The following articles are compiled by:

Leo Wong

Leo@WatchmenWatching.com

 

 

Pope Benedict blames Marxism, capitalism for problems

Source: CNN.com/Associated Press

 

May 14, 2007 -- Pope Benedict XVI blamed Marxism and unbridled capitalism for Latin America's problems on Sunday, and urged bishops to mold a new generation of Roman Catholic leaders in politics to reverse the church's declining influence in the region.

 

Ending a five-day trip to the church's biggest stronghold on the planet, Benedict also warned that legalized contraception and abortion in Latin America threaten "the future of the peoples" and said the historic Catholic identity of the region is under assault.

 

Like his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, Benedict criticized capitalism's negative effects and Marxist influences that have motivated some grass-roots Catholic activists, remnants of the Liberation theology he moved to crush when he was a cardinal.

 

"The Marxist system, where it found its way into government, not only left a sad heritage of economic and ecological destruction, but also a painful destruction of the human spirit," Benedict said as he opened a two-week bishops' conference aimed at re-energizing the church's influence in Latin America.

 

But he added that unfettered capitalism and globalization, blamed by many in the region for the deep divide between the rich and poor, gives "rise to a worrying degradation of personal dignity through drugs, alcohol and deceptive illusions of happiness."

 

Benedict, speaking in Spanish and Portuguese to the bishops in Brazil's holiest shrine city, also said Latin America needs more dedicated Catholics in leadership positions in the media and at universities.

 

"This being a continent of baptized Christians, it is time to overcome the notable absence -- in the political sphere, in the world of the media and in the universities -- of the voices and initiatives of Catholic leaders with strong personalities and generous dedication, who are coherent in their ethical and religious convictions," Benedict said.

 

He said the church's leaders must halt a trend that has seen millions of Catholics turn into born-again Protestants or simply stop going to church.

 

"It is true that one can detect a certain weakening of Christian life in society overall," Benedict told 200 bishops and archbishops and 20 cardinals. "And of participation in the life of the Catholic Church, due to secularism, hedonism, indifferentism and proselytism by numerous sects, animist religions and new pseudo-religious phenomena."

 

While Brazil is home to more than 120 million of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics, the nation's census shows the percentage of citizens characterizing themselves as Catholics plunged to 74 percent in 2000 from 89 percent in 1980. The ranks of those calling themselves evangelical Protestants rose to 15 percent from 7 percent.

 

Waiting to catch a glimpse of the pope in the shadow of Aparecida's basilica, 68-year-old Maria Costa said Brazilians needed the message from Benedict, and that his trip could revitalize the church.

 

"Catholics weren't feeling very good with the Church, and that's why so many were leaving," she said. "I think that could change now. Let's hope so."

 

Comments:  The finger pointing continues in earnest for the beleaguered leader of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC).  Grabbing at straws for what is ailing his church, the pope chastises anything and everything, but not at the root of the problem, the Vatican itself.  People are fleeing the RCC because they don’t see it as being relevant in their lives.  The RCC has not kept pace with the times. It’s outdated, controlling, and authoritarian.  It doesn’t give its followers anything of substance to gnaw at.  The Gospel of Jesus Christ is what people need, not church doctrines and dogmas that enslave rather than liberate souls.

 

Take, for example, the Vatican’s immense coffers filled to the brim with gold, silver and precious gems.  The world’s wealthiest institution ought to divest itself of its riches and give it all to help feed and clothe the poor.  For a church that claimed that Peter was its first pope, it surely doesn’t follow the poor fisherman’s example.  Earthly riches do not define a humble church, but a religious organization steeped in pomp and hypocrisy.  People can see through such double‑standard sham and will abandon it in time.  It’s the working of the Holy Spirit that droves of Catholics have gone for Protestant’s evangelicals.

 

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Portugal pushes for June 2007 treaty deal

Source: EUObserver.com

 

May 14, 2007 -- As incoming EU presidency in the second half of this year, Portugal has made it clear that if there is no significant agreement on a new treaty in six weeks time, it will put the issue on the political back burner for its six month tenure of the bloc.

 

Portuguese prime minister Jose Socrates said that Berlin, as current EU presidency, will have to secure a "precise mandate" during the EU leaders summit on 21-22 June, otherwise Lisbon would not continue individual negotiations with member states.

 

Comments:  Six weeks to get the EU constitution ship righted?  That isn’t a whole lot of time.  With the snail pace of agreements and more red tape than city hall, how on earth can all 27 EU member states agree on something as important as a constitution in that short a time?  It would someone with a whip to get all the horses to gallop in the same direction and there’s no one presently who can do that.  Senor Javier Solana?  He’s good, but hardly a taskmaster.  Germany’s Angela Merkel’s stint as the 6‑month rotating EU President hasn’t been spectacular and she can’t be blamed.  Six weeks or even six months cannot accord sufficient time for anything major to be accomplished.  In other countries, even 4 years isn’t time enough.

 

After the Rapture event has occurred, the EU constitution thingy will get straightened out in record time.  Due to the extreme nature of the worldwide disappearance of millions of Christians and total chaos, those Left Behind in the EU will all rally behind their elected saviour, the Antichrist, who will make quick work in getting all parties’ signatures on the makeshift EU constitution document.

 

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Christians will be first to leave Jerusalem

Source: Jerusalem Post

 

May 14, 2007 -- As the number of Christian residents in the Holy Land continues to drop, an adviser to Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski called on the government on Sunday to ease restrictions on family reunification for Christian Arabs living in the capital.

 

"The first ones who will disappear from the city are the Christians," Motti Levy, the mayor's adviser for Christian and Arab affairs, told The Jerusalem Post in a telephone interview.

 

"Our task as a municipality is to ease matters for the dwindling Christian population, and not to make things harder for them," he said.

 

About 10,000 Christians live in Jerusalem.

 

Levy noted that the ongoing exodus comes as the increasingly-educated and professional Christian residents emigrate to the West for better job opportunities and a higher quality of life.

 

"They are victims of their own success," he said.

 

In unusually frank language, the former Foreign Ministry official conceded that the economic situation in the capital was "not good" and equated the exit of middle-class Christians to that of Israelis leaving the city for better jobs in central Israel, or a better quality of life in the suburbs.

 

"So long as our situation in Jerusalem deteriorates, the Christians are the first who are willing to leave," Levy said. "Jesus is not going to make them stay in Jerusalem."

 

Comments:   In the Middle East, the word ‘Christian’ usually means people born from a family that identifies itself with a Christian group, usually Catholic in origin.  You read of Lebanese Christians being one such group.  Whether they’re true born again Christians in the real sense of the word because their sins have been forgiven and they’re disciples of Christ is another matter that only God knows.

 

Jerusalem ought to be the most exciting city in the world to be in.  Jesus Christ will return to Earth within 7 years or so and set His feet on the Mount of Olives.  Now, that’s an event to look forward to!  Of course, we who believe in the pre-tribulation rapture of the Church won’t be on earth at that time, but we’ll break through the clouds riding on horses as we follow Jesus out of Heaven to destroy the armies of the world arrayed against Jerusalem and against the Son of God.  In this article, the exodus of ‘Christians’ for greener pastures do not really impact on the city if they’re Christian in name only.  A true believer who stays behind and lives his/her live for Christ, now that’s influence.

 

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Lethal injection creator: Bring back the guillotine for the death penalty

Source: CNN.com

 

May 14, 2007 -- Even proponents of the death penalty say they have doubts about whether the three-drug formula is the best way to execute someone. "I think it's a dumb way to do it," said Michael Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a group that advocates the death penalty. "It's a complicated procedure, and open to criticism."

 

Instead, Rushford said he supports using carbon monoxide, which he described as being "simple, fast, and painless."

 

Dr. Jay Chapman disagreed with that assessment. But he had another idea. "The simplest thing I know of is the guillotine. And I'm not at all opposed to bringing it back. The person's head is cut off and that's the end of it."

 

Comments:  Revelation 20:4: And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

Off with your head!  Henry VIII would practise that pronouncement while having breakfast.  Beheading is fast, relatively painless and final. The separation of the head from the body is physical proof that death has occurred.  In the classic children’s movie, “The Wizard of Oz”, the mayor of Munchkinland held up a huge death certificate and sang, "As coroner, I must aver, I thoroughly examined her, and she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead" (see: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/hills/6396/ozfromaz.htm).

 

With lethal injection or even electrocution, how can the relatives of the murdered person really know the murderer is truly dead?  After they carry him out on a gurney, he could wake up in the mortuary prior to embalming and escape to kill again.  Public beheading would create no doubts.  The verse quoted above tells us that during the Tribulation Period, beheading will be the preferred method of execution.  How prophetic is this news article!

 

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Reformed churches told to speak out on economic and ecological injustice

Source: christiantoday.com

 

May 14, 2007 -- The head of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches has urged its member churches around the world to break their silence on economic and ecological injustice.

 

WARC General Secretary, Setri Nyomi, was speaking at the Synod of the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands on 7 May when he told them to turn around economic injustice by changing their own lives.

 

“Two hundred years ago churches were silent about the slave trade. If we remain silent now, we are failing God,” he said.

 

“Each individual and each congregation can do something to change their lifestyles and make an impact on economic injustice and global warming.”

 

Comments:  Once again, we hear the same old refrain: Unite to fight poverty and save the planet from global warming.  Christ’s commission to go out into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature is put aside.  The physical needs of people override the more important issue, i.e. the salvation of one’s immortal soul.  What good is a well fed street urchin who ends up in Hell?  Or reversing the effects of pollution and return Earth to its once pristine state?  It’s all about how to make mankind comfortable in this world that’s under God’s judgment.

 

Christian denominations worldwide are sounding the same warnings and working together in the name of ecumenism to bring about social justice for all.  Even Pope Benedict has come aboard the Justice and Eco Ship.  Christians and Catholics together, the unequal yoke of believers with pagans.  Do you think that pleases God?  When the mission to spread the Gospel of God plays second fiddle to social and environmental issues which are of a temporal duration, you sense the end is very near.  Heaven on Earth cannot be established by the combined efforts of man. It will be Jesus who will reign from Jerusalem during the Millennium.

 

 

 

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Keep watching (Matt 24:42)!

 

Until next time,

Shalom!

 

 

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