern “prophets of Baal,” but that is not the primary work he will do. Note, he will “turn the hearts” of “fathers” and “children,” and that requires turning marital hearts also. In other words, the topic of our Sabbath School lessons this last quarter is the Elijah message of “turning hearts” in our homes. That’s what we call “reconciliation,” and reconciliation is the same as “atonement,” making two to be one. According to the prophecy of Daniel 8:14, we are living in the great antitypical Day of Atonement which comes just before “the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” In fact, today is that day, the special time of reconciliation, of turning hearts.

Therefore it becomes clear that Elijah’s work and message will be found in the unique remnant-church-truth of the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary. We know that the bulk of God’s true people are still in “Babylon.” There are modern “Obadiah’s” who keep them alive with a little famine food and water. We too easily forget that the three angels’ messages of Revelation 14 are primarily directed to the Sunday-keeping churches; that’s where the bulk of God’s people are still to be found.

You already know the story of the original Elijah.

In 1 Kings 17:1 he appears out of nowhere, no designation of “prophet” or evidence that the Lord had sent him. He just suddenly crashes the king’s gate and startles him at his desk with the news that no more rain will fall until he agrees for it to come, “except at my word.” Face it, this sounds arrogant. He doesn’t say, “until the Lord agrees for rain to fall.” He says, “at my word.” Shocking as it is, Elijah has taken over the administration of the Lord’s work in Israel. God has entrusted enormous responsibility to him personally, including control of the elements. Elijah is a forerunner of that group of overcoming people in Revelation 3:21 to whom Jesus says He will grant to “sit with Me in my throne, even as I overcame and sat down with My Father in His throne.” Just as God gave executive authority to Elijah, so He will give executive authority to those who overcome even as Christ overcame. Elijah will have some important part to have from now on.

James in the New Testament does not say that the drought was the primary will of God; rather, it was His answer to the initiative of Elijah’s prayer:

“Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain . . .” (James 5:17, 18; emphasis added).

Ahab, you better send your soldiers quick and catch that man before he gets away; he has your kingdom in the palm of his hand!

But he did get away, and we follow him as he takes refuge at a little tributary of the Jordan where the ravens brought him gourmet meals (swiped probably from Ahab’s dinner table). But even providential water dries up and Elijah is directed to pagan Sidon—because (this is to the shame of God’s people!) there wasn’t a widow in Israel who had the faith or the nerve of this believing pagan lady of Zarephath. She preserved his life and fed him to nourish him until he took the long journey back to Ahab.

After the famine had sobered even Ahab and Jezebel, Elijah suddenly confronts Obadiah; the king slinks humiliated to meet him, the appointment is made to call the people to Mt. Carmel, Elijah taunts the Baal preachers, demands that they demonstrate before the crowd the lie that their imported Baal worship is, and he prays a prayer that gives us a clue to what the modern “Elijah” will do when he comes again:

“Hear me, O LORD, hear me, that this people may know that You are the LORD God, and that You have turned their hearts back to You again” (1 Kings 18:37; emphasis added)

Did you catch it? “Turning hearts” is Elijah’s main concern, and that will be his work for the church and for the world when he comes just before the return of Jesus. And we know that turning alienated hearts in atonement (at-one-ment) is something only the message of Christ’s cross can accomplish. Therefore it follows that Elijah’s message will be lifting up “Christ and Him crucified.” Jesus says something parallel to sending Elijah,

“‘Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.’ This He said, signifying by what death He would die” (John 12:31-33).

As an evangelist, Paul caught the idea. This at last is real “evangelism”:

“And I, brethren, when I came to you, . . . determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:1, 2).

Paul turned his world upside down with that message. From this we conclude that the message of that fourth angel which lightens the earth with glory (Revelation 18:1-4) will not be a fear-motivated brand of spiritual terrorism. Wherever and whoever “Elijah” is, he is not a spiritual Osama bin Laden scaring people into conversion; he is pleading as an “ambassador for Christ, . . . we implore you, be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20. What is the message he bears? What Christ accomplished on His cross:

“For He [the Father] made Him [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (vs. 21).

What was ancient Israel’s fundamental problem?

Something called “Baal worship.” We are inclined to think the people were stupid to confuse such an apparently clumsy counterfeit as Baal for Him who is the true God. But it was extremely sophisticated and subtle. Don’t kid yourself into thinking you are too smart to be misled. Almost everybody got swept in, the elite included. Is there such a thing as Baal-worship today that presents a challenge to us as it did to ancient Israel? The Lord’s servant has some serious insights. It’s a time of a serious crisis in the Lord’s work:

“Infidelity has been making its inroads in our ranks; for it is the fashion to depart from Christ, and give place to skepticism. With many the cry of the heart has been, ‘We will not have this Man to reign over us.’ [Lk 19:14] Baal, Baal, is the choice. The religion of many among us will be the religion of apostate Israel, because they love their own way, and forsake the way of the Lord. The true religion, the only religion of the Bible, that teaches forgiveness only through the merits of a crucified and risen Saviour, that advocates righteousness by the faith of the Son of God, has been slighted, spoken against, ridiculed, and rejected” (Testimonies to Ministers, pp. 467, 468; 1890).

The date gives this startling statement its context: the 1888 message of Christ’s righteousness which was “in a great degree” rejected and “kept away by our own brethren,” she says, and from the world. What happened when the latter rain and the Loud Cry had to be withdrawn? She explains:

“By exciting that opposition Satan succeeded in shutting away from our people, in a great measure, the special power of the Holy Spirit that God longed to impart to them. The enemy prevented them from obtaining that efficiency which might have been theirs in carrying the truth to the world, as the apostles proclaimed it after the day of Pentecost. The light that is to lighten the whole earth with its glory [Revelation 18:1-4] was resisted, and by the action of our own brethren has been in a great degree kept away from the world” (Letter to Uriah Smith, 1SM 234, 235; 1896).

The crisis Elijah faced in Israel was terrible.

We need to grasp how exceedingly clever was this counterfeit of Baal worship. Almost entire Israel was deceived. The word Baal was common. In ancient terminology, the husband was the master, the ba’al, of the wife who was dependent on him for her whole livelihood and over whom he had total authority. “Baal” being the simple every-day word for “lord,” the people used it for God just as we today use the word “Lord.” (Our Swahili Africans use the word “Bwana”). They were actually afraid to pronounce the sacred name which even today we are not sure how to pronounce—Yahweh, Yakweh, or Jehovah.

The Bible describes three aspects of Baal worship. Ellen White says it took the people about a century on this slippery slope (cf. Jeremiah 23:12) of confusion to descend to the Baal worship of Ahab’s and Jezebel’s day.

(1) It was an unconscious apostasy. Like a frog in warm water that gradually gets hot until he is boiled, the people were unconscious of this falling away. After Israel fell, the southern kingdom Judah also became infatuated with it. Jeremiah remonstrates with them,

“How can you say, I am not polluted? I have not gone after the Baals? See your way in the valley, know what you have done” (2:23).

They were as unconscious of their falling away as is modern Laodicea of ours, to whom the Lord Jesus says in our genuine sincerity, “You . . . do not know . . .” your true condition before God, before the world, and before the universe (Revelation 3:17).

(2) This Baal worship was subtly combined with the true worship of the Lord in His Jerusalem Temple:

“The children of Judah . . . have set their abominations in the house which is called by My name to pollute it” (7:30).

(3) To make bad become worse, this Baal worship was promoted by the very priests who were ordained to lead the people in the worship of the true Lord:

“Both prophet and priest are profane. . . They prophesied by Baal and caused My people Israel to err. . . Profaneness has gone out into all the land’” (23:11-15).

A simple definition of Baal-worship, both ancient and contemporary, is this: the worship of self disguised as the worship of Christ. It’s the assimilation of the thinking of “nations” around us in modern “Babylon.” The only remedy: the crucifixion of self “with Christ.” But that in turn becomes possible only as we understand what happened on the cross. Babylon just cannot grasp it due to their embracing the pagan-papal doctrine of natural immortality of the human soul. We say it humbly: no church on earth can proclaim what happened on the cross as can Seventh-day Adventists. This is said with deep respect to the Sunday-keeping popular churches; their doctrine has blinded them. They may be ever so sincere.

Who is “Elijah” today, and where is He?

God honored the faith of the honest Jews of Christ’s day and sent them “Elijah” in fulfillment of Malachi’s promise because they sincerely expected that the coming of their Messiah would be “the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” Even the disciples wondered “who” and “where” their “Elijah” was. Jesus told them he had already come in the person of John the Baptist:

“Assuredly I say to you, among those born of woman there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist. . . . And if you are willing to receive it, he is Elijah who is to come” (Matthew 11:11-13).

But John’s day was not “the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” That day is now. Therefore we may expect “Elijah” to come as a message in the same way that John’s message was the fulfillment of Malachi’s promise. The message to come as a shaking message will “slay” the modern “prophets of Baal.” “Elijah” won’t need to decapitate anyone; each “prophet of Baal” will create his own disappearing act (emphasis in each statement is added):

“There will be a refining, winnowing process in every church, for there are among us wicked men who do not love the truth or honor God” (RH March 19, 1895).

“We are in the shaking time, the time when everything that can be shaken will be shaken” (6T 332; 1900).

“In the absence of persecution there have drifted into our ranks men who appear sound and their Christianity unquestionable, but who, if persecution should arise, would go out from us” (Ev 360; 1890).

“Those who . . . continue to counterwork the work God would have accomplished will be purged out, for God accepts the service of no man whose interest is divided” (Ms 64, 1898).

“Those who have had great light and precious privileges but have not improved them will, under one pretext or another, go out from us” (6T 400; 1900).

“Many a star that we have admired for its brilliance will then go out in darkness” (PK 188; c. 1914).

“Frequent will be the apostasies of men who have occupied responsible positions” (RH Sept. 11, 1888).

“The great issue so near at hand will weed out those whom God has not appointed, and He will have a pure, true, sanctified ministry prepared for the latter rain” (3SM 385; 1886).

“Elijah” will proclaim nothing but positive “straight testimony.”

It will be the best Good News the world or the church has ever heard.

His message will be the “third angel’s message in verity,” which will be a clearer concept of “the everlasting gospel” since Pentecost’s message. The Protestant Reformers of the 16th century understood justification by faith clearly for their time; but they, including the Wesleys, lived too soon to grasp the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary in this Day of Atonement. Even Ellen Harmon failed to grasp it until after the Great Disappointment of October 22, 1844. When she came to her 60’s she eagerly welcomed a message brought by two young men to a General Conference Session in 1888 that brought a more clear understanding of justification by faith, the beginning of the Loud Cry of Revelation 18. She exclaimed with enthusiasm that it‘s initial “showers from heaven of the latter rain.” It was the Elijah message.


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* Sermon, Meadow Vista (Calif) Seventh - day Adventist Church, March 25, 2006
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