Last Days - Roelof's News Reports #4

[Roelof]

For the U.S. military, it’s the million dollar question — or rather the $687 billion question, according to a recent estimate of the Iraq war’s total cost. Is Iraq now stable enough for them to take a permanent back seat?

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debat...tion=debatehub

[Roelof]

California is under the judgment of the Lord for liberal gay and abortion laws - Roelof

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, optimistic California can finish its budget negotiations in a few days, is willing to reconsider his proposed cuts to education in hopes of averting a cash crisis, the San Francisco Chronicle said on Saturday.

Schwarzenegger to help reduce California's $26.3 billion budget deficit with cuts to school spending that would require suspension of constitutional rules on education expenditures.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...5601F220090704

[Roelof]

CAIRO — The most important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/wo...n.html?_r=1&hp

[Roelof]

It is not now as it hath been of yore. Summits between the leaders who live in the White House and the Kremlin once transfixed the world, as competing superpowers, ideologies and worldviews clashed. But when Barack Obama visits Moscow on July 6, it will be something of a rarity for the U.S. President: a rather dull trip. Obama will encounter no cheering crowds or overly excited local media.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...908308,00.html

[Roelof]

A lot of my former colleagues have been out of work for over a year," she says from her home

Today's unemployment figures don't offer much solace for job seekers. Nationally, unemployment reached 9.5 percent, up from 9.4 percent in May, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/205038

[RevLogos]

The head of Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle6638568.ece

I am sure a lot of us have suspected this for a long time. Question is, why leak this now? Who is the message for?

Today we live in a bizzarro world created by Obama, where Israel's ally, the US, might actually shoot down an Israeli jet passing through Iraq on the way to Iran. But Israel's long time enemy, Saudi Arabia, would let them pass through.

The shortest route form Israel to Iran's nuclear facilities in through Iraq. Obama has shut that down. The only other practical route is through Saudi Arabia. Israel is sending a signal to Obama that they do not need Iraqi airspace. Israel will do this without US help when the time comes.

I just wonder if they will decide to go through with it before its too late.

[Roelof]

The shortest route form Israel to Iran's nuclear facilities in through Iraq. Obama has shut that down. The only other practical route is through Saudi Arabia. Israel is sending a signal to Obama that they do not need Iraqi airspace. Israel will do this without US help when the time comes.

I just wonder if they will decide to go through with it before its too late.

2008/9/10 - Three total solar eclipses on the Biblical date of Av 1, for three years: Av 1 – 1 August 2008; Av 1 – 22 July 2009; Av 1 – 11 July 2010.

Maybe Israel will strike Iran still in July. The elections in Iran are past now

[Roelof]

One hundred and forty people have been killed and more than 800 wounded in riots that rocked the western China at the weekend, the deadliest social unrest since the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Running battles raged through the city of Urumqi throughout Sunday, pitting members of the Uighur minority against ethnic Han Chinese. Witnesses said that up to 3,000 rioters went on the rampage, smashing buses and overturning police barricades during several hours of violence.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle6646669.ece

[Roelof]

MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama arrived in Russia on Monday for a summit with Russian leaders at which a framework deal on arms cuts was to be signed as part of efforts to improve strained ties between Moscow and Washington.

An agreed text of an outline deal on cutting Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals would be put to Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev at a Kremlin meeting later in the day, a U.S. official told Reuters.

http://www.reuters.com/article/world...5640IZ20090706

[Roelof]

The government can scrap all laws discriminating against gays, the Holy Bible will remain the same forever - Roelof

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American attitudes have changed and the "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward gays serving in the U.S. military should be reviewed, former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Colin Powell said on Sunday.

President Barack Obama favors overturning the policy, which bars gay troops from serving openly in the military. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked military lawyers to look at ways to make the law more flexible, hailed by gay rights groups as a "seismic political shift".

http://www.reuters.com/article/polit...5641A920090705

Do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor abusers, nor homosexuals, (1Co 6:9)

The Lord loves all sinners. All you must do is to repent your sins and stop sinning. God will forgive you then - Roelof

My prayer for all gays:

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, in order to prove by you what is that good and pleasing and perfect will of God. (Rom 12:2)

In the Name of Jesus
Amen.

[Roelof]

LONDON, July 6 (Reuters) - The surviving parts of the world's oldest Christian bible will be reunited online on Monday, generating excitement among biblical scholars still striving to unlock its mysteries.

The Codex Sinaiticus was hand written by four scribes in Greek on animal hide, known as vellum, in the mid-fourth century around the time of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great who embraced Christianity.

Not all of it has withstood the ravages of time, but the pages that have include the whole of the New Testament and the earliest surviving copy of the Gospels written at different times after Christ's death by four of the Apostles: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

The bible's remaining 800 pages and fragments -- it was originally some 1400 pages long -- also contain half of a copy of the Old Testament. The other half has been lost.

"The Codex Sinaiticus is one of the world's greatest written treasures," said Scot McKendrick, head of Western manuscripts at the British Library.

The bible, which can be viewed online free from Monday, includes modern Greek translations and some sections translated into English.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/...x.html?_r=1&hp

Page the old Bible:

http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/virtualbooks/index.html

http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/

[Roelof]

Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important witnesses to the Greek text of the Septuagint (the Old Testament in the version that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians) and the Christian New Testament. No other early manuscript of the Christian Bible has been so extensively corrected.

A glance at the transcription will show just how common these corrections are. They are especially frequent in the Septuagint portion. They range in date from those made by the original scribes in the fourth century to ones made in the twelfth century. They range from the alteration of a single letter to the insertion of whole sentences.

One important goal of the Codex Sinaiticus Project is to provide a better understanding of the text of the Codex and of the subsequent corrections to it. This will not only help us to understand this manuscript better, but will also give us insights into the way the texts of the Bible were copied, read and used.
By the middle of the fourth century there was wide but not complete agreement on which books should be considered authoritative for Christian communities. Codex Sinaiticus, one of the two earliest collections of such books, is essential for an understanding of the content and the arrangement of the Bible, as well as the uses made of it.

The Greek Septuagint in the Codex includes books not found in the Hebrew Bible and regarded in the Protestant tradition as apocryphal, such as 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, 1 & 4 Maccabees, Wisdom and Sirach. Appended to the New Testament are the Epistle of Barnabas and 'The Shepherd' of Hermas.
The idiosyncratic sequence of books is also remarkable: within the New Testament the Letter to the Hebrews is placed after Paul's Second Letter to the Thessalonians, and the Acts of the Apostles between the Pastoral and Catholic Epistles. The content and arrangement of the books in Codex Sinaiticus shed light on the history of the construction of the Christian Bible.

The ability to place these 'canonical books' in a single codex itself influenced the way Christians thought about their books, and this is directly dependent upon the technological advances seen in Codex Sinaiticus. The quality of its parchment and the advanced binding structure that would have been needed to support over 730 large-format leaves, which make Codex Sinaiticus such an outstanding example of book manufacture, also made possible the concept of a 'Bible'. The careful planning, skilful writing and editorial control needed for such an ambitious project gives us an invaluable insight into early Christian book production.

http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/co...nificance.aspx

[Keturah]

I'm glad scientist are waking up, but I know he is alive for he has been real in my life.
I too believe we will be going home soon.

[Roelof]

Watching the governor of South Carolina cry like a little girl because his sexy e-mails got forwarded to his local newspaper, the State, made me wonder whether the real secret to a lasting marriage lies in limiting your means of escape. Whether you're putting the Buick Regal in reverse or hitting "Send" on a love note, you're busting out of your marriage, however temporarily, and soon enough there will be hell to pay.

When a married man begins a secret, solicitous correspondence with a beautiful and emotionally needy single woman, he has already begun to cheat on his wife.

And so two more american families discover a truth as old as marriage: a lasting covenant between a man and a woman can be a vehicle for the nurture and protection of each other, the one reliable shelter in an uncaring world — or it can be a matchless tool for the infliction of suffering on the people you supposedly love above all others, most of all on your children.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...908243,00.html

[Roelof]

And this gospel of the kingdom shall be proclaimed in all the world as a witness to all nations. And then the end shall come. (Mat 24:14)

My view is that "the end" could refer to the end of the Great Tribulation

The 10/40 Window is a term coined by Christian missionary strategist Luis Bush in 1990 to refer those regions of the eastern hemisphere located between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator, a general area that in 1990 was purported to have the highest level of socioeconomic challenges and least access to the Christian message and Christian resources on the planet.

The 10/40 Window concept highlights these three elements: an area of the world, with great poverty and low quality of life, combined with lack of access to Christian resources.

The Window forms a band encompassing Saharan and Northern Africa, as well as almost all of Asia (West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia and much of Southeast Asia). Roughly two-thirds of the world population lives in the 10/40 Window. The 10/40 Window is populated by people who are predominantly Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Animist, Jewish or Atheist.


"Unreached" non-Christian populations in the 10/40 Window:

• 865 million Muslims
• 550 million Hindus
• 275 million Buddhists
• 140 million in 2550 tribal groups (mainly animist)
• 17 million Jews

Total of 1.8 billion people

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10/40_Window