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The following articles are compiled by:

Leo Wong

Leo@WatchmenWatching.com

 

 

 

Testing raises abortion fears

Source: Winnipeg Free Press Online

 

February 7, 2007 -- Manitoba anti-abortion advocates and parents of Down syndrome children are worried offering all women the chance to have prenatal genetic screening will result in a "seek and destroy" mentality and a spike in the number of aborted fetuses.

 

The Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada (SOGC) will recommend today that every woman, regardless of age, have access to genetic screening for chromosomal abnormalities such as in Down syndrome.

 

The new guidelines will give all women the choice of having minimally invasive blood tests or ultrasounds to assess their risk. Before, these types of screening methods were reserved for pregnant women 35 and over, who have at least a one-in-400 chance of having a baby born with Down syndrome.

 

Statistics show that one in 800 babies is born with Down syndrome, 80 per cent of whom are delivered by women under 35. There are about 30,000 people with Down syndrome in Canada.

 

"I'm worried this may set up to weed out those that aren't perfect and need special care," said Jakki Jeffs, interim spokeswoman for League for Life Manitoba.

 

Comments:  Industrialized countries’ health care systems are bursting at the seams with overspending (not by choice, but necessitated by the burgeoning number of patients requiring care) and inadequate government funding.  The influx of HIV/AIDS patients places an enormous burden on the health budget.  As well, children born with defects require long term care that taxes the systems beyond the limit of reasonableness argues the critics of the bloated health care system.  Why not then screen all expectant mothers and counsel them as to their options concerning a newborn with a potential or verified defect?  It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?  With such data, mothers can make informed decisions as to whether carry the fetus to term or abort.  Of course, abortions will increase as a result of such screening.  How can they not?  Pro-lifers ought to be very alarmed.

 

Society today frowns upon handicapped people. You hear people making snide remarks about them and employers seethe under their breath because the law forces them to provide reasonable accommodations to the point of undue hardship.  “Normal” people resent the notion that people with physical and mental abnormalities are being taken care of through taxpayers’ money.  With rising income taxes and the cost of living outpacing cost of living wage increases, the resentment can only increase over time.

 

For the foreseeable future, one can postulate the Antichrist’s (AC’s) One World Government mandating that only physically and mentally healthy people with all limbs intact will be allowed to live.  The rest of the population will be ordered into extermination chambers to be rid of.  Handicapped people will serve no useful purpose for the AC for he places very little value on human life.  Like Hitler before him who envisioned a master race and sent millions of Jews and flawed humans to the gas chambers, the AC will be a mass murderer without mercy or conscience.

 

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More U.S. kids having obesity surgery

Source: Associated Press/USA Today

 

February 7, 2007 -- As the popularity of stomach surgery has skyrocketed among obese adults, a growing number of doctors are asking, "Why not children, too?"

 

For decades, the number of kids trying weight-loss surgery has been tiny. The operations themselves were risky, with a death rate of about 1 in 50. Children rarely got that fat, and when they did, pediatricians hesitated to put the developing bodies under the knife. Only 350 U.S. kids had such an operation in 2004, according to federal statistics.

 

But improvements in surgical technique and huge increases in the number of dangerously obese children have begun fueling a change of heart.

 

Comments:  Ezekiel 16:[49] Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her… Luke 17:[28] Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat [30] Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.  The days of Lot were characterized by binge eating because of the fatness of the land. Lot lived in Sodom which was so wicked (the Sodomites ruled the day) that the Lord had no choice but to destroy it with fire and brimstone from Heaven.  We’re indeed living in such days just prior to the return of Jesus.

 

Adults and children in industrialized nations such as Canada and the U.S. are obese like never before.  Lots of leisure time before the TV and video game monitors lends itself to munching on snack food loaded with trans‑fat and calories.  Adding to that is a general lack of exercise for that takes will, effort, and determination.  Kids, especially, take after their parents who set a bad example.  “Maybe it’s in the genes”, they say.  That could be it, but there are overweight kids with thin parents.  It probably has to do with the two income families which have more disposable money.  TV commercials bombard the viewers continually with fast food ads and who can readily resist such temptations?  Also, with so many families living hectic lives, a sit down home cooked meal is a thing of the past.  Instead, either Dad or Mom on the way home from work would pick up burgers, fried chicken and fries from the nearby drive through fast food joint and that constitute supper.  Ingesting more calories than the body needs translates into a buildup of fat and flab that shows up on one’s belly, hips and thighs.

 

The prevailing attitude of the day is that life is very brief and with all that discretionary money, it’s eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we’ll all end inside a crematorium.  There’s hardly a thought about the afterlife, just the present.  Food, oh delicious decadent food.  People are literally eating themselves to death.  Such is the society in which there’s no sense of the purpose of life.

 

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Remodeling European churches: As European worship steadily declines, many grand old buildings have fallen into disuse. What should become of them? 

Source: MSNBC.com

 

February 7, 2007 issue -- For the Muslims of Clitheroe, collective worship has never been easy. It's been 40 years since the first Asians settled in the little town close to England's industrial heartland, but the 300-strong community has struggled ever since to find a suitable site for a mosque. No longer. In December the town council finally approved plans for the conversion of a handsome but derelict structure: a disused Methodist chapel. "There is a feeling of overwhelming relief and joy," says Sheraz Arshad, a local Muslim leader. "Just because it looks like a church, there's no reason why it can't be used as a mosque."

 

Given the shifting demographics of an increasingly secular Europe, the conversion makes perfect sense. Across much of the continent, churchgoing is in long-term decline, while a swelling—and devout—Muslim immigrant population needs ever more places to worship.

 

Comments:  When nations give up on God, God stops blessing them.  (The U.S. better heed this warning or it, too, will be abandoned by God.)  Much of Europe has been weaned on Roman Catholicism which the masses increasingly find to be irrelevant.  The United Kingdom is the exception although its Protestantism isn’t doing so great either.  When the churches aren’t giving what the people need (i.e. Gospel preaching and the teaching of the Word as led by the Holy Spirit), the evitable turning away results.

 

As with the business world, losers create winners and in the spiritual world, Islam’s growth in Europe is at the expense of declining Christianity.  Former church goers see Islam as a viable alternative.  People are religious by nature and if they aren’t being catered to by nominal Christianity, then they’ll look elsewhere.  For some unknown reason, Islam’s lure is irresistible to them.  Perhaps, they’re attracted to Islam’s violent nature or the fact Muslims have a sense of purpose.  This sure beats going to a dead church each Sunday, a church that espouses nonsensical directionless generalities.

 

Islam’s aim is worldwide proselytism. Their adherents are fervent in converting infidels just like Mormon missionaries and Jehovah’s Witnesses.  Only Christians seem to be lackadaisical when it comes to personal witnessing to the unsaved.  The lukewarmness (apathy) of professing Christians is appalling.  Instead of being on tip‑toe expectation of their Lord’s return and announcing from the rooftop, “Behold the Bridegroom cometh!”, they’re asleep at the helm while the Devil’s servants scurry here and there sowing tares among the wheat.  Wake up! Ephesians 5:[14] Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.

 

 

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Keep watching (Matt 24:42)!

 

Until next time,

Shalom!

 

 

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