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Prophecy News Watch Newsletter
For The Week Of January 1, 2009

Biblical Prophecy In The News
http://www.prophecynewswatch.com

Keeping You Informed of World Events From A Biblical Perspective

We are pleased to offer our new featured items that you can receive when you donate to our ministry:


The One Year Book Of Christian History

Most of us are greatly unaware of the past, especially when it comes to issues relating to the church. Yet many of the issues that surrounded the Church for the past 2,000 years are also issues we struggle with today. We have an incredibly rich past, with people to learn from that most of us have never heard of. I would like to encourage you to connect with the believers who have gone before us and see how their lives might speak to us today. The One Year Book of Christian History gives us the story of the past in bite size daily portions that will not overwhelm those of us who struggle to find history interesting. I believe this is the perfect companion to a daily devotional or could be used as one to help you discover the richness of God's word in ages past./p>

What happened on this date in church history? From ancient Rome to the twenty-first century, from peasants to presidents, from missionaries to martyrs, this book shows how God does extraordinary things through ordinary people every day of the year. Each story appears on the day and month that it occurred and includes questions for reflection and a related Scripture verse.
Click here for a sample text from this book.

Strategic Perspectives DVD

In today's world, information is easy to come by. But there is one thing that Christians need: Perspective. The Koinonia Institute is a Christian Think Tank that fills an important void by bringing some of today's brightest Christian thinkers together to share their insiders' perspective on today's events and how they relate to the Bible.

• Amir Tsarfati - ''Israel and Her Challenges'' 
• David Hocking -''The Importance of the Modern State of Israel''
• Steve Berger - ''The Danger of Being Dead Right''
• Kevin Dodge - ''The Economics of Fear'' 
• Bill Cloud- "Light in a Dark Place''
• Dan Stolebarger - ''What Are You Doing For Christ's Sake''
• Chuck Missler - ''Strategic Trends Update''
• John Loeffler - ''Prophecy in Crisis''
• Walid Shoebat - ''Islamic Eschatology'

Click here to donate and and receive these items.

Millennium 1000 years of Peace

420 pages by Pekka Sartola
The millennium, this future 1000-year-period of peace that gives hope and promise to believers in Christ, receives little attention in today's Christian literature and is rarely discussed from our pulpits. One of Finland's great literary talents, author Pekka Sartola gives an in-depth look at some of the most important events and milestones leading us to this great period of peace. As you discover what the Bible says about the future, questions regarding "where will you spend eternity" will take on a profound new meaning.

Click Here To Order

Millennium 1000 years of Peace

420 pages by Pekka Sartola
The millennium, this future 1000-year-period of peace that gives hope and promise to believers in Christ, receives little attention in today's Christian literature and is rarely discussed from our pulpits. One of Finland's great literary talents, author Pekka Sartola gives an in-depth look at some of the most important events and milestones leading us to this great period of peace. As you discover what the Bible says about the future, questions regarding "where will you spend eternity" will take on a profound new meaning.

Click Here To Order

For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument -- that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. -- very seriously. Now he's found an eager audience: Russian state media. In recent weeks, he's been interviewed as much as twice a day about his predictions. "It's a record," says Prof. Panarin. "But I think the attention is going to grow even stronger." Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's academy for future diplomats.

U.S. retailers face a wave of store closings, bankruptcies and takeovers starting next month as holiday sales are shaping up to be the worst in 40 years. Retailers may close 73,000 stores in the first half of 2009, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. Talbots Inc. and Sears Holdings Corp. are among chains shuttering underperforming locations. More than a dozen retailers, including Circuit City Stores Inc., Linens ‘n Things Inc., Sharper Image Corp. and Steve & Barry’s LLC, have sought bankruptcy protection this year as the credit squeeze and recession drained sales. Investors will start seeing a wide variety of chains seeking bankruptcy protection in February when they file financial reports, said Burt Flickinger.

The terrorism threat to the United States over the next five years will be driven by instability in the Middle East and Africa, persistent challenges to border security and increasing Internet savvy, says a new intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press. Chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attacks are considered the most dangerous threats that could be carried out against the U.S. But those threats are also the most unlikely because it is so difficult for al-Qaida and similar groups to acquire the materials needed to carry out such plots, according to the internal Homeland Security Threat Assessment for the years 2008-2013.

Israeli population centers in southern Israel have been the target of over 4,000 rockets, as well as thousands of mortar shells, fired by Hamas and other organizations since 2001. Rocket attacks increased by 500 percent after Israel withdrew completely from the Gaza Strip in August 2005. During an informal six-month lull, some 215 rockets were launched at Israel. The charge that Israel uses disproportionate force keeps resurfacing whenever it has to defend its citizens from non-state terrorist organizations and the rocket attacks they perpetrate. From a purely legal perspective, Israel's current military actions in Gaza are on solid ground. According to international law, Israel is not required to calibrate its use of force precisely according to the size and range of the weaponry used against it.

Hamas fired more than two dozens rockets and mortar shells by mid-day Wednesday, including five that hit in and around the major southern Israeli city of Beersheba, 22 miles from Gaza. One hit an empty school. Another landed in a small farming community about 20 miles southeast of Tel Aviv. No serious casualties were reported. The diplomatic action was set in motion by the scale of destruction in Gaza since Israel unleashed its campaign Saturday, and a casualty toll that Gaza officials now put at 390 dead and some 1,600 wounded. Hamas says some 200 uniformed members of Hamas security forces have been killed, and the U.N. says at least 60 Palestinian civilians have died. Four Israelis have been killed by militant rocket fire, including three civilians. The chief of Israel's internal security services, Yuval Diskin, told Cabinet ministers that Hamas' ability to rule had been "badly impaired."

Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah guerrilla movement — widely seen as the Arab world's most effective force against Israel — is a staunch Hamas supporter but has so far held its fire as its Palestinian ally faces down Israel's assault in Gaza. Hezbollah possesses a formidable arsenal of rockets and missiles that bloodied Israel during a monthlong war between them in 2006, but is constrained by its own domestic political goals and fears of Israeli retaliation. Once considered as just a fighting force backed by Iran and Syria, Hezbollah has seen its political power in Lebanon grow since 2006. With Israel threatening massive retaliation if Hezbollah renews its rocket bombardments, that influence could come into doubt by Lebanese reluctant to be drawn into another war.

Israel's campaign in Gaza is serving to expose the strategic fault lines in the Arab and Muslim world. The essential divide is between, on the one hand, states aligned with the West - chief among them Egypt and Saudi Arabia - and on the other an alliance led by Iran, of which Hamas forms a part. Israel's action in Gaza has led to unprecedented tensions between representatives of these rival blocs. Because of the strategic importance of Egyptian control of the Rafah Crossing, this divide also has immediate practical implications for the direction and likely outcome of the current battle. On Sunday, Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah focused on the events in Gaza in a speech on al-Manar TV. Nasrallah did not limit himself to calling down fire and brimstone on Israel. Rather, he singled out Egypt for criticism. Nasrallah echoed Hamas condemnation of Egypt for refusing to allow a general opening of the Rafah Crossing.

Who is the greatest Russian of all time? In the unlikely event that you answered “Stalin”, you would be in good company. One of the 20th century’s most horrific dictators has just come third in an opinion poll conducted by a Russian television station. Some 50 million people are said to have voted. Myself, I have some doubts about the veracity of this poll, particularly given that the television station in question is state-owned, and therefore manipulated by the Kremlin. Also, first place went to Alexander Nevsky, a medieval prince who defeated German invaders – and an ideal symbol for the Putinist regime, which prides itself on its defiance of the West. Second place went to Piotr Stolypin, a turn-of-the-century economic reformer who, among other things, gave his name to the cattle cars (Stolypinki) in which prisoners were transported to Siberia – another excellent symbol for the “reformer with an iron fist” label to which both Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev aspire.

Russia has thrown down a new gauntlet to Barack Obama with an announcement that it will sharply increase production of strategic nuclear missiles. In the latest of a series of combative moves by the Kremlin, a senior government official in Moscow said the Russian military would commission 70 strategic missiles over the next three years, as part of a massive rearmament programme which will also include short-range missiles, 300 tanks, 14 warships and 50 planes. Military experts said the planned new arsenal was presumed to consist of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) rather than submarine-launched missiles. If this is the case, the plans represent a fourfold increase in the rate of ICBM deployment.

When the five Muslims convicted this month of plotting to kill U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix were charged, the New Jersey mosque where four of the men worshipped reacted to negative publicity by holding an "emergency town hall meeting" to calm neighbors and persuade Americans that Islam poses no threat. But having investigated the Islamic Center of South Jersey one year ago, Middle East expert and former Air Force special agent Dave Gaubatz insists not only is the mosque a threat to national security, it represents a pattern that has prompted him to launch a massive project to systematically classify every known mosque in the U.S. Mapping Shariah in America: Knowing the Enemy seeks by the end of next year to document in a rigorous, scientific fashion the controversial premise that the more a mosque or community of Muslims adheres to Shariah, or Islamic law, the greater its threat to U.S. national security.

I recently read a book that deserves the widest possible readership: "The Trouble with Textbooks -- Distorting History and Religion," by Gary A. Tobin and Dennis R. Ybarra. I never have met or talked with either of these gentlemen, but I can't say enough good things about this book. For all who believe that there is a fairly objective rendition of history that we are obliged to teach our children, this book reveals how shockingly far from that objective American education -- particularly in schools' textbooks -- has fallen. In their conclusion, the authors quote the great historian of Islam Bernard Lewis' observation concerning the willful bending of history: "We live in a time when great efforts have been made, and continue to be made, to falsify the record of the past and to make history a tool of propaganda; when governments, religious movements, political parties, and sectional groups of every kind are busy rewriting history as they wish it to have been, as they would like their followers to believe that it was." "The Trouble with Textbooks" identifies a system of self-censorship and cultural equivalence that "celebrates everybody and omits many unpleasant historic facts."

A proposed Internet filter dubbed the "Great Aussie Firewall" is promising to make Australia one of the strictest Internet regulators among democratic countries. Consumers, civil-rights activists, engineers, Internet providers and politicians from opposition parties are among the critics of a mandatory Internet filter that would block at least 1,300 Web sites prohibited by the government. Hundreds protested in state capitals earlier this month. "This is obviously censorship," said Justin Pearson Smith, 29, organizer of protests in Melbourne and an officer of one of a dozen Facebook groups against the filter. The list of prohibited sites, which the government isn't making public, is arbitrary and not subject to legal scrutiny, Smith said, leaving it to the government or lawmakers to pursue their own online agendas.

At first sight, it looked like a typical suburban road accident. A Land Rover approached a Chevy Tahoe estate car that had stopped at a kerb; the Land Rover pulled out and tried to pass the Tahoe just as it started off again. There was a crack of fenders and the sound of paintwork being scraped, the kind of minor mishap that occurs on roads thousands of times every day. Normally drivers get out, gesticulate, exchange insurance details and then drive off. But not on this occasion. No one got out of the cars for the simple reason that they had no humans inside them: the Tahoe and Land Rover were being controlled by computers competing in last November's DARPA (the U.S. Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) Urban Challenge.

ust three years ago, half of the U.S. adult population felt the influence of religion on American life was rising. Today, only a little more than a quarter believe so. A recent Gallup Poll found that just 27 percent of Americans perceive religion's influence to be on the upswing while 67 percent of Americans say religion as a whole is losing influence on American life. The trend is consistent with those who attend religious services regularly as well as those who seldom or never attend services, with majorities saying religion is losing influence in this country. Since 2005, the Gallup Poll has recorded a downward trend in those who believe the influence of religion is increasing.

American churches have a more informal worship style and ethnically diverse congregation than ten years ago, found a recent study on religious congregation trends. More worship services include drums, jumping and shouting or dancing, raising hands in praise, calling out "amen," visual projection equipment, applause, and speaking by people other than leaders compared to 1998, the National Congregations Study shows. Fewer churches feature traditional choirs during services. Most of the informal service changes occur in Protestant and Catholic churches that are increasingly using visual projection equipment and drums. The increase in jumping, shouting and dancing occur most frequently in black churches. Lead researcher Mark Chaves, a sociology professor at Duke University School of Divinity, noted that the study’s findings are especially noteworthy because “religious traditions and organizations are widely considered to be remarkably resistant to change,” according to USA Today. But the numbers for some features have remained about the same, including a sermon or speech, singing, greeting time, silent prayer or meditation, reading or reciting Scripture time, and speaking in tongues during service.

A nationwide poll shows pragmatism sometimes takes a back seat to faith for fully two-thirds of adults in this country, with 67% of Canadians believing in angels. Of the 1,022 Canadians surveyed by Ipsos Reid, 37% said they believed with certainty, while 30% said they believed somewhat. Slightly more than three-quarters of respondents in each of Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Atlantic Canada said angels exist; 66% of Ontarians, 63% of Quebecers and 61% of British Columbians agreed. "There's a lot of untapped religiosity in Canada," said Irving Hexham, professor of religious studies at the University of Calgary. "The question behind whether you believe in angels or not is whether you believe there's a world beyond this world." But Mr. Hexham noted that people can also have a secular belief in angels to the extent they see ordinary people as spiritual conduits. Twenty-nine per cent of Canadians characterize an angel as a "good-hearted, charitable or loving person," according to the poll conducted For Canwest News Service and Global National.