The following articles are compiled by:

Leo Wong

Leo@WatchmenWatching.com

 

 

Russian Orthodox Church leaders end 80-year rift

Source: Associated Press

 

May 17, 2007 -- Church bells pealed as leaders of the Russian Orthodox faith signed a pact Thursday healing a historic, 80-year schism between the church in Russia and an offshoot set up abroad after the Bolshevik Revolution.

 

After a choir sang hymns, Moscow Patriarch Alexy II, leader of the main Russian Orthodox Church, led the ceremony with a sermon praising the end of the formal division.

 

"Joy illuminates our hearts," Alexy said, addressing worshippers in the vast Christ the Savior Cathedral. "A historic event awaited for long, long years has occurred. The unity of the Russian church is restored."

 

Alexy later signed the reunion agreement with Metropolitan Laurus, head of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. Worshippers wept and incense wafted up into the cathedral's soaring cupola.

 

Later in the ceremony, also attended by leaders of church and state, Alexy formally signed the reunion agreement with Metropolitan Laurus, head of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

 

President Vladimir Putin joined the celebration, broadcast live on television. Alexy thanked him for helping end the split by meeting with leaders of the church abroad.

 

Comments:  Like TV’s renovation guru Bob Villa used to say, “It’s good to be Home Again.”  Kiss and make up for the sake of Christian unity (i.e. ecumenism) is the rallying cry heard in Christendom these days.  We’re all brothers and sisters in the same family of God, aren’t we?  Of course, we are.  Put aside any past hurt feelings and disagreements and let’s get back together.  After all, “We Are Family.”

 

Now that the Russian Catholics have had their “love-in”, what’s next for the Eastern Orthodox churches?  It’s on to the Vatican to seek reconciliation with the pontiff.  The Old Roman Empire had two capital cities:  Rome *West) and Constantinople (East).  That political empire is re-uniting right before our very eyes.  The religious parts will also come together as one.  The consummation of both will occur just right after the Rapture event.  Baby step by baby step, we’re seeing it happen.

 

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Report: Hong Kong authorities ponder labeling the Bible 'Indecent' FOXNews.com/Reuters

 

May 17, 2007-- Residents of the city are calling for an "indecent" label for the Bible, saying the text contains passages that are too gory for young eyes, Reuters reports.

 

At least 838 complaints had been registered Wednesday with the city's Television and Entertainment Licensing authority after an anonymous Web site, truthbible.net, said the Bible "made one tremble" with its sexual and violent content, including rape and incest, the news agency reports.

 

The Chinese city has been debating the merits of indecency since a recent sex column published in the Chinese University's "Student Press" magazine asked readers about their violent sexual fantasies.

 

That column was branded as indecent by the Obscene Articles Tribunal.

 

If the Bible is labeled indecent in Hong Kong, people over the age of 18 will be the only ones able to purchase the book, and it would have to be sold with a warning label wrapped around the book.

 

The Web site truthbible.net already includes an English-language warning: "Legal Disclaimer Warning: This Web site contains Bible material which may offend and may not be distributed, circulated, sold, hired, given, lent, shown, played or projected to a person under the age of 18 years."

 

Comments:  Amos 8:[11] Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD.  The Bible may be banned for Chinese people under 18 because it’s indecent? How ridiculous!  It’s nothing but a clever scheme to deny the young from reading the Word and receive life everlasting. God is a Holy God and not a God of perversion.  If anything, all that porn that is produced in the USA, Europe and Asia is of the Devil, the father of perverts and depravity.

 

Ever since Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, the Communists have made it their goal to slowly turn Westernized Hong Kong into more like Peking.  Censorship has taken on a whole new meaning.  Western hedonistic practices have given way to socialistic norms.  The liberty to worship is being controlled.  Chinese Christians have had their freedoms curbed somewhat as the godless leaders of mainland China attempt to push God out of their society.  Sure, the Bible (in particular the Old Testament) contains violence and graphic sexual descriptions.  This is the ugly heart of mankind being recorded for our learning and safeguard lest we allow our old nature to have its sway.  Children may have nightmares from being read certain passages of Scriptures, but all scriptures are Holy Spirit inspired.  Let the Holy Spirit work in the minds of the young.  Don’t worry.  The Bible is rated G.

 

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Scientists discover a benefit to having herpes

Source: FOXNews.com

 

May 17, 2007 -- The herpes family of viruses can have a surprising upside — it can protect against the bubonic plague and other bacterial contagions, at least in mice.

 

Research into whether a similar mechanism applies to humans and other mammalian hosts should be conducted, said viral immunologist Skip Virgin at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "There may be symbiotic advantages to chronic infections with these viruses."

 

These new results do not mean people should go out and get infected with herpes, Virgin stressed. They probably already are.

 

Comments:  The unsaved seem to have a silver lining for some forms of sin.  “Accentuate the positive” is their mantra.  Sin sometimes produces side benefits. Tell that to a herpes carrier.  I don’t think he’ll jump up and down with uncontrollable joy in that he may be exempt from the bubonic plague.  Herpes hampers his licentious lifestyle and is a real pain in the *******.  Some moralists say herpes is God’s judgment on the promiscuous.  It may very well be.  God works in mysterious ways.

 

We do have from God’s Word that pestilences (diseases) will define the last days prior to Jesus’ return to Earth.  Luke 21:[11] And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.

 

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Would an implanted chip help to keep my child safe?

Source: TIMESONLINE

 

May 17, 2007 -- If your child could wear an implant – a microchip that could tell a computer where he or she was at any time to within a few metres – would you buy it? After the horrific snatch of three-year-old Madeleine McCann from her bed in Portugal, the answer from many parents seems to be “yes”.

 

Professor Kevin Warwick, who developed the technology that made it possible for the first child in Britain to volunteer to be “chipped” in 2002 – after the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman – has been bombarded with e-mails over the past few days from parents desperate to keep tabs on their children. As we talk, another e-mail drops into his inbox from a mother of two young children who says that she is deeply anxious about Madeleine’s disappearance and wants to know more about the chip technology.

 

It works, in theory, by sending a signal via a mobile-phone network to a computer that can identify the child’s location on an electronic map.

 

But there was the concern at the time over the ethics of tagging our children’s bodies – some groups, including Barnardo’s and Kidscape as well as sections of the media, said that it was a neurotic overreaction that would not benefit children in the long run. So Warwick, Professor of Cybernetics at Reading University, did not continue to develop the project nationally. “It caused such a backlash that we had to step back,” he says. “There were ethical concerns, and as a scientist you have to listen.” But he adds that the point about chipping is not that you would use it to track your children 24 hours a day – only in a worst-case scenario. “You would hope that it never gets used,” he says.   

 

Comments:  The kidnapping of a child is one of the worst nightmares a parent can have.  Not knowing where the missing child is, whether h/she is alive or not, and not receiving any news are all stressors that one can do without.  Kids can easily be separated from their guardians in a shopping centre.  Wouldn’t it be reassuring if your child can be tracked by GPS?  Missing children would be located and measures put in place to retrieve them.  Millions of parents would gladly pay a fee to have their loved ones implanted with a microchip.  Of course, there are alarmists out there who fear that Big Brother would force the chip on everyone, young and old alike.  Once you open the Pandora Box, all its contents are let loose and you can’t get them back into the box.  A chip implant (billions of them costing just pennies each) is in the works to track everything and I mean everything, i.e. animals, products and people.  Big Brother is just waiting for the opportune time to act.  Until then, little by little, the world’s population is conditioned to welcome the chip, the forerunner to the Mark of the Beast.  Revelation 13:[16] And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads.

 

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Vatican denies hiding the full truth about the end of the world  

Source: TIMESONLINE

 

May 17, 2007 -- The Vatican tried yesterday to draw a line under a conspiracy theory that has dogged the Catholic Church for decades – that it was harbouring details of the predicted apocalypse.

 

The Pope’s second-in-command, Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, denied that the Church was suppressing a vision of the end of the world said to have been revealed by the Virgin Mary to three shepherd children on a hillside at Fatima in Portugal exactly 90 years ago.

 

The three “Secrets of Fatima” were written down by one of the children, Lucia Dos Santos – who became a Carmelite nun – and sent to the Vatican in a sealed envelope. Two of the “secrets” were made public, apparently predicting the inferno of 20th-century world war and totalitarianism and the eventual reconversion of Communist Russia to Christianity.

 

Comments:  Ezekiel 39:[2] And I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee, and will cause thee to come up from the north parts, and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel: [5] Thou shalt fall upon the open field: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD. [6] And I will send a fire on Magog, and among them that dwell carelessly in the isles: and they shall know that I am the LORD.

 

Will Russia convert back to Christianity?  The above two verses would suggest “No”.  In a soon coming day, God will send a fire on Magog (Russia) and consume 5/6 of the population.  God doesn’t destroy true believers that way but He will judge the godless.  Now that we’re in the 21^st century, the predicted 20^th century WW3 didn’t happen after all.  The multitude of Catholics may be wondering if the Vatican has suppressed the “truth” of end of the world said to have been revealed by the Virgin Mary, but if they realize that the deceased Virgin Mary is unable to communicate to humanoids and that such appearances can be attributed to demonic forces, they can debunk that notion.  Satan and his myriads of demons walk and fly back and forth in the Earth’s atmosphere.  They are responsible for the many UFO sightings and apparitions and voices in séances, to name just a few of their workings.

 

Spiritual deception is one of the major signs of the Lord’s soon return.  Satan knows his time is short and he’s doing his utmost best to deceive the gullible and hold them steadfast in spiritual darkness.  Only the light of the Word can break through his fortress of deception and liberate the lost and perishing.  2 Corinthians 4:[4] In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

 

 

 

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Keep watching (Matt 24:42)!

 

Until next time,

Shalom!

 

 

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