The following articles are compiled by:

Leo Wong

Leo@WatchmenWatching.com

 

 

Bill Hybels unveils Willow Creek's future vision 

Source:  chirstianpost.com

 

May 4, 2007 -- Willow Creek Community Church, one of the largest and most influential churches in the nation, is unleashing a new vision that would expand its already far-reaching impact around the world.

 

A survey conducted among Willow Creek attendants had revealed "mind-blowing" results, as Hybels put it. It asked how satisfied attendants were with how Willow Creek serves them at various stages in their spiritual development. Pre-Christians, or people who are still seeking and exploring Christianity, rated Willow Creek "very high." Ratings dropped slightly among new Christians but were still "fantastic." Adolescent Christians rated the church as good. But fully devoted followers of Christ indicated less satisfaction, saying they are not sure the church is helping them as much at this stage in their life.

 

"We want more of the deep truths of God," they said, according to Hybels

 

In Vision 2010, Willow Creek leaders will be altering the way they coach to teach attendants how to be "self-feeding individuals" early on in their spiritual development. Rather than expecting to be spiritually fed each week with a 35-40 minute sermon on Sundays, congregants will start learning how to take responsibility for their own feeding. Everything else – the worship services and the classes at Willow Creek – will just be "whip cream" on top.

 

Willow Creek's third big idea is to unleash unprecedented levels of compassion into the broken world. The mega church already feeds thousands locally through food pantries and sends aid overseas for AIDS relief and tsunami recovery. But Hybels believes they're just in the "warm-up stage of what God is going to do in and through this church in unleashing unprecedented amounts of compassion and justice and fighting for the poor and oppressed in this world."

 

This is where "multiplied impact" comes in.

 

"When God moves in our church more and more, then it stirs other churches," said Hybels. "As the watching world sees Willow do this, there will be multiplied impact around the nation and around the world."

 

Comments:  The seeker sensitive mega-churches just go overboard with “feelings” and the promotion of the social gospel.  This survey told Bill Hybels that mature Christians are starving for the Word.  The unsaved needs the clear simple Gospel of God.  Once they’re saved, it’s at that time that service for God can begin.  The lost and perishing are outside of God’s family. They may be close to being saved, but closeness only counts in the game of horseshoes.  This is the most important mission of any church, big or small.  Get people into the church and preach Christ (and nothing else) to them.  All the contemporary music, self-esteem improvement messages, tapes, books and DVDs, and other psychological tools to make people feel good about themselves won’t cut it.  Big isn’t necessarily better.  In a very large church congregation, the masses tend to get caught up with the excitement and there’s no quiet moment to contemplate about one’s soul.  Vision 2010?  What about 2007, 2008 and 2009?  Why look so far ahead of ourselves.  The Lord might rapture us way before 2010.  Christians who have long range plans want to stay down here on this sin ravaged planet. Luke 12:[34] For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

 

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U.N.: China's one child policy stops global warming 

Source: YAHOO NEWS!

 

May 4, 2007 -- China's one-child per couple policy introduced in the early 1980s, for instance, had a side-effect of braking global warming by limiting the population to 1.3 billion against a projected 1.6 billion without the policy.

 

"This has reduced greenhouse gas emissions," he told a conference in Oslo last month. China is the number two emitter of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, behind the United States and ahead of Russia.

 

Comments:   There’s no dispute that planet Earth has way too many people.  With the pillaging of farmland, trees and other vegetation to make way for concrete and mud cities and towns, the planet is becoming like an arid desert.  The uncontrolled burning of fossil fuels spews carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which allows the sun’s rays to hit the planet’s surface, but keep them from bouncing back into space.  Each person consumes a large portion of resources and that taxes the system to the max.  Population control is one way to arrest global warming.  There will come a day not too far into the future where each of us will question whether we deserve to live or not.  The elderly, the handicapped, the sick and the poor especially will be looked upon as “defective” human beings not fit to live anymore.  The future One World Government dictator will start a war to exterminate a whole lot of people.  Revelation 6:8] And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

 

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US dollar drops below NIS 4.00 as shekel hits 7-year high

Source: Jerusalem Post

 

May 5, 2007 -- The US dollar dropped below the four-shekel mark on Monday for the first time in seven years, weighing in at NIS 3.993.

 

At the end of April, the dollar teetered on the edge of NIS 4.00, with analysts predicting it might go lower.

 

In a recent report, Morgan Stanley argued that Israel's strong macroeconomic data and structural shifts in the balance of payments had been the main parameters driving the shekel's continued sharp advance, more so than the dollar weakness around the world.

 

Similarly, the Bank of Israel has been stressing that the current account surplus widening to $6.8 billion and foreign investment reaching a record of $21.2 billion have been supporting the shekel in recent months.

 

Since October last year, the Bank of Israel has been cutting interest rates, but the cuts have not succeeded in weakening the currency.

 

Comments:   The times are good in Israel, in fact, very good.  The land flowing with milk and honey is prospering like none other and envious eyes (Arab and Russian eyes) are fixed on her wealth.  Even in the midst of an impending war, Israel’s economy is red hot.  Get into shekels.  Forget flipping houses for a hobby.  Shekels are the thing to go with.  Things are really going in Israel’s favour.  Of course, the Jewish people have always been good business wise and their ingenuity is legendary.  It’s no wonder companies have invested heavily in Israel’s hi-tech sector.  Not just hi-tech, but anything and everything that sits on top of Israeli soil.  Is it any wonder why most of the world hates Israel with a passion.  Many believe that Israel has the favour of God and that’s why she’s being blessed in such a way.  Those who detest the God of Heaven also have deep contempt for the Jewish state.  Israel’s future will be even brighter after she signs a comprehensive peace treaty with the world.  She’ll hit the wall, however, when the Antichrist breaks his agreement to protect Israel and turns on her at the mod-point of the Tribulation Period.

 

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Campaign targets 'Religion-Based Bigotry Against Gay People'

Source: crosswalk.com

 

May 5, 2007 -- A homosexual advocacy group announced on Thursday that it is launching a five-city, six-month "Call to Courage" tour to "educate Americans about the misuse of religious teachings to discriminate and isolate gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people."

 

However, a conservative Christian leader told Cybercast News Service that the group was replacing one kind of bigotry with another -- and "unfortunately, it's against Almighty God."

 

"We're asking Americans to be courageous and to join us in a stand against discrimination in all forms," said Mitchell Gold, founder of the organization Faith in America, during a telephone news conference on Thursday.

 

"As a nation, we have exhibited such courage in the past by rejecting the use of religion to sanction slavery and the subjugation of women," Gold said, adding that people "using their biblical interpretations to justify legalized discrimination or lack of protections for any American is just plain wrong."

 

Jimmy Creech, who spent 29 years as a minister in the United Methodist Church and is the organization's executive director, asserted that "religion-based bigotry" is presently being used "to manipulate the American public to take rights and protections away from GLBT people."

 

Rev. Dr. Cindy Love, executive director of the MCC, said it was "fitting" that Thursday's announcement took place on the National Day of Prayer, adding that she enthusiastically agrees with the campaign's goals.

 

"I believe we'll truly be a Christ-centered nation when we no longer allow our own homophobia, our irrational fear of GLBT people, to stop us from doing what is really right," Love asserted.

 

Comments:  So if you don’t believe homosexuality is morally wrong based on the Bible, you’re a bigot?  Gays and lesbians will have a field day with their campaign to stamp out religion-based bigotry.  Many of the public who used to shun and heap scorn upon “queer” people have resign themselves to the fact the gays and lesbians are here to stay and they don’t want to be labelled politically incorrect.  They’ve somehow given up the fight.  It’s the fundamental Christians and not necessarily all the evangelicals who still hold to God’s pronouncement of judgment to be meted out to all those who practise the vile unnatural sexual act.

 

Notice that a former Protestant liberal minister (of the United Methodist Church) and a female minister are supporting gay rights.  There seems to be no lack of assistance being given freely to the same gender groups.  These ministers have rejected God’s Bible as literal in interpretation and substituted it with their humanistic viewpoint.  They’re traitors to the faith and are working as unpaid servants of the Devil.  The turncoats are showing their true colours in these last days.

 

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3 of 4 kids lose religious beliefs at public schools

Source: WorldNetDaily.com 

 

May 6, 2007 -- Exodus, according to the dictionary, is "a going out, departure or emigration," or "the departure of the Israelites from Egypt under Moses." Now there are Christian leaders who would like to add another definition: "The mass departure of Christians from the public school system."

 

Chaplain E. Ray Moore of Exodus Mandate, whose goal is to "encourage and assist Christian families to leave Pharoah's school system," said there's an urgent need Christian parents must understand.

 

"Based on statistics, there is a 70-to-80 percent chance that a [Christian] child will abandon the church and their faith in a public school career," Moore told WND. The bottom line, then, is Christian parents need to lobby their pastors, pastors need to lobby their denominations, and their denominations need to start programs creating and operating public schools.

 

Comments:  The public school system is the Devil’s training ground.  With the removal of the reciting of the Lord’s prayer and other vestiges of Christianity, Christian young people go into the Devil’s lair like innocent lambs being led to the slaughter.  The unsaved parents don’t think of it that way because they’re blinded by the Devil.  Believers cringed when sending their little ones to kindergarten knowing that liberal humanism is the tool by which the kids will be indoctrinated.  Aside from home schooling and the setting up of Christian private schools, neither of which mixes the saved with the unsaved, what else is there?  Living segregated lives might insulate a child from the influences of the world, but when they graduate and go into the secular work environment, they’ll be fodder for the oppressive power hungry corporate bosses.  Much prayer must be lifted up to the Lord for guidance in these matters as this Christ rejecting world grows more evil by the day.

 

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MKs in Jerusalem welcome Sarkozy victory

Source: Jerusalem Post

 

May 6, 2007 -- The election of Nicolas Sarkozy as France's new president was well-received in Jerusalem on Sunday night, with several MKs calling the Conservative politician "a friend of Israel," Army Radio reported Monday.

 

Vice Premier Shimon Peres welcomed Sarkozy's friendship and added that the new president's victory speech declaration that a European Union-like treaty would be formed in the Middle East was a "very interesting" suggestion.

 

 

Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu, too, hailed Sarkozy's victory, calling it good news for Israeli-French relations.

 

Netanyahu asserted that "Sarkozy is a friend of Israel and a personal friend of mine. He wants to help Israel achieve true peace, and he understands our security needs well."

 

Comments:  The confetti showers down on Sarkozy from the Jerusalem government galleries.  Left and right wing politicians both hail this man (who came from relative obscurity to the forefront) as the man of peace who will do his part in helping Israel achieve “true” peace whatever that means.  Just ask Bibi Netanyahu his definition of “true”.  It’s eerie when Peres and Bibi agree on an issue.  Bibi should be wary.  This Sarkozy dude may have said all the right things in his victory speech, but will he deliver the goods or is he some fast food type joint that caters to the take‑out crowd only?  Only time will tell.  His proposed EU-like treaty has piqued the dovish Peres’ interest.  Peres is always on the lookout for some new fangled peace initiative for this man will make peace at any cost, even to Israel’s detriment.  The coming months will be exciting times as the new French leader uses his honeymoon status to re-energize the moribund peace talks in the Middle East.  Of course, we all suspect that he’s another of the One World Government underlings taking orders from the movers and shakers operating behind the scenes.

 

 

 

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Keep watching (Matt 24:42)!

 

Until next time,

Shalom!

 

 

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