The Biblical Examiner 
An Examination of Biblical Precepts Involved in Issues at Hand 

November, 2008

CONTENTS

The Root of Sin

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Romans 1:21

Understanding that the love of money is the root of all evil, we will develop Paul's words from Genesis 4:1-8 as a root of evil.

The following is not according to the standard understanding of Genesis 4, but it is more consistent with the context. To prevent the reader considering this writer a "heretic," he has left in some lengthy quotes from where the following implications were drawn.

Commenting on Genesis 4:1, Keil-Delitzsch points out that Eve made no connection between Cain and the redemptive promise of Christ. The promise of God's salvation was just a minute seed at this point. The name, Jehovah, the God of salvation, was not reveled to man until Exodus 6:3. Accordingly, we must be careful about reading our present knowledge into what took place 6,000 years ago.

As he comments on Genesis 4, Pink reads into Genesis 3 what is later revealed about the approach to God through the sacrifice, but his conclusions are not in the context. We are not at all saying that such a sin sacrifice is not pictured in Genesis 3, but the picture is for those looking back with the understanding of the sacrificial laws as given by Moses. Did Adam realize the coats of skins represented a blood sacrifice to cover his sin? We can speculate, but we are not told by the context that he understood about the blood.

Ussher (Annals of the World, p. 18) tells us that though Eve bore many sons and daughters, after Abel's murder, Seth was the next one born when Adam was 130 years old. Seth is the third name recorded, but we know there were many other sons (and daughters) born before Cain, the oldest, murdered his brother. (How many other sons were between Cain and Abel?) Many years had passed between the birth of Abel and his murder. They were both quite old in terms of our age, but young for that day when men commonly lived over nine hundred years. Thus, the population of the earth could have easily been several hundreds of thousands by the time of the murder.

V. 1, how many years after creation was Cain born? Scripture can gloss over a great many years, even generations, with simply the word and. Neither Adam nor Eve probably understood the promise of 3:15 enough to think Cain fulfilled the promise of Jehovah, the God of salvation.

"I have gotten a man from the Lord—that is, ‘by the help of the Lord'—an expression of pious gratitude..." (Jamieson, Fausset, Brown. Online Bible. JFB)

V. 2, Abel... Keil says the name means Nothingness, or vanity. Early on, Adam and Eve discovered the vanity of this earthly life. Ground. Though God had cursed the ground in 3:17, it had to be tilled to provide food. At this point, animals were only for clothing, not for food. Nor is there any record of animal sacrifices for sin from Adam's time until Moses gave the law. (See below.)

V. 4. Abel, by faith, he offered a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. Hebrews 11:4

Cain and the blood offering.

There was no command in Genesis to offer a blood sacrifice for sin. God killed an animal in 3:21, but the text says God's purpose was to cover nakedness, not to cover sins. Do we read the "sin" purpose into the text as we look back through Moses' laws concerning the sin offerings?

Keil points out that the difference in the sacrifice was not the blood; rather, the difference was the calling of each, and the sacrifice was from the product of each man's occupation. The basic difference was the heart attitude. About all the "commentators" (including Pink, whom I greatly respect) hold that Abel offered a blood sacrifice, and in doing so, he looked forward to Christ. However, such a meaning must be read into Abel's sacrifice, for it is not given in Genesis, nor can it be dogmatically applied from Hebrews 11:4, for the more excellent sacrifice is not defined.

Barnes' seems to hold the best to the context. Commenting on Hebrews 11:

Verse 4. By faith Abel offered. See #Ge 4:4,5. In the account in Genesis of the offering made by Abel, there is no mention of faith —as is true also indeed of most of the instances referred to by the apostle. The account in Genesis is, simply, that Abel "brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering." Men have speculated much as to the reason why the offering of Abel was accepted, and that of Cain rejected; but such speculation rests on no certain basis, and the solution of the apostle should be regarded as decisive and satisfactory, that in the one case there was faith, in the other not. It could not have been because an offering of the fruits of the ground was not pleasing to God, for such an offering was commanded under the Jewish law, and was not in itself improper. Both the brothers selected that which was to them most obvious; which they had reared with their own hands; which they regarded as most valuAbel. Cain had cultivated the earth, and he naturally brought what had grown under his care; Abel kept a flock, and he as naturally brought what he had raised: and had the temper of mind in both been the same, there is no reason to doubt that the offering of each would have been accepted. To this conclusion we are led by the nature of the case, and the apostle advances substantially the same sentiment—for he says that the particular state of mind on which the whole turned was, that the one had faith and the other not. How the apostle himself was informed of the fact, that it was faith which made the difference, he has not informed us. The belief that he was inspired will, however, relieve the subject of this difficulty—for, according to such a belief, all his statements here, whether recorded in the Old Testament or not, are founded in truth. It is equally impossible to tell with certainty what was the nature of the faith of Abel. It has been commonly asserted that it was faith in Christ—looking forward to his coming, and depending on his sacrifice when offering that which was to be a type of him. But of this there is no positive evidence, though, from Heb 12:24, it seems to be not improbAbel. Sacrifice, as a type of the Redeemer's great offering, was instituted early in the history of the world. There can be no reason assigned for the offering of blood as an atonement for sin, except that it had originally a reference to the great atonement which was to be made by blood; and as the salvation of man depended on this entirely, it is probAbel that that would be one of the truths which would be first communicated to man after the fall. The bloody offering of Abel is the first of the kind which is definitely mentioned in the Scriptures, (though it is not improbAbel that such sacrifices were offered by Adam, comp. #Ge 3:21,) and consequently Abel may be regarded as the recorded head of the whole typical system, of which Christ was the antitype and the fulfilment. See Barnes "Heb 12:24". (Barnes' Notes. Online Bible.)

That is to say, there is no mention of faith involved in the offerings either in Hebrews or in Genesis. The account is simply that two men brought two different offerings to the Lord. We are simply told that one offering was more excellent than the other – we can only speculate why this was so. The problem cannot be that one was the fruit of the ground, for such fruit offering was a required offering after Moses. See Leviticus 1, &c. Both brothers brought to the Lord what was the most valuAbel to him. However, it is not improbAbel that Abel, and even Adam, looked forward to the coming atonement for sin in his sacrifice, and that atonement revealed to Adam after the fall. But that is not the context.

Neither the Genesis nor Hebrews context tells us that God mentioned a blood offering for sin at this point. Such an assumption must be read into the passage, based upon what we know of the required blood offering after Moses. However, we do know from the context that each man brought the results of the produce of his own occupation, which was permissible even after Moses gave the law. Exodus 23, 34, Leviticus 2, &c.

Thus, God's rejection was not over the lack of a "blood" sacrifice; rather, the rejection was over the attitude of the heart which motivated the offerings. Abel's "heart" motivated him to bring the first and the best, while Cain's "heart" motivated him to simply bring of the fruit of the ground with little or no though of what was the first and the best. The judgment was over the attitude of the heart, for these were "thanksgiving" offerings.

Abel's more excellent offering reflected his thankfulness to the Lord, while Cain's offering reflected his indifference to the Lord: he did what was expected, and no more. Evidently, both men knew what God required, or neither would have offered. Thus, it was the motive behind the offering that God rejected. Paul tells us that a lack of proper thankfulness shows we are not glorifying God as God. Romans 1:21.

I believe one will find that up to the time of Moses, the sacrifices and offerings were giving of thanks to the Lord for his provision. (However, we are told that the gospel of Christ was preached to Abraham, John 8:55.) Though there was probably the need to feel at peace with God, and thus the sacrifices, there is no mention here of either man seeking forgiveness of sin. These offerings expressed gratitude to God.

We get the idea of the blood sacrifice for sin here in Genesis 4 by reading the law of Moses into it, which law was not given for another 2500 years. (Actually, the sin offerings started in Leviticus.)

Keil continues:

The offerings were expressive of gratitude to God, to whom they owed all that they had; and were associated also with the desire to secure the divine favour and blessing, so that they are to be regarded not merely as thank-offerings, but as supplicatory sacrifices, and as propitiatory also, in the wider sense of the word. In this the two offerings are alike. The reason is to be found rather in the fact, that Abel's thanks came from the depth of his heart, whilst Cain merely offered his to keep on good terms with God — a difference that was manifested in the choice of the gifts, which each one brought from the produce of his occupation.

This choice shows clearly "that it was the pious feeling, through which the worshiper put his heart as it were into the gift, which made the offering acceptAbel to God" (Oehler); that the essence of the sacrifice was not the presentation of a gift to God, but that the offering was intended to shadow forth the dedication of the heart to God.

The blood sacrifice did contain "the germ of that substitutionary meaning of sacrifice," which was expanded as we move toward Christ.

Vv. 5-7.

On account of the preference shown to Abel, ' it burned Cain sore (the subject, ‘wrath,' is wanting, as it frequently is in the case of chaaraah, {see definition 02734} cf. #Ge 18:30,32 31:36, etc.), and his countenance fell' (an indication of his discontent and anger: cf. #Jer 3:12 Job 29:24). God warned him of giving way to this, and directed his attention to the cause and consequences of his wrath.

' Why art thou wroth, and why is thy countenance fallen?' The answer to this is given in the further question, ' Is there not, if thou art good, a lifting up' (sc., of the countenance)? It is evident from the context, and the antithesis of falling and lifting up (npl {see definition 05307} and ns'), {see definition 05375} that paaniym {see definition 06440} must be supplied after sª'eet. {see definition 07613} By this God gave him to understand that his look was indicative of evil thoughts and intentions; for the lifting up of the countenance, i.e., a free, open look, is the mark of a good conscience. {#Job 11:15} ' But if thou art not good, sin lieth before the door, and its desire is to thee (directed towards thee); but thou shouldst rule over it.' The fem. chaTaa't {see definition 02403} is construed as a masculine, because, with evident allusion to the serpent, sin is personified as a wild beast, lurking at the door of the human heart, and eagerly desiring to devour his soul. {#1Pe 5:8} heeyTiyb, {see definition 03190} to make good, signifies here not good action, the performance of good in work and deed, but making the disposition good, i.e., directing the heart to what is good.

Cain is to rule over the sin which is greedily desiring him, by giving up his wrath, not indeed that sin may cease to lurk for him, but that the lurking evil foe may obtain no entrance into his heart. There is no need to regard the sentence as interrogative, ‘Wilt thou, indeed, be Abel to rule over it?' (Ewald), nor to deny the allusion in bow {see definition 0871a} to the lurking sin, as Delitzsch does. The words do not command the suppression of an inward temptation, but resistance to the power of evil as pressing from without, by hearkening to the word which God addressed to Cain in person, and addresses to us through the Scriptures. (K-D)

"His countenance fell." It was evident that Cain's face revealed the evil thoughts and intentions of his heart. Job tells us that a free, open look "is the mark of a good conscience. (Job 11:15)." In other words, sin shows up in the face. Though sin desires to control us, we should rule over it. Cain did not bring his anger under control, and the result was the first murder.

V. 7 speaks of sin as a person: "But if thou art not good, sin lieth before the door, and its desire is to thee (directed towards thee); but thou shouldst rule over it." (K-D) Cain was to have dominion over the sin that was seeking to control him from the outside. If he had exercised that dominion over sin, he would have been accepted by God.

Sin took control of Cain's heart, and changed his looks as his countenance fell. How did God address Cain.

There is nothing said here about God appearing visibly; but this does not warrant us in interpreting either this or the following conversation as a simple process that took place in the heart and conscience of Cain. It is evident from vv. 14 and 16 that God did not withdraw His personal presence and visible intercourse from men, as soon as He had expelled them from the garden of Eden. "God talks to Cain as to a wilful child, and draws out of him what is sleeping in his heart, and lurking like a wild beast before his door. And what He did to Cain He does to every one who will but observe his own heart, and listen to the voice of God" (Herder). But Cain paid no need to the divine warning. (K-D)

As we saw in the Garden, sin, like a wild beast, a serpent, is lurking at the door of the heart; bitterness will open the door, and rob us of our clear conscience. It is the Word of God that exposes sin:

Hebrews 4:11 ¶ Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. 12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. 13 Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

Sin, even bitterness in Cain's case, lurked at the door of Cain's heart. It was his choice to bring the "left-overs" to God, and when God did not accept his offering, at the first opportunity, it leapt in, and his countenance fell.

Thus, the difference was the attitude of the heart in the offering: One was from a heart of gratitude, and the other was simply to keep on good terms with God.

Oehler's comments:

THE FIRST OFFERING. CAINITES AND SETHITES. TRADITION OF THE FLOOD.

The position henceforth taken by the human race toward God is represented in the first offering, Gen. iv. (1). Although this is not to be regarded as a proper sin-offering, but rather as a thank-offering, by which the offerers acknowledge in presenting it that they look on the gains of their occupation as a gift and blessing from God, the feeling that man must first of all become sure (2) of the divine favor is expressed in these offerings, and consequently a feeling of separation from God, by which the first offering proves to be also an offering of supplication, indeed even an offering of reconciliation, or, in a wider sense of the word, a propitiatory offering (3). The reason that Abel's offering pleased God, and Cain's offering displeased Him, cannot be in the fact that the former was a bloody and the latter a bloodless one ; for the difference of the two offerings is distinctly dependent on the difference in their callings. The reason can only be found in the different states of heart of the two offerers, which in ver. 3 f. is shown in the fact that Cain offers his gift of the fruit of the ground without selection ; while Abel, on the other hand, brings the best of the flock. Thus, in this narrative, the Old Testament testifies at the outset that offerings when presented as a mere external service are rejected, and that only a pious disposition makes the offering well-pleasing to God (comp. Heb. xi. 4). In the difference between the two sons of the first human pair, we have the contrast presented henceforth in the history of the human race, and already the separation of a people of revelation begins. For while among Cain's descendants, the life of sin rises to insolent defiance (iv. 23 f.) (4), in Seth, who takes the place of the murdered Abel, is propagated the race of patriarchs who seek the living God (iv. 26) (5), among whom Enoch by his translation testifies of a way of life which raised him above the common lot of death (v. 24), and Lamech at the birth of Noah, before the close of the first period of the world, announces the hope of a Saviour of man from the evil weighing upon him (v. 29) (6). (Emp. added. Gustav Friedrich Oehler, 1812-1872. Theology of the Old Testament, p. 54. T & T Clark, 1873. The 1884 Funk & Wagnalls version is downloadAbel at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/oehler)

Oehler's Notes:

(1) Gen. iv. relates that the sons of the first pair offered to Jehovah, as a gift, a portion of the produce of the business of their life : Cain, from the fruits of the ground cultivated by him ; Abel, from the firstlings of his flock, and from the fat pieces of these. Abel's gift was received with favor, but Cain's gift with displeasure. To understand the word (Hebrew word), [lit. to look, then to look upon with favor, to have respect to], with Hofmann (Schriftbeweis, ii. 1 ; 2d ed.p. 220), of Jehovah's glance of fire, by which He took to Himself the gift in consuming it, does not agree well with the words, " Jehovah looked upon Abel and his gift," for we surely cannot suppose that Abel himself was struck by the divine gleam of fire. (Art. Opferkultus des A. T.)

(2) Cain himself feels this need, and hence his sullen rage on seeing his offering despised.

(3) See my article in Herzog's Real-Encyklop. x. p. 615 f., for a fuller discussion of the meaning of the first offering, and wrong views of it.

(4) The sense of the song of the sword, Gen. iv. 23 f., is : I will kill any one who lays hands on me ; each injury to my person will I avenge tenfold. [It should be rendered, " For I have slain a man for my wound (i.e. for wounding me), and a young man for my bruise.—D.] " In this is uttered," as Delitzsch says (Commentary on Genesis, iv. ed. p. 177), " that Titanic haughtiness of which it is said, Hab. i. 11, that his strength is his God, and Job xii. 6, that he carries his God, namely his sword, in his fist."

(5) Gen. iv. 26 is to be rendered : " Then men began to call on the name of Jehovah." Herein is implied that God's name (Hebrew word), goes back to primeval antiquity.

(6) The passage which refers back to chap. iii. runs thus : " He shall comfort us for our work and the labor of our hands, from the earth, which Jehovah has cursed." The passage manifestly expresses a hope of redemption from the curse weighing on mankind as the consequence of sin. Now, if we may reason back-ward, it follows that in chap. iii. also there must certainly lie a promise of salvation, although a very indefinite one.

Oehler presents an important view; that is, God requires a pure and thankful heart for one's "offering" to be accepted. In other words, Abel's offering was from a pure and grateful heart, and, accordingly, was the best he could do. Cain was indifferent about the whole matter, so he did just enough to get by, and be Abel to say that he did something.

Thus, the true thanksgiving offering recognizes that all good things come from above, James 1:17. Accordingly, for any "thanksgiving" offering to be well-pleasing to the Lord, it must be the best one can do, and from a pure and grateful heart. Cain's offering was from an indifferent and ungrateful heart, and was not his best; accordingly, his offering was rejected.

Sadly, it seems that many "thanksgiving" offerings today are an attempt to impress those watching, clear the conscience before God or trying to stay on the good side of the Lord. There is very little, if any, though given as to whether or not it is the "first" and the best.

Psalms 24:4 He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.

a pure heart. True religion is heart work. We may wash the outside of the cup and the platter as long as we please; but if the inward parts be filthy, we are filthy altogether in the sight of God, for our hearts are more truly ourselves than our hands are. We may lose our hands and yet live, but we could not lose our heart and still live; the very life of our being lies in the inner nature, and hence the imperative need of purity within. There must be a work of grace in the core of the heart as well as in the palm of the hand, or our religion is a delusion. May God grant that our inward powers may be cleansed by the sanctifying Spirit, so that we may love holiness and abhor all sin. The pure in heart shall see God, all others are but blind bats; stone blindness in the eyes arises from stone in the heart. Dirt in the heart throws dust in the eyes. (CHS. Online Bible.)

1 Timothy 1:5 Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned:

Out of a pure heart. The love which is genuine must proceed from a holy heart. The commandment was not designed to secure merely the outward expressions of love, but that which had its seat in the heart. (Barnes')

Do we love God out of a pure heart? Though our outward actions may be right, as was Cain's, is our heart like Cain's or Abel's?

2 Timothy 2:22 Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.

peace, with, etc.—rather, put no comma, "peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart" (#1Ti 1:5 Eph 6:5 Col 3:22). We are to love all men, but it is not possible to be at peace with all men, for this needs community of purpose and opinion; they alone who call on the Lord sincerely (as contrasted with the false teachers who had only the form of godliness, #2Ti 3:5,8 Tit 1:15,16) have this community [THEODORET]. (#Ro 12:18). (JFB)

Jude 11 Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.

The way of Cain, in its context, can thus be defined as trying to serve God with an impure heart, serving with less than the best, serving just enough to clear the conscience, serving with outward actions but with an ungrateful heart.

Did not Paul tell us that failure to glorify God as God with a pure heart and with our best is the start of the slippery slope into personal darkness, which leads to social darkness and chaos?

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Romans 1:21.

Application:

My wife's parents were missionaries in Brazil. Bettie was raised there, and moved to the states her senior year to finish High School here, and then on to college. While on the field, they would come home on furlough every five years. While in the states, people would given them clothing, and her mother would pack a "missionary" barrel. When they got back to the field, they would unpack the barrel to see what clothing would fit which child. (There were 6 children.) It was not until Bettie got older that she realized the good, generous Christians gave them the left over or even their cast-off clothing – bottons missing, repairs needed, &c.

Moreover, any "full-time" worker in the Lord's ministry has learned that the normal giving to the church is of left-overs or throwaways. Many people seem to consider giving to those in the "ministry" as giving to Goodwill or to the Salvation Army (they make it a practice to "glean" unneeded and used goods for sale). Giving reveals the heart attitude – is it the attitude of Cain, which is not well-pleasing to the Lord, or is it the attitude of Abel, which is well-pleasing to the Lord?

The clear teaching of Matthew 25:40ff is that what is given in the name of the Lord is giving to the Lord himself. If something as insignificant as a cup of water given in the name of the Lord is giving unto him, then surely garments or other objects given in his name is given to the Lord. Giving a worn out objects to the "ministry" in the name of the Lord is a sure sign of unthankfulness, indifference and an impure heart. Such "offerings" go in the way of Cain. Jude 11.

Cain hated his brother and slew him. The reason for his hatred was because God accepted his brother's sacrifice, and not his. The reason God rejected Cain's was because of the impure, indifferent and unthankful heart. Cain's inner problem was exposed when he failed to give God his best, which Abel did.

Deadly Rumors

As the eastern Indian state of Orissa entered its fourth week of violence, anti-Christian attacks spread to five more states across the country, furthering panic and calling into question the lackluster response by local and national authorities.

At least 45 people have died and more than 40,000 are believed to be hiding in forests, according to the All India Christian Council (AICC). The violence began when Christians in Orissa were blamed for the Aug. 23 assassination of a Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader and four of his disciples. Maoists have since claimed responsibility for the death of Laxmanananda Saraswati, but Hindu extremist mobs have continued their attacks on Christians, destroying more than 4,000 homes and 115 churches, according to the AICC.

Violence has spread to 14 of Orissa's districts as rumors of forced conversions of Hindus to Christianity added fuel to the fire. In Orissa's Kandhamal district—the epicenter of the violence—20 houses were set on fire and 70 Christian families were forced to "re-convert" to Hinduism on Sept. 8. Reports circulated that Hindu extremists poisoned water in government refugee camps—home to an estimated 12,000 people. Local police also became targets after efforts to disperse a violent mob resulted in the death of one of the rioters. Extremists retaliated by killing a policeman and burning down a police station in Kandhamal district on Sept. 16.

"What we are witnessing in states like Orissa most recently is a carefully orchestrated ploy by the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] and its sister organizations to inflame religious prejudices and passions," Indian Congress president Sonia Gandhi told her country's Supreme Court on Sept. 16. She accused the BJP, the VHP and other Hindu nationalist groups of instigating a campaign to "divide and polarize society, with no regard to loss of lives and livestock" ahead of elections.

Several VHP leaders accused Gandhi of covering for those behind the assassination of their leader. VHP Orissa State President Gauri Prasad Rath told Compass Direct News that he did not condemn the violence against Christians in his state. "You should ask me to condemn the killing of Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati and his associates with AK-47s by Christians," he said.

Christians comprise 2.4 percent of Orissa's population—almost 900,000 people. —Jill Nelson

World magazine, October 4/11, 2008. P. 12.

Persecution in India

Bro Joel, who is close to Orissa, answered a question put to him by a supporting pastor. Rick Waltz. The question was about the persecution against Christians in India that was mentioned in an article, "India Burning."

Here is Bro Joel's answer:

I have been through the article that you have sent my way and indeed, I do agree with most if not all of the points that were made in it. Often the persecutions in India are self caused and it is very unfortunate.

Coming out of pagan religions, most new believers can be overly zealous and thus take an "in your face" kind of approach in sharing their faith. I myself am always dealing with this area with our new converts.

For example: One habit that our new believers and churches have is that they like to put up loud speakers and blast Gospel songs and messages in their neighborhoods. This can be very irritating and often raises the wrath of the Hindus. I have stopped many a believer and church from using this approach to "Evangelism."

One of the key reasons for these wrong approaches to Evangelism, I feel, is again the Dispensational understanding of the Gospel and the "doomsday" preaching that is so often used to "scare" people into heaven.

[Editor's note: I am all to familiar with this kind of "doomsday evangelism" here in the states. Though it does not cause riots, it certainly can create hard feelings, even anger and hatred against those doing it.]

This is another area for which I praise the Lord in opening my eyes. Having come to the understanding of a Sovereign God and His plan and process of salvation of sinners has calmed my spirit greatly. Human methods and efforts can only damage our testimony and cause sinners to detest the Gospel. Indeed there needs to be a Scriptural examination of our methods and efforts and let God have His way.

Another area of examination needs to come by way of the cultural aspects. Often missionaries have "Westernized" more than "Evangelized." Thus in India, as in other countries of the world, people have labeled Christianity as a "white man's" religion.

We need God's Wisdom and Grace in dealing with delicate issues such as these. The Salt of true Christianity needs to retain its savor. There is a fine line between compromising and offending.

October 2008 prayer letter

Secunderabad, India

Dear Pastors, churches and prayer partners,

Grace and peace to you all in the wonderful name of our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ. Manifold are the blessings of God in shedding forth His Gospel light on many a lost soul in this pagan land. By His grace, we have been able to venture once again into the hills and jungles of northeast Andhra Pradesh, from the 23rd of September to the 10th of October.

The six churches that we have established there in the past have been eager to receive us, having waited for over 6 months for my return. We had a baptismal service in Kora Konda, where I baptized over 40 believers. Our baptisms took place in a river, right opposite to a Hindu Temple. The priests of that temple were not the least bit pleased, because in India, Hindus consider their rivers to be sacred.

After Kora Konda, we went further toward the border of Orissa to Gudem. There is much turmoil in Orissa and taking the Gospel there is getting harder. 35 pastors were killed in this State over the past month and also a Catholic nun was raped and killed. We were stopped and screened by the National Police Force as a security measure. Much animosity exists toward the Gospel in Orissa and Chattisgarh. Our next trip in November is to visit our believers and 2 churches in Chattisgarh. Please pray for us.

Amidst religious persecution and turmoil, we praise the Lord for the joy and victory that He gives in seeing many turn from their pagan gods to the True and Living God. I somehow believe that the Gospel thrives better amidst conflict. I praise the Lord that His antidote for the wickedness and sin in this world is not a sword, but the Cross. Romans 1:16.

We continue to look to the Lord in regards to a stable mode of transportation and hope that you folks are praying with us about this need. Traveling by foot and by public transportation can be unnerving at times, as we become easy targets for the enemy. But it is assuring to know that our lives are in the safekeeping of a Sovereign God. We thank you for your prayers and support, which give us strength as we serve the Lord.

In His Service,

Bro. Joel Saripalli and family

In addition

I wanted to share with you one of the testimonies given by one of the sisters at our church in Hyderabad on the 15th of August. Many non-Christians came and heard the testimonies of how the Lord saved several of the members of our church from Spiritual Darkness and Deadness. One testimony especially brought tears to our eyes of one of our members, Sis. Jayalakshmi.

The Lord saved her last year and she had never shared the details of her testimony before as she had on the 15th. She is married with 2 children (12 and 10). They live in the house opposite to our church. She is from a staunch Hindu family and her husband is a drunkard and wife beater. She is the only one who earns to run her family and last year, she was on the verge of committing suicide, when she got up on the terrace of her house to end her life, she looked across the street and saw us (our church) having our Thursday night prayer meeting. She was somehow compelled to come and sit and listen. I was just then into my message and was speaking on "God being the Author of LIFE." She had brought her 12 year old daughter along to the meeting that night.

The things that she heard in the message that night made her to forget her suicidal thoughts and her daughter kept reminding her over the next month, whenever she was depressed about the things that she heard that night. Over the course of the next few months, she kept attending our services and the Lord saved her in due time. I had baptized her upon the profession of her faith in September of 2006. She is one of the most faithful members that we have, regardless of the fact that her husband has become more hard on her since her conversion. She and the children are always joyful to be in the presence of the Lord regardless of their trials.

It makes me feel humbled when I see the work of the Lord in other peoples lives. It is indeed a great honor to serve a Sovereign God.

Bro Joel

Note: Evangelists like Joyce Meyer draw huge crowds when they go to India, 400,000 in Hyderabad, January 2008. These "high powered" evangelists then offer maybe $1 to each person who is willing to be baptized. Then these evangelists take the reports of multiplied thousands of Indians being baptized back to the States in order to raise money. Bro Joel will be happy to give you the details. Joel Saripalli <joelsaripalli@msn.com>

If you would like a CD which presents Bro Joel's ministry, as well as the persecution, let me know. Also, if you would like to keep up with Bro Joel's ministry, please send me your e mail address.with the note, Bro Joel Saripalli. We will keep up his reports on the web site.

SENIOR MOMENT

Speaking of Senior Moments, here's an example:

An irate customer called the newspaper offices, and loudly demanded to know where her Sunday newspaper was.

Ma'am, said the employee, today is Saturday. The Sunday paper is not delivered 'til Sunday.

There was quite a pause on the other end of the phone, followed by a ray of confusion, then the elderly woman said: 'So that's why no one was in church today

CALVINISM, HYPER-CALVINISM

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

I do not think I differ from any of my Hyper-Calvinistic brethren in what I do believe, but I differ from them in what they do not believe. I do not hold any less than they do, but I hold a little more, and, I think, a little more of the truth revealed in the Scriptures. Not only are there a few cardinal doctrines, by which we can steer our ship North, South, East, or West, but as we study the Word, we shall begin to learn something about the North-west and North-east, and all else that lies between the four cardinal points.

The system of truth revealed in the Scriptures is not simply one straight line, but two; and no man will ever get a right view of the gospel until he knows how to look at the two lines at once. For instance, I read in one Book of the Bible, ‘The Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.' Yet I am taught, in another part of the same inspired Word, that, ‘it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.' I see, in one place, God in providence presiding over all, and yet I see, and I cannot help seeing, that man acts as he pleases, and that God has left his actions, in a great measure, to his own free-will. Now, if I were to declare that man was so free to act that there was no control of God over his actions, I should be driven very near to atheism; and if, on the other hand, I should declare that God so over-rules all things that man is not free enough to be responsible, I should be driven at once into Antinomianism or fatalism.

That God predestines, and yet that man is responsible, are two facts that few can see clearly. They are believed to be inconsistent and contradictory to each other. If, then, I find taught in one part of the Bible that everything is foreordained, that is true; and if I find, in another Scripture, that man is responsible for all his actions, that is true; and it is only my folly that leads me to imagine that these two truths can ever contradict each other. I do not believe they can ever be welded into one upon any earthly anvil, but they certainly shall be one in eternity. They are two lines that are so nearly parallel, that the human mind which pursues them farthest will never discover that they converge, but they do converge, and they will meet some-where in eternity, close to the throne of God, whence all truth doth spring. (A Defense of Calvinism, CHS. Banner of Truth Trust.)

BOOK REVIEW

"In Defense of Israel"

by John Hagee

By Thomas Williamson

The full title of this book is "In Defense of Israel - The Bible's Mandate for Supporting the Jewish State." This creates the impression that Hagee will provide a Bible-based theological justification for Christians to support actions and policies of the modern state of Israel.

However, in the very first chapter, Hagee delivers a diatribe against the policy of the current Israeli government with regard to giving up occupied territory in an effort to achieve a settlement with the Palestinians. Hagee is well known for his opposition to this Israeli policy and has been criticized for this by Israeli and American Jews.

A more accurate title for this book would be " In Opposition to Israel and in Support of the Fulfillment of John Hagee's Armageddon Prophecies, Even If Millions of Jews Have to Die."

Hagee never explains just what it means to "support Israel," but by his example, he indicates that it is okay for the Christian Zionist to oppose any policies and actions of Israel that do not fit into Hagee's end-times prophecy scenarios. Logically, this means that we are not under an obligation to blindly render unconditional support to Israel at all times.

We are all free to support Israel when we believe that Israel is right, and to withhold such support when we believe that Israel is wrong. Hagee does not explicitly say this anywhere, but it is a logical deduction based on his own example of vociferously opposing policies of Israel that he does not like, while bragging of his "support for Israel. "

We Have a Duty to Help Our Jewish Brethren

Hagee (p. 7) justifies our support for Israel using Matthew 25:40, saying that the Greek word for "brothers" in that verse refers to "relatives according to the flesh," that is, to Jews.

I was not able to substantiate this interpretation by Hagee. The Greek word here is adeluhos, and a quick check of Strong's Concordance will reveal that the Apostle Paul routinely used the same word to address the predominantly Gentile congregations at Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Thessalonica, etc. In Philippians 2:25 Paul refers to Epaphroditus as his adelphos. Was Epaphroditus, named after the heathen Greek goddess Aphrodite/Venus, a Jew? I hardly think so.

Hagee's interpretation of Matthew 25:40 as referring only to ethnic Jews appears to be without etymological or exegetical justification. Of course we agree with Hagee that we should do nice things for Jews and defend them from persecution. But what does this have to do with "opposing policies of the Israeli government that John Hagee does not like because they do not fit his Armageddon scenarios of war and mass killing of Jews?" There is a logical disconnect here.

Hagee has only one other proof-text for supporting Israel (p. 4): "Speaking of the Jewish people, the Word of God says, `I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you.' (Genesis 12:3)" But this promise is not addressed to "the Jewish people" - it is addressed only to Abraham, using grammar intended for a singular subject. If we spiritualize this to include all of Abraham's literal descendants, we would have to include the Arabs as well as the Jews under this blessing. There is no exegetical basis for applying this promise to a portion of Abraham's descendants 4000 years later (Israeli Jews) while excluding his other descendants (Palestinians and other Arabs).

We Must Attack Iran In Order To Protect Israel

Hagee (p. 6) says "Another Persian - Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran - is plotting to exterminate the Jewish people. His goal is to put together the capability for a nuclear holocaust." Hagee provides no evidence to support these statements. Representatives of the Jewish community now living in Iran have stated that they are not in danger and do not wish to emigrate from Iran.

Meanwhile, 16 American intelligence agencies have stated that Iran has no program to develop nuclear weapons. Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a religious edict in 2005 forbidding the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons. Perhaps Hagee was not aware of these facts when he wrote this book.

On page 79 Hagee says "If there is any doubt that the president of Iran is committed to the destruction of Israel, we should simply hear his own words." But Hagee fails to quote, anywhere in this book, any statement by the president of Iran threatening to destroy Israel. Hagee wants to conduct an unprovoked attack against Iran, on behalf of Israel, but he fails to make the case that Iran poses any threat to Israel or to Jews anywhere. Hagee would have us go to war based on the same types of falsehood and misinformation that got us into our current endless, unwinnable war in Iraq.

Nowhere in this book does Hagee consider the real possibility that an American attack on Iran would make things much worse for Israel, by plunging the entire region into all-out war. It wouldn't matter to the fatalistic Hagee, because he says on p. 173 that "When I speak about a coming conflict or worldwide war, it is something that has been predicted by the prophets of Israel for thousands of years. Now these ancient prophecies are becoming reality. . . . These prophecies are going to happen exactly as described in Scripture because their source is God Almighty." (Lots of people in the Middle East have to die, and there is nothing we can do to stop it, so why bother trying)?

Hagee denies accusations that "my intent is to ignite World War III and kick-start the Apocalypse. It's absolutely untrue." Well, that's certainly a relief. If thousands of Israelis are killed in Hagee's war, it won't be Hagee's fault, even though he lobbied for that war. Hagee, in this book and in many other places, has demanded that America start a war that may result in the death of millions, but Hagee will be absolved of blame because it was God's will that all those people die anyway.

The Crusades Were Evil

Hagee (p. 21) sees the Crusades, which were ordered by the Pope in 1096, as totally evil and an expression of "Christian" (actually Catholic) anti-Semitism. He says, "The Crusaders were not holy men on a holy mission. They were a mismatched and misled mob of thieves, murderers, andrapists who believed their sins had been forgiven in advance by the pope."

I agree with Hagee's assessment of the Crusades. The atrocities committed by the Crusaders against Jews, Muslims and non-Catholic Christians were among the worst in the annals of recorded history, and we do ourselves no favors by justifying and identifying ourselves which such monstrous crimes. It should be noted, however, that the anti-Jewish pogroms of the Crusaders were condemned by Bernard of Clairvaux and other Catholic leaders, and that throughout the Middle Ages it was the policy of the Catholic Church to provide sanctuary and protection to Jews when they were subjected to pogroms by ignorant Catholic mobs.

Hagee describes Hitler's Holocaust against the Jews as a logical consequence and expression of institutional anti-Semitism on the part of the Roman Catholic Church. Much as I would like to join Hagee in his Catholic-bashing on this issue, fairness compels us to point out that Pope Pius XII personally saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews during World War II and was thanked by Jewish leaders for doing so.

Nevertheless, the anti-Semitic teachings of the Catholic Church and of Martin Luther do provide a partial explanation for the terrible persecution of Jews during World War II, and Hagee deserves some credit for daring to point out these influences, at the risk of irritating Catholic and Lutheran readers.

Hagee's point is that since nominal Christianity is responsible for modem anti-Semitism, therefore we as Christians should feel the need to make amends by reaching out to the Jews in love. This is a valid point, but not everyone will agree that lobbying for endless wars in the Middle East is the best way to show our love and concern for the Jews.

Who Are the Jews?

Since everything revolves around the Jews, Hagee on p. 47 poses the all-important question, just who are the Jews? And he never really answers that question anywhere in this book. [This editor has a book, "Israel's Identity, Israel's Conversion. See Ezra 2:59, 62. Biblically, a true Israelite, or Jew, had to prove his genealogy, which is impossible to do today.]

He lists 5 possible criteria for establishing Jewishness, one of which is "Personal choice/conversion" which means basically that anyone choosing to convert to Judaism, or to call himself a Jew, is a Jew. Hagee never really states his agreement or disagreement with any of the listed criteria. He correctly states that Romans 9–11 deals with "Jews according to the flesh" but never deals with such passages as John 8:39, Romans 2:28-29, Galatians 3:7, 28-29, 6:15-16 and others which teach that not all Jews after the flesh are true Jews, and that Gentile converts to Christianity are part of the true Israel.

Hagee makes no mention of Gentiles being grafted into Israel in Romans 11:17-24, nor of the walls of separation between Jew and Gentile being broken down, Romans 10:12, Acts 15:9, Ephesians 2:11-14.

Hagee notes that Adolf Hitler was possibly 1 /4 Jewish but he does not tell us whether such a person with 1/4 Jewish ancestry is to be considered a true Jew. Nor does he clearly state whether or not Gentile converts to Judaism, such as Sammy Davis, Jr., are to be considered true Jews. If there is a spiritual advantage before God in being a Jew, should we all follow the example of Sammy Davis, Jr. and convert to Judaism? You will not find the answer to such questions in this book - Hagee leaves us hanging.

Christians and Jews Worship the Same God

On page 62 Hagee correctly states that "The Allah described in the Quran, the scriptures sacred to Muslims, is not the same as the God of Abraham." But on the same page he errs in saying, "Both Jews and Christians worship the same God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." It is not true that Christians and Jews worship the same God. We worship a Trinitarian God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) and Jews do not. [See also John 14:6. The God of Scripture can only be approached through Christ. Ed.]

Jesus Was Not the Messiah

In his zeal to vindicate the Jews from the charge of rejecting their Messiah, Hagee departs far from any semblance of orthodox Christianity bydenying that Jesus was the Messiah, saying "It was not the Father's will, nor his, to be Messiah." (p. 138) "The Jews were not rejecting Jesus as Messiah; it was Jesus who was refusing to be the Messiah to the Jews." (p. 140) "The Jews did not reject Jesus as Messiah; it was Jesus who rejected the Jewish desire for him to be their Messiah." (p. 145)

If true, then the Apostle John lied when he said that Jesus told the Woman at the Well that He was indeed the Messiah (John 4:25-26). The same John said in 1 John 2:22, "Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ [Messiah)? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son." Oops, looks like Hagee has made himself a liar and an antichrist, by denying that Jesus was the Christ.

This Book is Not Recommended

"In Defense of Israel" is a bad book, not only because of the blatant false teaching with regard to Jesus not being the Messiah, but also because it provides a faulty basis for going to war with Iran. Hagee fails to provide any factual, military or theological basis for attacking Iran. He does not explain how such an attack would fulfill Bible prophecy. He leaves the impression that such an attack would have the effect of supporting Israel, but he himself openly opposes current policies of the Israeli government.

He ignores any consideration of the blessings that Israeli and Jewish people would experience as a result of peace in the Middle East, insisting instead that there must be devastating wars there in order to fulfill his own personal version of the Armageddon Theology.

Some readers may feel that I am wasting too much time dealing with the errors of John Hagee and that there are more important issues to deal with. Meanwhile, Hagee claims to reach 99 million viewers with his television broadcasts, and has great influence on the foreign policy views of major Republican candidates for President including John McCain.

We do not have the time or ability to warn our people about every false teacher, but Hagee is one of the most prominent false teachers of our time, who is purveying dangerous principles that could lead to a pointless war in the Middle East with heartbreaking consequences to millions of Jews and Gentiles. We need to inform our people about the errors of John Hagee.

Thomas Williamson, 3131 S. Archer Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60608

Many more articles by Bro. Williamson can be found at biblicalexaminer.org

Personal

It has been several months since we have published, and due to the lack of support, this will be our last hard copy. We will only send hard copies to those who support us. We will send e mail copies to those who request them, or notify of updates to the web site. Also, we will continue to post at our web site.

We have been far too busy for folks our age, but it is far better to wear out than to rust out.

End of April and May is garden time here on the mountain. Our property has very good top dirt on it. However, there is just enough dirt to hold the rocks together. There is no place one can easily drive a stake without having to break through rocks.

The ground here is not tillable, but it does produce some nice high-meadow grassland, so there are a lot of cattle raised up here. There is a large area of grassland around us, and has a good number of cattle on it. The man who owns the cattle told us we can have all the cow manure mixed with hay we wanted, and there is a lot piled up around his three cattle feeders. (We can see the feeders from our house, and smell them when the wind is right.)

Garden? We tried to "plow" one up, but the rocks were formidable. So, boxes and top dirt from the Potomac River bottom. Besides, more plants can be grown in boxes. Boxes can be used in very small places, regardless of the ground conditions. With the terrible GMO situation that is corrupting our food supply, home gardens are becoming a necessity. There are several seed companies that maintain an expanding stock of "heirloom" seeds; that is, seeds that will produce plants from which seeds can be saved for the next planting season.

But before we could build the boxes, we had to take down a dead locust tree. Those who live near a woods know that locust trees draw lightning. Every locust tree we have has been struck by lightening at least once, which makes very good firewood. In fact, locust trees, period, make the best fire wood, although locust is not listed on the btu output charts for wood. I have been told that the reason it is not listed is because it is a "wild" tree.

The garden fence is at least 6 ft., and, evidently, the boxes discouraged the deer from jumping the fence. New fruit and flowering trees must be fenced, for deer love the new buds. (They killed one tree by nipping off the buds before we got it fenced.

These rocky mountain tops grow excellent fruit trees. These mountains were populated with huge orchards, but due to government intervention, most have been removed or abandoned.

Raising your own food needs serious consideration. Or at least make contact with local co-ops that raise non-GMO products you can purchase. Can what you can, and eat the rest.

The deer love about anything that grows, especially fruit trees, flowers, gardens, and will eat anything they can get to. Our fenced garden produced enough to can for the coming year. Though our fruit trees are not producing yet, neighbors gave us enough fruit to do everything we wanted to do with fruit.

Wood

One of our men works on the new "Corridor H" that is being put across WV. (The "Robert Byrd Pork Barrel Project.") He operates a track-hoe used for clearing trees. (Some years ago, I only knew of ‘dozers clearing land, and I did my share of clearing. Now I guess track-hoes are the common means of clearing land.) He had a final few acres of locust trees to clear, so he brought us a small load of locust for fire wood for the winter of 09/10. (About 3 or so cords. Wood needs at least a year to cure to make good fire wood.) It is not uncommon at all here in the mountains to see large piles of logs in people's yards, waiting to be "bucked" and split. Even at $400-$500 for a 10 cord load, wood is much cheaper than oil, gas or electric heat. We heat for a long winter with 1 to 1 1/2 cords a season.

Sodomy

I realize those with children in the government school system are tired of my harsh words of criticism of the statist system, and calling those parents sinners. But here is another warning.

We held our Midweek Bible Study in the library in Moorefield, with the hopes of making inroads into the Moorefield schools. Discussing John 14:1, we got onto the subject of sodomy. The subject struck a note with one of the young ladies who attends the Moorefield school, as well as with a young man who coaches track there.

There is a very pro-active sodomite ring in the school, made up primarily of girls. They call themselves Bi-curious as they experiment with all kinds of "sex." Then the young man spoke up and also said that sodomy is steadily increasing, not only among the kids but among the adults. Sadly, none of the churches in the area will speak out against sodomy, for, no doubt, it would offend the young people in their youth ministries. (The young lady started naming the sodomite girls, telling which churches they went to, and what youth activities they were involved in, and the "praise and worship" teams they "served" on.)

The young lady's dad left her mother for a man some years ago. Mom has full custody, but dad still sees the girl. When he heard that we spoke against sodomy, he called me quite upset. He put enough pressure on the girl's mother, that her mother stopped her from coming to the Bible study.

This is a very small community. WV only has a total of about 1.5 million in the entire state. Even here in a very small area that is surrounded by churches, the public education system is accomplishing its goal of expunging Christianity from society as professed Christians willingly send their children to be indoctrinated by the sodomites. It is a sin for parents to allow their children to be trained by the ungodly in the government school system.

Though Christian parents evidently do not care that their children are being influenced to be sodomites, they should care that they are being converted to follow Mohammad, for the schools have new "History textbooks promoting Islam." Some even have "Mohammedan" education requirements, teaching the children how to pray to "Allah." Christians who leave their children in the government school system will face serious judgment in that day.

New report says Muslim activists ‘succeeding' in expunging criticism

By Bob Unruh

History textbooks being used by hundreds of thousands of public school students across the U.S. are blatantly promoting Islam, according to a new report by an independent organization that researches and reviews textbooks....

http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=63872

Medical

I strained my right shoulder some way, and it was quite painful. I could not use it properly, but it was still usable. I could lift my arm straight up, so it was not a badly toren rotator cuff. I had an x ray, and it showed arthritis or bursitis, and some tearing. I was given a cortisone shot, which created problems with the left eye in which I had laser surgery in ‘95. Now I am trying to deal with this situation. From 50 years old, it is all downhill.

This past summer kept us moving.

In the early 80s, one of the men in the Linden Church introduced me to a "pagan" man who believed in reincarnation. The man was pretty much a jack of all trades. He had a portable band sawmill, and he would cut lumber in woods. He had a large pole barn to store the wood and dress it as needed. He had set up his 5 or so acres in a manner he could be completely self sufficient, including a stocked pond and place to raise sheep and chickens, as well as a root cellar.

His propensity to plan ahead led him, in the late 80s moved him asked me to do his funeral. Then when we moved to VA, he called to see if I would still do it. I assured him I would. Then when we moved to WV, he called again to make sure I would keep my promise. He passed away the first of April, and we went back to do the funeral. It was good to see the men, saved and unsaved, we had worked with during those years as I was heavily involved in local politics.

Blessings

The Lord has blessed us with three "salvations" in less than our first year, the latest one was 60 year old woman who is extremely well known and well liked in this community. She has several things that need to be straightened out, but the Lord can do it.

Polls

I have worked the polls since the late 80s, when a man from our church in Indiana was elected as a precinct committeeman. In Indiana, each committeeman was responsible for getting the poll workers for his precinct. Then in VA, we also worked the polls. We volunteered for the job here in WV, and we worked the primaries and general election. Voting days are long days at the polls, but we found the experience to be quite useful in getting to know the people of a community.

Windmills

Bettie and I joined the Bean Settlement Ruritans at the end of last year. They meet monthly, and usually have a speaker. A few months ago, they had a representative from the Shenandoah Power Company. Though headquartered in VA, they service our area of WV. His topic was what to expect in electrical service. They purchase their power from Virginia Power, which has a large generating station at Mt. Storm, WV. It was built there in the mid-1960s because of the large deposits of coal very close at hand.

Mt. Storm is about 50 miles from us (by road), and sits at over 3,000 feet elevation. In fact, when we go out to the new highway and turn west on that road, we can see the power station off in the distance on the mountain top. (We are at about 2800 ft.) That station provides power for a vast area of the East Coast. (Robert Byrd Pork Barrel Project, known as "Corridor H." To the east, it reduces to a crooked road [US 55] over the mountains about 25 miles from I 81 and I 66–out of D.C.) The new highway will not be completed in my lifetime, as it goes over the mountains to meet up with US 50 at about I 79. It now dead ends at Moorefield, about 8 miles West of us.

When we can see the smoke from the power station, we can also see a multitude of large "Wind Mills," with many more being built. You know they are huge when we can see them 50 miles away.

My point is this: I asked the representative of the power company about those windmills. He told me that they were being built by speculators. (Have not speculators driven up the price of oil, as well as caused the debt crises?) Obviously, that "green" solution, wind, does not produce consistent power. Sometimes the wind blows, and some times it does not. The point is that the power generating source, coal, oil, nuclear, water, must, therefore, be on line at all times with enough power to supply the demand whether those "green sources" work or not. The demand remains the same, regardless.

Congress is debating the "cap and trade" proposal. There is to be a cap on carbon emissions, and "green" tickets given to those "green" sources according to how far under the cap they are. Those "green" tickets can then be traded or sold to power sources that go over the cap.

What this all amounts to is a big scam. The representative told me that the cost of electricity will go up when the carbon cap and "green" tickets are put into effect. The "dirty" producers will have to purchase the "green" tickets from the "green" producers, yet those same "dirty" producers must keep enough reserve generating capacity to provide the power when the windmills are not turning.

The wicked are always plotting ways to defraud others out of their wealth.

Why was I not surprised?

Family Camp

A pastor's wife in Phoenix AZ looking for modest clothing found Bettie's sewing site. (practicallyprettydesign.com) From there, she went to our christiancourtship.us site where we mention that we are available for family conferences. From there, she went to biblicalexaminer.org, where she read some articles. The pastor had been looking for someone one to come to speak at their fifth family conference. She told him he needed to look at some things she found on the web. The result was that he called us, and asked us to come out for a weekend family conference. He wanted an older couple who could speak not only from the word of God, but from experience.

Two churches join together every year for a weekend at a very nice camp up in the mountains above Prescott AZ. It was at 7,500 feet, so the weather was very nice.

We were amazed: There were 26 families there, but an attendance of 175, including several grandparents and families with few or no children. The families were all home schooling families whose parents disapprove of homeschooling and/or large families. It was certainly exciting to see so many young large families in the "reformed" movement. The Heritage Baptist Church pastor, started 5 years ago by Pastor Jason Young who invited Bettie and me, has asked us to join them in the ministry there, for there are no "grey heads" in either of the two churches. Heritage planted the other church, Legacy Baptist Church, three years ago on the other side of Phoenix. (That pastor identifies himself as a "recovering youth pastor.") Pastor Young is also looking at planting another church in the Phoenix area. I have been asked to come as an elder Elder. (I cannot imagine a sound, reformed Baptist church with all young, large families and no "grey" heads.) I spoke with Bro Sprinkle, and he was encouraged that God is moving among young men, and encouraged us to accept the offer, if the Lord so leads. Our church family here appreciates the opportunity before us, and Bro Sprinkle intends to see something continued here. It all depends upon our selling our WV house. (see ethell.com/house) We are not even moved into this 2 year old house good yet. We stand amazed at the Lord's control of all events, even in the lives of the least of his people. It is an opportunity that pastors my age (67) can only dream about. The pastor there even offered to let us be "snow birds," expecting us to come back to the east coast to spend time with our children and 21 grandchildren during the couple of hot months there, and come back for new births.

Pray with us

9/11, another word

"An investigation of the 9/11 events by a Russian-American journalist and a father of a 9/11 victim implicates the US government in the attacks.

ALEX PROKOP (Jarek Kupsc), a successful journalist, receives a rare 9/11 video tape revealing new information about the attack. The footage was sent by PAUL COOPER (Joseph Culp), a driven researcher, whose daughter died on 9/11. Sensing a good story, Prokop travels with Cooper to New York and Washington, DC, where they uncover suppressed information implicating the US Government in the attacks. As Cooper introduces Prokop to key eye-witnesses, the façade of the "official story" begins to crumble. Prokop hears accounts of underground explosions in the Twin Towers moments before their collapse and discovers that the firm providing WTC security was run by the President's brother.

We follow Alex and Cooper as they investigate the inexplicable collapse of the 47-story WTC Building Seven, disprove the implausible airliner "attack" on the Pentagon, and uncover the illegal destruction of physical evidence from Ground Zero.

The pressure builds as the FBI intimidates Alex's editor, McGUIRE, (Lisa Black) to reveal key sources – while the magazine's corporate investors threaten to kill the entire story. Plagued by the ghosts of his Communist childhood and trying to uphold the independence of American journalism, Alex's search for the truth leads to a dangerous and shocking realization!

THE REFLECTING POOL is an intense, sobering investigation into the most controversial tragedy of our time. Drawn from established sources and based on verifiable facts, THE REFLECTING POOL is a thought-provoking study of a search for truth and the profound consequences of not looking for it any further than the nightly news."

(http://www.reflectingpoolfilm.com)

Letters

Dear Bro Need

Just a note to thank you for the book, The Triumph of Titus. It is an amazing work, and a good account of history that is often ignored. I really appreciated receiving it.

Best Regards, Pastor D. Meyer,

Dear Bro Need:

My compliments on another "dynamite" issue: Microwaving, Genetically-Modified Foods, and Female Suffrage. I'll bet you received some mail on that! But this does help explain the "Soccer Mon" phenomenon.

Your March issue, which I haven't yet finished, is also on the mark with sports. We, as a nation, seem intent upon creating "Gods" to worship: movie stars, TV preacher, political saviours, and athletic heroes. The English have their royalty, and we make up our own.

Attached is a check to help you to keep on with your outreach.

Regards, Ted

Trash

That masquerades under the name of ‘hymns' and religious ‘songs.'

While going through the book of John, I encountered a very applicable quote from A.W. Pink (1886-1952). Evidently, "7-11" songs were up and coming in his day. (7 words repeated 11 times, or 11 words repeated 7 times.) They seem to dominate "Christian" music in the "worship" services of our day.

John makes the deity of Christ very clear—he is the Creator and Sovereign Lord God of all his creation. John chapter 13 is one of the greatest chapters in God's word, where the Creator take on the office of a servant as he washes his disciples feed.

Then in v. 13, though he had fulfilled the office of a servant, or even a bond slave, he reminds them that he is still their Master and Lord.

In general, Christianity has become far too familiar with Christ. They sing about and speak of him as though he were still "washing their feet" in humility. The Church has forgotten that he is Master and Lord, and due all the reverence and honor mankind can give to him. The pop-Christian songs of our day treat him as a servant, which he clearly is not. He is God in the Flesh, the Everlasting Father.

I am sure that the angels in heaven and the saints around the throne today are not praising him with fluffy, "7-11" songs. They are praising him with songs that reflect his majesty and glory. Ezekiel and John both fell at his feet when they saw him, and I am sure they did not praise him with the likes of modern fluff. Modern fluff is like "Dream Whip." It is all empty chemicals with no nutrition. But it sure appeals to the flesh.

A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the LORD of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name? Malachi 1:6

The fluffy stuff of our day that is said to honour God is actually despising his name.

Jesus is the Lord of Glory, and is due all the majesty and dignity that can come from a human being.

Here is the quote from A.W. Pink that is worth repeating:

‘ Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.' Surely this is sufficient for any humble-minded Christian. If our blessed Redeemer says we ‘say well' when we address Him as ‘Master and Lord,' how can we afford to speak of Him in terms upon which His approval is not stamped? Never once do we find the apostles addressing Him as ‘Jesus' while He was with them on earth. When He exhorted them to make request of Him for an increase of laborers He bade them, ‘Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest'. (Mt 9:38) When He sent forth the disciples to secure the ass on which He was to ride into Jerusalem, He ordered them to say, ‘The Lord hath need of him'. (Lu 19:31) When He required the use of the upper room, it was ‘The Lord saith, My time is at hand; I will therefore keep the passover at thy house'. (Mt 26:18)

The apostles never once addressed the Lord as simply Christ or Jesus. They always addressed him as "Lord."

... What would be thought of one of the subjects of king George referring to the reigning monarch of Great Britain and saying, ‘I saw George pass through the city this morning'? If, then, it would be utterly incongruous for one of his subjects to speak thus of the king of England, how much more so is it to refer to the King of kings simply as Jesus! But now, king George's wife might refer to and speak of her husband as ‘George' with perfect propriety. Thus it is that the Holy Spirit refers to our Lord by His personal name in the Gospel narratives.

Our modern hymns are largely responsible for the dishonor that is now so generally cast upon that ‘worthy name', (Jas 2:7) and we cannot but raise our voice in indignant protest against much of the trash (for such it is) that masquerades under the name of ‘hymns' and religious ‘songs.' It is sad and shocking to hear Christians sing ‘There's not a friend like the lowly Jesus.' There is no ‘lowly Jesus' to-day. The One who once passed through unparalleled humiliation has been ‘made both Lord and Christ', (Ac 2:36) and is now seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high. If the earnest student will turn to the four Gospels and note how different ones addressed the Son of God he will be well repaid. The enemies of Christ constantly referred to Him as Jesus, (Mt 26:71, etc.) and so did the demons. (Mr 1:23,24) Let us pray God to deliver us from this flippant, careless, and irreverent manner of speaking of His Blessed Son. Let us gladly own our Savior as ‘Lord' during the time of His rejection by the world. Let us remember His own words: ‘All should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him'. (John 5:23) This is no trivial or trifling matter, for it stands written, ‘By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned'. (Mt 12:37) (Ibid.)

There are certainly places in the New Testament where "Jesus" is used by itself, so take Pink's words above accordingly.

He is right, however, in saying that most modern hymns, especially "praise and worship" songs, have done dishonor the ‘worthy name' of our Lord. Rather than raising our voices in "7-11" songs, we should be raising our voices in indignation against such "trash." (If a group is going to sing hymns written by men, let me encourage that group to examine the "Trinity" song books. There are other books also that use good, Scriptural songs that exalt the faith once delivered to the saints.)

Bill Gates

Tight US immigration forces outsourcing

US high-tech companies are being forced to outsource more jobs overseas because of outdated restrictions on immigration, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates told Congress Wednesday.

Gates, echoing a longstanding complaint from the technology sector, told a congressional panel that the US immigration system "makes attracting and retaining high-skilled immigrants exceptionally challenging for US firms."

"Congress's failure to pass high-skilled immigration reform has exacerbated an already grave situation," Gates said in remarks prepared for delivery to a hearing of the House of Representatives Science and Technology Committee.

"As a result, many US firms, including Microsoft, have been forced to locate staff in countries that welcome skilled foreign workers to do work that could otherwise have been done in the United States, if it were not for our counterproductive immigration policies."

Gates said the limits on so-called H-1B visas aimed at highly skilled professionals are far too low for the rapidly growing tech sector.

He said the current cap of 65,000 H-1B visas "is arbitrarily set and bears no relation to the US economy's demand for skilled professionals."

The Microsoft founder noted that all the 65,000 visas for the current fiscal year were snapped up in one day last April and that employers are now waiting to apply for visas for fiscal 2009, starting in October.

"Last year, for example, Microsoft was unable to obtain H-1B visas for one-third of the highly qualified foreign-born job candidates that we wanted to hire," Gates said.

"If we increase the number of H-1B visas that are available to US companies, employment of US nationals would likely grow as well. For instance, Microsoft has found that for every H-1B hire we make, we add on average four additional employees to support them in various capacities."

Gates also said the United States needs to improve science and math education to train a new generation of tech leaders, reversing a move away from these fields.

"If we don't reverse these trends, our competitive advantage will continue to erode. Our ability to create new high-paying jobs will suffer," Gates said.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080312143412.qjper5cy&show_article=1

See Two Million Minutes

Grey Areas

Some time ago, I was asked a question about "grey areas," such as how a Christian should dress. I love questions like that, for they motivate me to consider and study whatever issue is at hand. Just about all the articles and books I have written have been motivated by questions like this, and I love the study and research.

How should Christian men and women dress?

We can expect the world to dress in ungodly ways to motivate lust. But, as we will see, the world's manner of dress is not the cause of social disintegration.

On the other hand, God requires Christians to dress in the manner outlined in his word. A manner that pleases him and that glorifies Christ. To dress otherwise brings God's judgment against a social order.

All of Proverbs 7 develops one implications of the Seventh Commandment:

Exodus 20:14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Notice Proverbs 7:10: the heart of the harlot is revealed in her dress, not by her adulterous actions. Her adulterous actions are a result of her heart problem. Thus, a woman is identified as a harlot before God by her heart — that is, a heart that desires to
draw attention to self. 1 Timothy 2:9.

V. 10. The harlot's garment... She knows in her heart that certain apparel will attract attention, so she wears it. Makeup, hair, jewelry, &c., have the same idea.

Men are not excluded. The male whoremonger, or adulterer, is also identified by his heart. In his heart, he wants to attract lustful attention to himself, so he will present an appearance that he knows will draw attention, such as a football jersey.

Modest apparel can be defined as clothing that does not attract lustful attention to the wearer. (You know the passages.) Females as well as males dress immodestly, e.g., tight fitting jeans, or anything that will attract lustful attention, making them as guilty as the ones lusting after them.

I am constantly amazed that husbands and fathers allow those under their authority to dress in clothing that they know draws lustful attention. More than that: I have heard from ladies on the mailing list who complain that their husbands encourage them to dress in an immodest manner. The husbands, therefore, are encouraging other men to commit adultery with their wives.

If we had time to develop the implications of Psalms 50:16-23, we would see that those who allows those under their authority to dress in a provocative manner are also partaker with the adulterer.

We live in an evil day when lust controls both men and women.

"But, I am not wearing the revealing clothing to attract attention."

Let me say this as strongly as I can: Regardless of one's intent, if the clothing draws lustful attention, then God considers that person a harlot or a whoremonger. Does Matthew 5:28 apply only to men?

One of the saddest things is to see mothers dressing their young daughters in the bare minimum amount of clothing. They are training their daughters from the earliest to think nothing of exposing their bodies as much as possible. It becomes a way of life to them, and their conscience will say very little against their nakedness when they are older. But the Grace of God can intervene, and the Spirit then deals with them about their nakedness.

We as men need to be honest with the women under our authority, wives and daughters. We know what it is like to look at a woman in immodest clothing, as well as looking at women even in modest pants. We remember what it was like as a young men.

Modest dress.

Obviously, what is modest and what is not has been an issue for the last 75-100 years. When I was in school (graduated in, ‘59), a girl would not think of wearing anything except a dress, except where dresses were not appropriate. However, boys wearing even modest clothing, such as a football jersey, to attract female attention is immodest.

Look at old pictures. Back in the early 1900, all women wore long dresses, even in the factories if they were in factories. It was WW II that put women in the factories and into pants, which changed the roles of men and women. Men wore white shirts and ties, except in the dirtiest occupations.

However, the issue is not "pants," nor tight fitting jeans. The issue is changing the Biblical roles between men and women. Britches can be quite modest, as are Hillary Clinton's. But notice those are "power suits," meant to give off the feeling of power. Skirts can be used in the same way, but pants are more common for "power dressing."

There is far more to the "dress" issue than "meets the eye," so we should not really get off on the "grey" areas of modesty. Our decisions should be based on the overall precepts presented by the total of God's word.

The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God. Deuteronomy 22:5

This passage has been used repeatedly to beat women over the head. But let us consider some other important implications. Keil & Delitzsch, as well other Old Testament commentators, points out that this passage deals with the confusion of the sexes as God made them, and their unique appearances and responsibilities.

"For that were to alter the order of nature, and to despite God." Geneva. How many churches preach modest apparel, yet support their women in the work place.

Thus, when Christians ignore Deuteronomy 22:5, they ignore God's condemnation of the confusion of the sexes. Though they swear love and loyalty to the Lord, they show despite to the God they claim to love.

The question coming out of 22:5 is this: How can Christians, the church, condemn the sodomites who remove the distinction between male and female when they ignore that distinction demanded by Deuteronomy 22:5. Romans 1:27.

Four points from 22:5:

First: Same dress... In places such as China, men and women dress the same. Thus the family distinction and role is destroyed, and the state can then become the great parent of all.

Bettie and I worked the polls for the general election. That precinct is known for its "settlement" of sodomites. Several came in to vote, and the only way one could tell they were females might have been by their voices. Their hair was worn like a man's, and their clothing was identical to a mans. In addition, every female who came in to vote was dressed like a man, and many walked like a man with a man's mannerisms. As Clement said, "In truth, unless you saw them naked, you would suppose them to be" men. Some females had clothing so tight, there was no mistaken "identity."

Society's ills lie in the hearts of God's people. Immodest apparel reveals that God's people have adulterous hearts. Apparel reveals that God's people have lost their love for God's male/female distinctions in their heart. Women preachers and open sodomy even in the "Pulpit" are the results.

Hosea 4:9 And there shall be, like people, like priest: and I will punish them for their ways, and reward them their doings. (Also Isaiah 24:2.)

A sign of God's judgment is when he gives them what they want.

1 Peter 4:17 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?

We teach that we are involved in a spiritual warfare, even against principalities, powers, rulers of darkness of this world and against spiritual wickedness in high places. Therefore, every physical action, and every motive of the heart, whether public or private, has a spiritual nature to it. Biblical actions and thoughts produce a godly spirit in society, while unbiblical actions and thoughts produce an ungodly spirit in society. (The subject of other studies.)

Second: God condemns the confusion of male/female occupations. That is, women entering into the work force. The interchanging of occupations also reveals that God's people have lost their love for God's Biblical male/female distinctions in their heart.

Writing in about AD 190, Clement of Alexandria said:

"Luxury has deranged all things; it has disgraced man. A luxurious niceness seeks everything, attempts everything, forces everything, coerces nature. Men play the part of women, and women that of men, contrary to nature; women are at once wives and husbands: no passage is closed against libidinousness [driven by lust, preoccupied with lustful desires]; and their promiscuous lechery is a public institution, and luxury is domesticated."

Third: God condemns effeminacy in man, as well as mascanulinity in women – that is, modern feminism. How many sermons do we hear against effeminate men?

Let me give a few points from a lengthy statement made by Clement of Alexandria, date, AD 153 - AD 217. This is from Vol. 2, p 167, and pp. 275-277 of the 37 volume set of The Nicene Fathers. The section is titled AGAINST MEN WHO EMBELLISH THEMSELVES. He is addressing Lev 19:29.

Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness.

Clement's date was before Christianity became approved by Rome- AD 312. Therefore, the instructions in the principles of the Gospel found in the godly men of Clement's day had a great influence in overthrowing pagan Rome as the converted pagans placed into practice the implications of the Gospel outlined by Clement. They lived godly in the midst of incredible luxury and debauchery of the Roman society of his day.

Obviously, the social climate in which Clement wrote was quite similar to our modern social climate.

These points are from Clement's second book of "The Instructor." Clement is speaking to the Christian converts from Roman paganism. I toned down his statements, so they would not be too offensive. Clement would be an outcast if he said such harsh things today. (Complete quote at http://www.biblicalexaminer.org/w199606.htm)

Clement said that Christian men should be identifiable in appearance, actions and attitudes of the Scythian barbarians of his day. Certainly, we cannot agree with that, but we cannot deny his contention that men are being demasculinized to the point where they think nothing of acting like, looking like, working like and even smelling like women, while women have been urged to take the place of men. This was in AD 190.

His words are strong, but they are his.

FIRST: The smooth skin, perfumed smell, love of finery, alluring/provocative attire, feminine hair, i.e., long hair, marked these men as effeminate creatures, using Clement's word. These things defined the Romans of his day. Look at the images that have survived from the time of Rome. Though they had closely cut hair, they used curling irons to give them the tight curls.

Clement said that onlookers will judge the men "by their foreheads, he [the onlooker] will divine them to be adulterers and effeminate," as was so common among the Romans.

"Foreheads...," Clement was well versed in scripture, for the Lord did and does indeed judge according to the "forehead," e.g., Ezekiel 9:4, Revelation 7:3; 9:4; 13:6; 14:1; 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.

God not only bars fornicators, idolaters and adulterers from the Kingdom of God, but also the effeminate. 1 Corinthian 6:9. How all of these things work out in the judgment day, I do not know.

Clement held that the smooth appearing face and features – obtained by shaving and plucking – female hair style, hair, and the wearing of golden ornaments such as chains &c., was "womanly." He called them "womanly creatures." "In truth," he said, "unless you saw them naked, you would suppose them to be women."

There is certainly nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9

(SPECULATION. Note that the ones who arrested Paul were surprised he was a Roman. Was that because Paul had a beard, and the Romans did not? Acts 16:37.)

Clement makes a point difficult to refute: Ridding of hair, shaving and/or plucking, by men to be attractive to other men, "is the act of an effeminate person,—if to attract women, is the act of an adulterer..."

Therefore, why, asks Clement, do men take great pains to remove their distinctive beards, and both men and women take such great pains to hide their age by removing the grey hair? Are they attempting to appeal to members of the same sex? appeal to members of the opposite sex?

We might mention here that it is feminine for women to appear "hairless," with exception, of course, of the shaved head, 1 Corinthians 11:5, 6. On the other hand, for men to appear feminine is quite contrary to Scripture. In Scripture, it was a shame for a man to have the smooth face of a woman. 2 Samuel 10:5, Jeremiah 41:5.

SECOND: Clement speaks against men and women who seek to cheat time (elude death)? by denying their grey hair: They desire to retain their youthful appearances with dyes and other tricks (including surgery) to escape the ravages of time.

It is not dreadful to appear old; in fact, the hoary head [gray] is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness. Ps 16:31.

Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am the LORD. Leviticus 19:32

Vast sums are spent by people militating against God and his image in them: They are fearful of appearing as old as the Lord made them. Is it not fraud to present something that is not true? Exodus 20:16.

Of course, advertising promotes the youthful look, free of grey hair. People use many various means in their vain attempts to trick time, but noting can permit one to elude death at his appointed time.

Clement tells us that the beard and grey hair are signs God placed upon manly, vigorous, mature men. The beard, according to Clement, is God's token of the superior nature of man, for both the man and the beard were in existence before Eve. The Creator had/has a beard, white as wool, and He created Adam in His image, so Adam no doubt had a beard. Why is man so against that image?

Clement asks, Does a man want to appear Godly? Let the hair turn white as wool in the way of righteousness. The white like wool in Revelation 1:14, must also include Christ's beard, Isaiah 50:6.

When and why did the beard become "out of style?" Who were those men seeking to please when they shaved it off? The beard does, however, seem to be gaining popularity. One wonders if that popularity is an effort by men to retain their manliness in the day of the feminization of men?

THIRD: Great care was taken to see that boys sold and used for sodomite purposes were hairless. Obviously, stealing and selling "hairless" boys for sodomite purposes is far more common today than we admit. Being in places of great power and authority (because Christians have considered those places "secular," therefore, places to be avoided), can we expect the pedophiles, sodomites included, to publicly reveal what is taking place with the tremendous number of children being stolen?

FOURTH: Clement preached against his time of "luxury." It was also fashionable in his day, as it is today, for Christians to try to fit into the Roman society of effeminate males who were determined to eradicate God's natural distinction between men and women.

FIFTH: Denying nature or seeking to change nature commits adultery against nature, therefore, against nature's God. "People may sin legally..." said Clement of the wicked laws of his day.

Clement's call was to men to look and act like men. He exalts civil authorities who detest the effeminate men who give "the body to feminine purposes, contrary to the law of nature..." Such men are "judged worthy of the extremest penalty, according to the righteousness of the law." He called on civil and religious authority to exalt manliness, as well as exalt femininity in women.

But we see just the opposite today as effeminate men and masculine women are exalted by both civil and religious authority. God will judge righteous judgment.

SIXTH: People are known by external appearances: conversation, i.e., manner of life, Ephesians 4:22; Philippians 1:27; Titus 4:12; Hebrews 13:5, &c.

We cannot ignore the openness of sodomy of our day, the feminization of men and the confusion of the sexes – trying to make men out of women and women out of men.

Nor can we ignore the modern effort to trick time with surgery and dye. Reading Clement's statement "AGAINST MEN WHO EMBELLISH THEMSELVES," we see that what we face today is not much different from what Clement preached against at the end of the second century.

The problem addressed by Clement is that man is a sinner at war against God at every opportunity. Man the sinner will spare no expense nor effort to rebel against the image of God in himself.

As even Christians remove the distinction between the sexes as God made them, how can we condemn the sodomites who remove the distinction between male and female when they ignore that distinction in their manner of dress and occupations?

A concluding statement from Clement:

The man, who would be beautiful, must adorn that which is the most beautiful thing in man, his mind, which every day he ought to exhibit in greater comeliness; and should pluck out not hairs, but lusts.(8) I pity the boys possessed by the slave-dealers, that are decked for dishonour. But they are not treated with ignominy by themselves, but by command the wretches are adorned for base gain. But how disgusting are those who willingly practice the things to which, if compelled, they would, if they were men, die rather than do?

A final point under immodest dress.

Immodest dress breaks down the morality of a society. People become preoccupied with sex (and sports), which leads the nation to destruction. Immodest dress is anything that attracts lustful attention, both with men and women.

Why do Christians refuse to admit that immodest apparel leads to immodesty and to the destruction of a society?

I am not saying that all immodest dress leads to immodesty. We are talking of God rewarding openly the fruit of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (This is another study in itself, for a later time.)

I know Christian women who are repulsed by any idea of immorality in any way, yet they still dress in ways that attract lustful attention. I will never understand how a Christian female can ignore the fact that shorts, short dresses, tight pants, revealing clothing of all kinds, attracts lust. Are they not also guilty of the lust they attract? The same goes for males.

Dresses at all times... There are times when dresses can be dangerous. My wife rides a motorcycle with me. We always wear protective clothing, leather chaps and armor jackets of some kind. She wears what I guess you could call long baggy culottes under the chaps. When we get off the motorcycle, she takes off her chaps, and it looks like she is wearing a long dress.

"Grey Areas," as well as every area of life and thought, are addressed by the total of God's word. Those who wrongly "divide the word of God" and have thrown out the Old Testament leave themselves open for gross misunderstandings of "Grey Areas."

Men, and women, let us remove the lust from our hearts. Let us not reject God's image in our hearts. We must avoid confusing the God established male/female distinctions.

Let us adorn ourselves in the beauty of Christ; might others see the beauty of Christ in us rather than the beauty of this world.

Whose attention do we attract.

Search Warrant & Murder

The following is an account by Dean, a man on our mailing list for about 15 years, concerning a mutual friend, William Patrich. Mr. Patrich, of Carbondale IL, had been on our mailing list since 1992, and had supported us faithfully over many years. Bill, William, came to Indiana a couple of times to visit us when we were in Linden.

Dean called to inform me of the murder of Patrich by a SWAT team. I asked him to send me an account of the murder, which is below. I added to what Dean wrote, according to what he told me over the phone. He spent 45 minutes explaining the details, and I asked him to write something down.

Dean was called by Patrich's sister, and he went to Patrich's house for several days to go through Patrich's books to salvage anything of value before they threw them away.

Admittedly, William was "strange." He was single, and certainly had needed a wife to help keep him balanced, which I told him many times. I did not realize he was a Vietnam vet. I have known Nam vets who slept with "one eye open," and it was several years before they could sleep without a gun under their bed. Only the Grace of God can free one from fear, and that may take some time.

This ordeal is quite similar to the murders at Waco and Ruby Ridge. The evident purpose of the encounter was to kill Mr. Patrich, and leave no witnesses. As with the Waco and Ruby Ridge situations, any warrant could easily have been served in daylight, and the whole matter settled peaceably. Therefore, it is obvious that a peaceful resolution was not the goal.

Further note: The local elected sheriff is the final authority in a county. Such evil activities as Bill's murder must be done under the oversight of the sheriff. Thus, the sheriff is as guilty of these murders as are the ones who pull the trigger.

A SWAT team may visit anyone who lives where there will be no witnesses in the dead of night as an example to all. "We can come against anyone with impunity, if we want to."

Dean's account:

The phone rang and a girl on the other end of the line said your friend (Bill Patrich) had died. How? I asked.

She told me that he was shot by a swat team at 7AM in the morning.

Why did they shoot him?

They said he shot at them first.

There are no witnesses?

No – except Bill and he's dead.

What happened I asked? I just talked to him the other day on the phone, and he said there were helicopters over his house for 3 hours.

Knowing he lives in the timber in Southern IL, and it's abundant in his area, I didn't understand. It seems they came to deliver a search warrant, and beat on the sliding glass doors. He had 5 dogs barking outside to warn him if anyone came on "his property".

As he came up off the couch he was sleeping on, he shot through the glass doors, and, according to the police, he hit two officers in the arm and one in the mask he was wearing. Bill had no police record at all.

[Obviously, it was foolish on Bill's part to shoot through the door without first seeing who was there. However, there was no evidence that Bill's shot wounded the men. Rather, "friendly fire" is suspected, as was the case at Ruby Ridge. Bill was shot 5 times, with the last shot through the head from the rear. It seems that the SWAT teams have great boldness in surprise, numbers and from the rear.]

Bill had sign out in his drive way that said ,"PRIVATE PROPERTY", and a sign with a gun and an X on the end of the barrel saying "you are right here". This should have warned any one coming there that he didn't want bothered.

There had been 5 break-ins in the last 30 days on Falcon Road where he lived. He had told me on the phone that he was sleeping with a gun. This isn't a safe place, believe me – I was there. I stayed 4 days [going through Bill's stuff], and on the second night I was across the road. At 2:00 am I heard voices outside the room I was sleeping in and a flashlight hit the window.

Panic stricken, I waited until it got quiet again and went to Carbondale and got the police. They asked where I was going to stay the rest of the night. I said I'd stay in my car and they said, "no you won't" ...

I said ,"WHY NOT?"

They replied, "DON'T YOU KNOW IT'S NOT SAFE AROUND HERE?" You'll have to go to Marion to the truck stop and sleep in your car until daylight. So I did.

The coroner said he had 3 suicides in 72 hours, and handled 7 deaths in 4 days while I was there. His statement to me made it clear that the place was not safe.

The moral of the story is that no matter what "YOU" do, YOU could be the next target of the SWAT TEAM as they practice for the NEW WORLD ORDER take over. It's not coming. It's here in sheep's clothing.

Common sense would have had the search warrant delivered by a woman [a police women] at noon, and then have other officers brought in if they want to look for anything. But instead, "FOR A PRACTICE RUN" they decided to show their FORCE and use the element of surprise and shoot the witnesses.

Bill was a Vietnam vet, and had no record with the police. He was 61 years old and lived there all his life, and his mother across the road.

The search warrant was for "pot" plants growing on his 22 acres of property, and there were some there... but to kill the man over a search warrant – Deadly Force. Who of us could be next? When there are no witnesses, it's hard to prove what happened.

[It seems there is great concern over "pot," yet none over the horrendous theft of "public" money that is taking place today.]

When the shots were fired, Bill's sister and husband, who live across the road and were drinking coffee, came out, and ran down the road to see what was going on. The police raised automatic weapons at them and said they were under arrest.

"Why?" she said, "My brother is in that house"

They were going to arrest them when one of the officers recognized Bill's brother-in-law as a lawyer he'd seen in court over the years. They let them go back home with the threat they would be shot if they came closer. That was at 7:30 am and they weren't told until 1:30 pm what had happened to Bill. All they knew was there were cops everywhere, and no one could go in nor out of the property. There were no witnesses except the law. Bill was dead and gone, and they went home.

Their story has not come out in the paper and may never. You see ,"its none of OUR business," which was how all of Germany went down as the Hitler forces took over the public — FEAR was put on the whole town, and Bill was made an example to everyone of the FORCE used by the NEW WORLD ORDER in these early days of the takeover.

This is a statement taken form The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, page 957– "Night and Fog Decree":

This grotesque order reserved for the unfortunate inhabitants of the conquered territories in the West, was issued by Hitler himself on Dec.7,1941. It's purpose, as the weird title indicates, was to seize persons "endangering German security" who were not to be immediately executed, and make them vanish without a trace into the night and fog of the unknown in Germany. No information was given their families as to their fate even when, as invariably occurred, it was merely a question of the place of burial in the Reich.

We Christian brothers and sisters are now watching the beginning of the New World Order which Hitler called ,"the New Order" in his day. By the way; when my friend was killed on Sept.25,2008 at 7AM it was dark and a real heavy fog covered the area. Practice makes perfect. ...

Editor's note: I am not justifying my friend William's "pot" growing. However, since when is "pot" an automatic death penalty with no judge nor jury? Where is the "rule of law" that the state wants to claim at its convenience? The enemy in India is the Hindus, elsewhere it is the Muhammadans, but in the US, he seems to be our own government. We know from the Tower of Babel that God will not permit a "One World Government" to prosper. But the enemies of God and of righteousness do not believe anyone can stop them.

How long will it be before Christians are openly considered an enemy of the state, and the SWAT team breaks down our doors? How many more secret murders are taking place by SWAT teams under the protection of the local sheriffs?

I now personally know of one. How many do you know of?

Are you ready to meet our God?

[Feel free to pass this on. I am sure this is the only public notice of this next murder by a SWAT team.]

Beware

Apparently, saying "Barak Hussein Obama" in public might just get you a visit from the FBI. Just ask Sheriff Mike Scott who is under investigation for referring to Obama at a campaign rally by his full name. Sheriff Scott responded to Obama's goon squad by saying: "I absolutely, unequivocally don't regret saying it," Scott told the News-Press on Monday........ These will be dangerous times, mark my words: the police and the military will be used against American citizens. Think of Waco, Texas, but on a national scale," warns Det. Frances.

http://www.newswithviews.com/NWV-News/news105.htm

That will be a wretched day when the church thinks any departure from truth is of little consequence. J. H. Evans

Soy is making kids ‘gay'

Posted: December 12, 2006

There's a slow poison out there that's severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture. The ironic part is, it's a "health food," one of our most popular.

Now, I'm a health-food guy, a fanatic who seldom allows anything into his kitchen unless it's organic. I state my bias here just so you'll know I'm not anti-health food.

The dangerous food I'm speaking of is soy. Soybean products are feminizing, and they're all over the place. You can hardly escape them anymore.

I have nothing against an occasional soy snack. Soy is nutritious and contains lots of good things. Unfortunately, when you eat or drink a lot of soy stuff, you're also getting substantial quantities of estrogens.

Estrogens are female hormones. If you're a woman, you're flooding your system with a substance it can't handle in surplus. If you're a man, you're suppressing your masculinity and stimulating your "female side," physically and mentally.

In fetal development, the default is being female. All humans (even in old age) tend toward femininity. The main thing that keeps men from diverging into the female pattern is testosterone, and testosterone is suppressed by an excess of estrogen.

If you're a grownup, you're already developed, and you're able to fight off some of the damaging effects of soy. Babies aren't so fortunate. Research is now showing that when you feed your baby soy formula, you're giving him or her the equivalent of five birth control pills a day. A baby's endocrine system just can't cope with that kind of massive assault, so some damage is inevitable. At the extreme, the damage can be fatal. (Emp added.)

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because "I can't remember a time when I wasn't homosexual." No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can't remember a time when excess estrogen wasn't influencing them.

Doctors used to hope soy would reduce hot flashes, prevent cancer and heart disease, and save millions in the Third World from starvation. That was before they knew much about long-term soy use. Now we know it's a classic example of a cure that's worse than the disease. For example, if your baby gets colic from cow's milk, do you switch him to soy milk? Don't even think about it. His phytoestrogen level will jump to 20 times normal. If he is a she, brace yourself for watching her reach menarche as young as seven, robbing her of years of childhood. If he is a boy, it's far worse: He may not reach puberty till much later than normal.

Research in 2000 showed that a soy-based diet at any age can lead to a weak thyroid, which commonly produces heart problems and excess fat. Could this explain the dramatic increase in obesity today?

Recent research on rats shows testicular atrophy, infertility and uterus hypertrophy (enlargement). This helps explain the infertility epidemic and the sudden growth in fertility clinics. But alas, by the time a soy-damaged infant has grown to adulthood and wants to marry, it's too late to get fixed by a fertility clinic.

Worse, there's now scientific evidence that estrogen ingredients in soy products may be boosting the rapidly rising incidence of leukemia in children. In the latest year we have numbers for, new cases in the U.S. jumped 27 percent. In one year!

There's also a serious connection between soy and cancer in adults – especially breast cancer. That's why the governments of Israel, the UK, France and New Zealand are already cracking down hard on soy.

In sad contrast, 60 percent of the refined foods in U.S. supermarkets now contain soy. Worse, soy use may double in the next few years because (last I heard) the out-of-touch medicrats in the FDA hierarchy are considering allowing manufacturers of cereal, energy bars, fake milk, fake yogurt, etc., to claim that "soy prevents cancer." It doesn't.

P.S.: Soy sauce is fine. Unlike soy milk, it's perfectly safe because it's fermented, which changes its molecular structure. Miso, natto and tempeh are also OK, but avoid tofu.

James Rutz is chairman of Megashift Ministries and founder-chairman of Open Church Ministries. He is the author of "MEGASHIFT: Igniting Spiritual Power," and, most recently, "The Meaning of Life." If you'd rather order by phone, call WND's toll-free customer service line at 1-800-4WND-COM (1-800-496-3266).

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=39253

Various

YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK

State Dept. promotes ‘Mosques in America'

Publishes '09 calendar featuring worship sites for only 1 religion

Posted: July 18, 2008

This now available from the U.S. State Department: "2009 Mosques of America Wall Calendar: Limited Edition for Ramadan."

"Yep, you read that correctly. It's ‘perfect for Muslim outreach efforts," according to a commentary at the Gates of Vienna blog. "Where's the ACLU on this one?"...

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=69914

1st AMENDMENT ON TRIAL

Court says ‘gay' rights trump Christian rights

Dismisses free-speech case filed by Philadelphia 11

Posted: July 18, 2008

A federal appeals court dismissed a civil rights complaint by 11 Philadelphia Christians, ruling their First Amendment rights were trumped by the First Amendment rights of homosexuals at the city's taxpayer_funded "Outfest" celebration in 2004.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=69881

CALIFORNIA SCHEMIN'

Next on school agenda: Teaching communism

Family advocate: ‘Just when we thought indoctrination couldn't get any worse'

Posted: March 04, 2008

A new plan by a California lawmaker would allow schools to be used to promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, and let teachers in public district classrooms "inculcate in the mind of any pupil a preference for communism," according to a traditional values advocacy organization.

"Just when we thought the indoctrination in California's public schools couldn't get any worse, state lawmakers introduce bills that will further brainwash innocent children," said a statement from Capitol Resource Institute, a traditional values and family advocacy organization based in California. ...

http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=58061

THE DOCUMENTARY

Two Million Minutes (Running time: 54 minutes)

Regardless of nationality, as soon as a student completes the 8th grade, the clock starts ticking. From that very moment the child has approximately

…Two Million Minutes until high school graduation…Two Million Minutes to build their intellectual foundation…Two Million Minutes to prepare for college and ultimately career…Two Million Minutes to go from a teenager to an adult

How a student spends their Two Million Minutes _ in class, at home studying, playing sports, working, sleeping, socializing or just goofing off __ will affect their economic prospects for the rest of their lives.

How do most American high school students spend this time? What about students in the rest of the world? How do family, friends and society influence a student's choices for time allocation? What implications do their choices have on their future and on a country's economic future?

This film takes a deeper look at how the three superpowers of the 21st Century _ China, India and the United States _ are preparing their students for the future. As we follow two students _ a boy and a girl _ from each of these countries, we compose a global snapshot of education, from the viewpoint of kids preparing for their future.

Our goal is to tell the broader story of the universal importance of education today, and address what many are calling a crisis for U.S. schools regarding chronically low scores in math and science indicators.

In many ways the six kids simultaneously fit and break national stereotypes.

Take Rohit in Bangalore. He is under intense pressure from his folks to get into a top engineering university but blows off steam singing with his "boy band" and dreams of sending demos out to record companies. In Shanghai we meet math whiz Xiaoyuan, who, while awaiting word from Yale to see if she gained early acceptance, tries out as a violinist for the top music conservatory in Shanghai.

In Indianapolis we go to school with Neil. The senior class president and former star quarterback who gave up football to focus more on his studies. He has cruised through school, but now, with a full academic scholarship to Purdue University, wonders if he is up to the college challenge. The other students profiled in the documentary "Ruizhang, Brittany and Apoorva " face many of these universal adolescent pressures as well.

To put these narratives in context we have assembled an array of interviews with specialists like former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, Congressman Bart Gordon, chair of the House Committee on Science, Harvard economist Richard Freeman as well as top Indian CEOs, and leading scientists in America.

Statistics for American high school students give rise to concern for our student's education in math and science. Less than 40 percent of U.S. students take a science course more rigorous than general biology, and a mere 18 percent take advanced classes in physics, chemistry or biology. Only 45 percent of U.S. students take math coursework beyond two years of algebra and one year of geometry. And 50 percent of all college freshmen require remedial coursework.

Meanwhile, both India and China have made dramatic leaps in educating their middle classes _ each comparable in size to the entire U.S. population. Compared to the U.S., China now produces eight times more scientists and engineers, while India puts out up to three times as many as the U.S. Additionally, given the affordability of their wages, China and India are now preferred destinations for increasing numbers of multinational high_tech corporations.

Just as the Soviets' launch of a tiny satellite ignited a space race and impelled America to improve its science education, many experts feel the United States has reached its next "Sputnik moment." The goal of this film is to help answer the question: Are we doing enough with the time we have to ensure the best future for all?

The DVD is $25 for home use. See http://www.2mminutes.com/about.html

I watched a few of the trailers posted on Youtube, as well as read some of the articles. While showing the immodestly clad "cheer-leaders," the football teams running onto the field, and the ecstatic crowds watching, the government school teachers dismissed the findings of the film by saying that the American students are more "well-rounded" and better equipped to face the realities of life. May I ask a foolish question? How does being a "cheer-leader," a high school football god, or an enthusiastic sports fan better equip one to face life, better than hard coursework?

GMO update

Fears Grow Over ‘Catastrophic' US Biosphere Collapse

By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers (3/26/08)

Scientists from the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (RAAS) are reporting in the Kremlin today of the ‘imminent and catastrophic' collapse of the United States agriculture sector due to the rampant, and unforeseen, consequences relating to rapidly mutating genetically modified strains of crops inundating their biosphere.

These reports detail that the first casualties of mass biosphere genetic poisoning will always occur first in plant pollinators, and which has been confirmed as occurring in the United States, and as we can read as reported by the BBC News Service:

"A mystery illness that has scientists baffled is wiping out tens of thousands of bats across the north-east of the US." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7307345.stm)

"The pollination of crops by bees is responsible for a third of the food produced in the US. One in every three mouthfuls has been touched by their tiny feet; but our six-legged friends are in trouble. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7312358.stm)

They are getting sick and leaving their hives. Without bees, food gets more expensive - some products could disappear altogether. Colony collapse disorder (CCD) emerged last year, and by spring 2007 bees were dying in huge numbers - over the year as a whole the total bee population fell by 30%. (Ibid)

Some beekeepers lost closer to 90%, and the fear is it will get worse. Beekeeper Gilly Sherman says: "It's worse than last year, and last year was worse than the year before, so it's bad, and there are a lot of good big beekeepers that are having a lot of problems. (Ibid)

"I think we're coming in for a big train wreck." (Ibid)

Even more disturbing, these reports continue, is that this genetic poisoning appears to have now hit mammal populations in the US, with their State of Minnesota, one of America's leading agriculture States, and the third largest planters of genetically modified crops in America, now reporting that the moose population in their northeastern regions are dying in record numbers and nearing extinction, and which is the area of that State most concentrated with these mutant crops.

How critical this situation in the United States has become is stated in a report by US Center for Food Safety, and which says, "It has been estimated that 70-75 percent of processed foods on supermarket shelves—from soda to soup, crackers to condiments—contain genetically engineered ingredients."

One could reasonably expect that a Nation facing such a catastrophe as the United States with the destruction of its biosphere would begin to rapidly eliminate such a disaster from devastating their own citizens, except to note that these Western Nations are becoming so vile that this very week, in the United Nations, they actually declared ‘victory' when a resolution declaring water as a ‘human right' was defeated.

With food riots breaking out in Egypt and Cameroon this past week, and with the United Nations World Food Programme reporting it has no more funds to feed 73 million people, the events occurring in the United States do, indeed, speak towards the almost complete destruction of this once great Nation and its people.

[Ed. Note: The United States government actively seeks to find, and silence, any and all opinions about the United States except those coming from authorized government and/or affiliated sources, of which we are not one. No interviews are granted and very little personal information is given about our contributors, or their sources, to protect their safety.] http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1083.htm

A Moneychanger Interview:

The Hidden Agend a of Genetic Manipulation

Seeds of Destruction, by William Engdahl

F. William Engdahl's latest book, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, "focuses on how a small American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: our daily bread." As Henry Kissinger's said, "Control the food and you control the people,"

Economist and writer F. William Engdahl has authored a best-selling book on oil and geopolitics, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, translated into several languages. For more than thirty years, beginning the first oil shock and world grain crisis in the early 1970s, he has written about geopolitics, energy, agriculture, WTO, IMF, politics and economics .

After a degree in politics from Princeton University and graduate study in comparative economics at the University of Stockholm, he worked as an economist and free-lance journalist in New York and Europe, covering the collapse of the USSR, the 1997-98 Asia Crisis, GATT Uruguay Round trade talks, EU food policies, the grain cartel, IMF policy, Third World debt issues, hedge funds and the political role of derivatives trade.

Mr. Engdahl contributes regularly to a number of publications worldwide. He currently lives in Germany. In addition to writing regularly he also acts as a consulting geopolitical risk economist.

You can order Seeds of Destruction from www.global research.ca. The book reads like a novel but is footnoted like a Supreme Court brief. I give it my highest recommendation, and strongly urge you to buy and read it for yourself. At Mr. Engdahl's website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net, you will find a number of fascinating articles. Mr. Engdahl kindly made time for this interview on 18 March 2008.

Moneychanger What's wrong with food from genetically modified organisms (GMOs)? Isn't it just the next stage in scientific advance?

Engdahl I would ask: What's rightwith genetically modified organisms? GMO science is absolutely incompetent, bombarding the DNA of different plant species, such as soybeans, rice, and corn (and now wheat) with genes from another kingdom (bacteria), plus the idea that private corporations take out patents on basic life forms that have existed as long as the human species. They put private patents on these and then try to extract license fees yearly from farmers around the world.

Not only is GMO science upside down science, but micro-biology today is also based on a scientifically incompetent view of life. They reduce life to hard little steel balls called genes so that you can play with genes like Legoblocks to create new structures. That is flawed from the ground up. GMO is inherently unstable. Talk with leading scientists who aren't bought and paid for by the GMO giants Monsanto or Sygenta or DuPont. If they are honest and have done serious work, they will tell you that these structures are inherently unstable and we are literally letting the genie out of the bottle, threatening the future of human life on this planet by sending GMOs into the human food chain.

Moneychanger But no less an authority than the US Department of Agriculture USDA) says that there is nothing at all wrong with genetically modified organisms. They're perfectly safe.

Engdahl Back in 1992, Poppa Bush — George H. W. Bush — was president. He made an executive ruling that henceforth all US government agencies responsible for human health and safety and food and drugs would treat genetically modified patented seeds as being "substantially equivalent" to natural organisms.

That is hardly a rigorous, tight scientific concept. "Substantially" means "more or less," according to Webster, and "substantially equivalent" means it's more or less the same as normal corn and normal soybeans. But it cannot bemore or less the same. Otherwise how could Monsanto receive a patent on it? Applying for a patent they must claim that it's unique. They have taken a gene cannon and shot a bacteria or some other organism into this corn's DNA and produced something unique and new. They want to have their cake and eat it, too. They want patents on seeds, on life forms, so that they can essentially put us into a new type of serfdom depending on the GMO corporations but at the same time they want to claim that they don't need any government regulations because it's harmless.

Moneychanger What about GMO technique? For bT corn, for instance, they take a gene from a bacterium that produces a certain toxin and blast that at a corn cell nucleus. That creates a corn seed that produces that same bacterial toxin to keep European corn borers from eating the corn.

Engdahl But it kills everything else in sight as well.

Moneychanger They take two completely different life forms, a bacterium and a plant, and mix their genes. How can they limit the change they bring about to one effect? The genetic mechanism is incomprehensibly complex. If you change it to produce one kind of toxin, how do you know it won't produce another toxin as well — one you didn't want?

Engdahl I can give a direct example that I know personally, Franklin. A close friend of mine, Gottfried Gloeckner, farms here in Germany — the first German farmer to win permission back in 1996 to plant GMO corn on his farm north of Frankfurt. He was a very proud farmer and always looking into the new scientific and technological trend. He thought GMO made sense – it was progress.

His crop came up, even and straight and beautiful. Then he began feeding it to his prize winning cattle herd, about 80 head. He began mixing 10% GMO corn into normal feed and gradually increased it to 100% GMO. Every single cow starting having absolutely terrible diarrhea. Calves were born with ears sticking out their spines as well as two other ears, with distended udders, with livers hanging on the barn floor. I have seen the pictures, as grotesque as the 1960s Thalidomide babies. Gottfried went to the corporation who gave him the seeds, Sygenta (one of the big four I call the "four horsemen of the Apocalypse") and asked them to check their seed sample for the GMO corn they had sent because of the very bizarre results. "My calves are dying left and right. Something really is wrong."

Sygenta told him that they had sent the seed back to their US lab and it tested all okay. You must be doing something doing wrong.

He took soil samples to an independent research lab and found that where the cows have sprayed their feces, his soil was highly toxic. Through very complicated research he found that in one of the cow's four stomachs, the corn changed into a highly toxic substance that was actually killing the calves and breeding all sorts of monsters. He sued Sygenta and ended up having his life threatened, not to mention his farm and his livelihood ruined. On national television he gave interviews and spoke with lots of farmers groups and he is still doing that. He wants to make sure that his experience teaches other farmers and consumers just how dangerous GMO is.

Moneychanger This is same GMO corn raised in the US?

Engdahl I don‘t know how much. Sygenta is, but Monsanto probably dominates the US GMO corn market. However, it's not anything better. How did the government pass the Monsanto or DuPont or Dow varieties of GMO? The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the USDA simply asked Monsanto for their company tests. Back to the 1940s Monsanto has a track record of fraudulently altering test data. This is putting the fox in charge of the hen house.

Moneychanger The FDA and the USDA do not require tests by any independent agency or does not perform tests themselves? They just take whatever Monsanto hands it as Gospel?

Engdahl Exactly. And most American or Canadian consumers have no idea. They think these agencies protect consumers' interests. The truth is absolutely the opposite. That's one of the terrifying facts that motivated me to write Seeds of Destruction. These private companies have amassed power over the human food supply that never before in human history has rested in single private hands. That alone is grounds for me to oppose GMO heart and soul.

Moneychanger More than that, they have seized control of these US government agencies, while people are led to believe – falsely – that these agencies protect them.

Engdahl It's a revolving door. Monsanto's attorney in Washington, Michael Taylor, was top enforcer for genetic substances at FDA. When he retires from FDA after he has done this work for Monsanto, he enters private practice as VP for Public Relation for Monsanto. It's just a revolving door.

There is example after example like that. Mickey Cantor, Bill Clinton's trade representative, left government after making many favourable rulings for Monsanto et al., the gene giants, and became directly a member of Monsanto's Board of Directors. This is how this works. When you begin to scratch the surface, you're shocked.

All this information is openly available. What I've documented in the books is no hidden knowledge or conspiracy theory. It's conspiracy reality. People are out to control our food supply.

Moneychanger Have far has this gone already? About 80% of the corn grown in the US is GMO corn. Soybeans, rice . . .

Engdahl Soybeans, nearly everything grown . Do you have a percentage figure on rice?

Moneychanger I think it's about 60%.

The unanswered question and danger is that the same basic stuff that killed cows in Germany, although a different type of genetic modification, is being fed to human beings in the US without any tests for untoward reaction or safety.

But Gloeckner's case in Germany wasn't unique. What about Dr. Arpad Pusztai in Scotland?

Engdahl Arpad is a very dear friend of mine. Back in the late 1990s he was known as a leading GMO researcher, biologist and nutritionist. He published dozens of scientific papers and was at the time convinced that GMO would feed the human race and solve hunger. He got financing at the government-supported Rowett Research Institute in Scotland under Tony Blair's administration. He was to perform independent, three-year long studies of GMO feed's effect on rats.

After a number of months he found alarming results which he hadn't expected at all. To his director he said, I think we have to go public with our findings to warn public officials and the population that we must go very slowly releasing GMOs into the human food chain. Let's do long term research, five to ten years, to see how it affects organisms over a period of time.

He found that the organs of the rats fed on GMO potatoes were dramatically shrunken. Their livers, kidneys, hearts, and most alarming — he dared not say this on national television in Britain — the brainsof GMO rats had shrunk. Within 72 hours of making his findings public, he had been fired, his computer and all his files had been seized and locked up, he had been forbidden under severe penalty to discuss anything with any colleagues, , and he had been told not to have any discussion with any of his colleagues under severe penalty. The reaction was so dramatic that he suffered a heart attack.

Today he is in his mid-70s. He was black-listed from any work. The British Academy of Sciences made fraudulent accusations about his scientific methodology. They staged an absolutely McCarthyite witch-hunt against Dr. Arpad Pusztai.

Moneychanger Sponsored by the government?

Engdahl From a colleague who had retired and felt safe to tell him, he later found out that Tony Blair had called the director of Rowett Institute the day after and said, "You shut this guy Pusztai up or you won't have any research funds." Then he found out that Tony Blair had been reacting to a phone call from none other William Jefferson Clinton back in Washington. Clinton, in turn, had gotten a phone call from Monsanto.

Trace the causality there. They were terrified that this Pusztai finding – independent scientific research on GOM's effects — would kill GMO in its infancy, and it certainly would have.

That same pattern of suppression has appeared again and again and again. A Berkley, California research biologist discovered a GMO infestation in the World Corn Seed Bank in Oaxaca, Mexico, and published an alarming article in the British magazine, Nature. Monsanto intervened to simply buy the biology department of Berkley University and tried to prevent Dr. Cheleppa, the biologist, from getting tenure. After a bitter fight, he finally won but that gives a flavour how these corporations attempt to corrupt honest science..

Moneychanger If they are scheming to monopolize the market, now that 80% of corn, 100% of soybeans, and 50-60% of rice planted is GMO, how much farther do they have to go?

Engdahl Europe right now is the major battleground. In the developing world they are forcing in GMO through US food aid in Africa. The Africans are very sceptical. They don't want GMO but no longer do they get food aid in the form of money to buy crops from neighbouring countries that aren't in famine. Rather, they get it as GMO seeds from the USDA.

This is a worldwide fight. Asia and China are very alarmed at the prospect of Monsanto coming in. After initial openness to GMOs, they dramatically pulled back. It's a battle. In Germany the Monsanto lobby is putting enormous pressure on the government to allow GMO, which previous governments forbade. Country by country it is a battle.

Moneychanger The ultimate goal is to control the entire stock of seed and germ plasm in the entire world?

Engdahl I think they aim at nothing less than that. Seeds of Destructiongoes back to a mid-1970s quote attributed to then-Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. He said, if you control oil, you control countries; if you control food, you control people. I think that has been the goal of powerful, wealthy families like the Rockefellers, through their foundations.

For decades reaching back into the 1920s the Rockefellers were financing what was called then "eugenics". That is race science for the purity of race, something that became unpopular after World War II when allied soldiers discovered the gas ovens of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen where humans were being exterminated in vast numbers.

Moneychanger Also native Germans. Hundreds of thousands of native Germans – handicapped or mentally retarded or mentally ill — were liquidated under Nazi eugenics programs.

Engdahl Eugenics in Hitler Germany would never have gained the renown it enjoyed in the 1930s without the Rockefeller Foundation. Right up into 1939 – six years into the Nazi regime – the Foundation supported the German program with hundreds of thousands of dollars, which today would translate into million.

Moneychanger Wait — Rockefeller Foundation financed Nazi racial research?

Engdahl Not only research, but also forced sterilization of the mentally or socially "unfit" carried out by the Nazis. Members of the Board of Directors of the Rockefeller Foundation would come back to New York saying, "It's a shame that Nazism has such a bad reputation in the western press, because they are actually doingwhat we only talkabout doing. They are really working on racial purity."

Moneychanger [Laughs]

Engdahl It even gets better. In the 1950s, after the gas ovens had been uncovered and the Nuremberg Trials held, the Rockefeller family consciously changed the name of eugenics into "genetics". To the tune of over a hundred million dollars they financed genetically modified organism research: genetic engineering. That is a Rockefeller Foundation project from start to finish. The idea is to control the food so you can control the people. Patents on life.

Four private companies — three with intimate links to the Pentagon, Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and DuPont, traceable back to WWI — have been involved in black Pentagon operations over decades. They have lied about Agent Orange effects on American soldiers in Vietnam. They have lied about almost every damage their chemicals have done to their own employees and nearby residents in towns where they have factories.

These are the people we are told to trust with the human food supply.

Moneychanger What is the agenda behind this, the final goal?

Engdahl I have given a lot of thought to that over the decades I've been researching. The only conclusion that I can reach is that people at the very top have gotten such enormous wealth and power that they feel they are above sovereign, elected governments. These families feel they are like kings. At the root they are highly paranoid, psychologically disturbed individuals who look at the world and say, "There are 6 billion of ‘them' out there and if ‘they' get the idea to go after me and my wealth, I'll have nothing. So we have to cullthe human herd, as Prince Phillip once so charmingly put." That's their mentality.

Ted Turner, founder of CNN and a multi-billionaire, gave a billion dollars to the US to finance population reduction programs in Africa and elsewhere. He said he would be comfortable in a world with only 225 million people. Then we would have room for the right nature preserves and ecological developments.

Moneychanger You are saying that the ultimate goal is to reduce human population….

Engdahl Dramatically.

Moneychanger Presently the earth allegedly supports 5 billion people. You mean reduce humanity down to less one-twentieth its present number? That's genocide.

Engdahl Yes, and that would have catastrophic ecological repercussions, probably the end of mankind.

Moneychanger In the late 1980s and early 1990s I researched the environmental movement, and even wrote a book about it, The Greening, with Larry Abraham.

First of all, I quickly learned that the environmental movement was created whole cloth by foundation money. It's not a grass-roots movement. It was created by the foundations, Rockefeller, Ford, and others.

Second, one theme that runs throughout environmental literature and propaganda is that there are too many people, just too many people. In the course of this research I got a copy of the Population Council's yearly report.

Engdahl John D. Rockefeller's little group.

MONEYCHANGER I tell you without exaggeration, it was so disturbing and so disgusting and so filled with hatred of humanity, that it made me sick – physically sick. You say things that sound outrageous — these people think that the human herd ought to be culled. As crazy as it sounds, that does appear to be what these people want.

Engdahl Yes, and constantly keeping people in a state of confusion and a state of subservient passivity . These people think that they are mightier than God, and they count on humanity behaving as a herd, passive, waiting for their orders, stupid, not capable of thinking outside the box.

Moneychanger But turn this around . Wasn't the Green Revolution , sponsored primarily by the Rockefeller Foundation a humanitarian effort to increase Third World food production, especially in Asia.?

Engdahl Oh, not at all. After WWII Nelson Rockefeller went down with to Mexico with Norman Borlaug. They had a problem. They had produced a huge stocks of nitrate for explosives for the war. The factories still existed after the war, still were capable of producing nitrates, but they had no outlet for it. One of their scientists proposed converting it into fertilizer. Then they went down to Mexico and said, if we introduce fertilizer and mechanized farming, that will create a new market for gasoline and also for our chemical surpluses.

Norman Borlaug was an employee of the Rockefeller University at the time, and he went down there and started experimenting with different wheat hybrids. The companies sold the wheat hybrids to American companies like DuPont & Pioneer. Now you have a new foreign market for seed, a new market for fuel, and a huge market for chemical fertilizer using your nitrate. That was the Green Revolution.

The first harvest year it looked pretty good. Yields were boosted an average 20%, but after two, three, or four harvests, yields actually dropped lowerthan before the Green Revolution.

I sound like a broken record, but all this belonged to a huge project that was started by Rockefeller Foundation money in the 1950s at the Harvard Business School. They financed a project called agribusiness, to create an industrialized, top-down pyramid business model for producing food and animals.

Moneychanger "Farming" became "production." Factories in the field.

Engdahl Factories in the field, CAFOs [Confinement Animal Feeding Operations], the whole nine yards, it all started out of Harvard Business school. The goal was not the quality of nutrition entering the human food chain, but rather the bottom line profit for the multi-national corporations that would control agribusiness from the top down.

That's our world today. Three or four companies control the entire North American beef processing market, pig slaughtering and so forth…

Moneychanger Pork, grain, chickens…

Engdahl And sanitary conditions in these industrialized settings are absolutely horrendous beyond belief.

Moneychanger Yet the deadly results of those processors and producers is never against them. Few press reports and no or FDA reports say, "Hey, these CAFOS and the way they process animals are a train wreck, and packing too many animals in too small space causes disease, overuse of antibiotics, and after the animals are slaughtered, huge recalls for lethal ." Instead, they use it against small farmers, to put them out of business and smear the safety of their produce.

Engdahl Yes, the absolute opposite of the truth. To groups I speak to across the country and Europe I often say that the most precious link of the food production chain is the family farmer. If we extinguish that species, life on this planet is in danger, ladies and gentlemen. I came from a second generation Mid-west farm family. I know farmers who get up at 3 and 4 in the morning to care for a sick calf and for their animals and crops. Without that kind of personalized care and attention to the food product, you end up with diseased animals: 50,000 chicks in a house, pumped up with antibiotics, and sanitary conditions that would kill anybody.

Here's an example. A few years ago the huge bird flu scare flew out of Asia. In front of the National Institute of Health President Bush held a press conference. He invited the World Health Organization (WHO) director and talked about upping his request to Congress for a billion dollars to purchase Tamiflu to fight a possible human flu outbreak. His alarmist presentation and pressure led the WHO to reverse its policy 180º. Suddenly they discovered that the biggest danger of spreading bird flu were carriers from Asia into western Europe and North America and unsanitary conditions among free roaming backyard chickens.

Moneychanger [Hooting laughter]

Engdahl They went on to say the safest places are these industrial concentrations of chicken production. Then they floated the incredible myth that deadly ill birds were flying from the heart of Vietnam and China, from east to west, carrying bird flu all the way into the Ukraine, north Germany, Turkey, Croatia, and other parts of Europe. For a few weeks, people panicked about eating chicken.

Then somebody from the Audubon Society pointed out a basic fact: birds do not migrate east-west. They migrate north-south. Suddenly that whole argument fell to pieces. Somebody else figured out that every bird flu outbreak occurred near factory-like concentrations of chicken production in Asia. Companies there were built on the model of Tyson Foods. Thai, Vietnamese, and Chinese owners of these agribusiness companies belong to David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission. That seems to be the story on bird flu. Under USDA and other pressure, WHO reversed its position to give their support to agribusiness.

Seeds of Destruction traces the history of agribusiness' emergence. It is the most dangerous threat to life on this planet. It's not just GMO, but GMO as the final link in agribusiness controlling humanity's food chain. That is the biggest threat to health and life on this planet today — much bigger than nuclear war.

Moneychanger Right, and the outcome is all around us. Statistics show an epidemic of diabetes, auto immune disease, obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease. All of these illnesses have skyrocketed since the small family farmer has been removed from the scene.

Engdahl Go back to the mid-1990s when GMO was first unleashed on the US. Compare that with statistics of explosively multiplying allergies among children, obesity, autoimmune disorder, and so forth, you'll find incredible correlation.

Moneychanger We've talked about the attempt to monopolize plant germ plasm, but what about animals?

Engdahl They are moving onto animals as well, trying to patent pigs and bull serum.

Moneychanger Is this what's behind cloning, too? USDA has already approved cloned animals in the food supply.

Engdahl Man is trying to play God, something that we were never intended to do.

Moneychanger Since we bought a farm I have learned the critical of maintaining as many diverse genetic strains as possible. Corn grown in one place for 30 years adapts to those particular condition. It's a treasure that it doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. When you begin abandoning those varieties and concentrate the whole national herd into one bloodline, what happens if it can't resist some new disease? Right now worldwide banana production is threatened because the dominant Cavendish variety cannot resist a new blight that is literally wiping out banana production everywhere.

Engdahl A wheat blight is also marching across Pakistan and other countries in Africa.

Moneychanger In our last few minutes, let's talk about the American financial empire. Before WWII, the US and especially Roosevelt, became the enemies of the British Empire. They insisted that the British Empire had to be dismantled. What that just because of their soft feeling for all the oppressed colonial peoples?

Engdahl Their warm-heartedness for all the underprivileged? I think not.

In 1939 a project called War and Peace Studies was begun at the New York Council on Foreign Relations, again, funded with Rockefeller Foundation money This will appear in the book that I am working on called The Rise and Fall of the American Century.

In 1939 Germany had yet to invade Poland, but clearly something was about to happen in Europe. It wasn't clear that the United States would be dragged in. These elite experts were brought together to work out the US master plan to dominate great areas of the world – geo-politically carving up the post-war world before the first shot had been fired. The Roosevelt state department was staffed by people who worked on this Council on Foreign Relations, and they literally created the United Nations as part of this project. The idea was to have world government controlled behind the scenes by the US. Countries dependent on the US were guaranteed to vote for any US proposal.

In their plan they said, "The British empire they blew it because they weren't clever enough, and we are going to take the benefit of their experience and their failure. We won't ourselves an `empire'. We are going to call ourselves the ‘defender of democracy and national liberation' around the world. We are going to publicize the freedom that America is built on, free enterprise, free markets. Before the dust had cleared from bombed-out Europe's rubble, Truman cancelled Lend Lease which had kept the British economy from complete collapse. He told the British government that it would not get a cent more from the US government and the US would not forgive the Britain's war debts.

At the behest of Chase Manhattan Bank, City Bank, and others this hardball stance aimed at dismantling the British empire & the Commonwealth of Nations so that American corporations could take over those markets. Free trade is always free for the biggest player in the game, not the small countries. They said we will create an empire, but an informal empire based on the idea of defending democracy and freedom. To my mind, an absolutely brilliant but fatally flawed strategy.

Moneychanger Did it include also a financial empire?

Engdahl The two pillars of the post War American empire were to be the planet's dominant military power on the planet and to issue the world reserve currency, the dollar. In the 1940s the dollar was considered as good as gold. Under the gold exchange standard set up in 1944 as Bretton Woods (along with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank), all European and other member currencies were convertible into dollars, but only the dollar was convertible into gold. Nobody questioned it at the time because they were so hungry for dollars.

The American economy was the world's industrial powerhouse. In those days United Stated engineering and science were world class. It was a time of tremendous intellectual, engineering, and technical expansion. That began to play out in the late 1950s and 1960s. By 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window. Since that time the world has been forced to swallow dollars as a fiat currency with no backing. Today the dollar is in terminal decline. As the dollar declines the Euro is emerging.

Moneychanger But it's not technically any better than the dollar. It's just another fiat with even less gold behind it.

One aspect of all this "American Empire building" remains a mystery to me.

The Bretton Woods system would inevitably de-industrialise the United States. The gold exchange standard made the American manufacturer pay an export tax because their costs kept rising internally while foreign manufacturers were paid in un-depreciating gold, in effect an import subsidy. Foreign manufacturers would always be able to undercut American manufacturers. Like so many other US government policies, it was a roadmap to national suicide. At the same time that these people were creating an American hegemony over the entire world, they were also destroying the US economy. None of these policies have benefitted the people of the United States.

Engdahl Oh, not at all, but these people don't care about the people of the United States. They think of them as cannon fodder to fight their wars.

Moneychanger Right, and I hope one day they figure it out. Thanks very much for your time. [end of interview].

The MONEYCHANGER, a privately circulated newspaper published monthly. "Our goal is to help Christians prosper with their principles intact in an age of monetary & moral chaos." 12 issues, 14 silver dollars, $22 in 90% silver coins, or F$149 in paper. Franklin Sanders, S.P. PO Box 178, Westpoint TN. 38486. 888-218-9226. http://www.the-moneychanger.com

Real Monopoly coming

"Doomsday Seed Vault" in the Arctic

Bill Gates, Rockefeller and the GMO giants know something we don't

by F. William Engdahl

...No project is more interesting at the moment than a curious project in one of the world's most remote spots, Svalbard. Bill Gates is investing millions in a seed bank on the Barents Sea near the Arctic Ocean, some 1,100 kilometers from the North Pole. Svalbard is a barren piece of rock claimed by Norway and ceded in 1925 by international treaty (see map). ...

On this God-forsaken island Bill Gates is investing tens of his millions along with the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto Corporation [the leader in forcing GMOs on us], Syngenta Foundation and the Government of Norway, among others, in what is called the ‘doomsday seed bank.' Officially the project is named the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, part of the Svalbard island group. ...

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7529

And we think Windows is a bad monopoly. What will happen when all of our "public" seeds and crops are corrupted with GMOs?

Article you do not want to see

The Federal Reserve Is Inflating at 341% per Annum. (Don't Look for the Decimal Point.) (Gary North, http://www.garynorth.com/public/4178.cfm)

The Coming Mesiah, 1/1/08

The dispensational crowd has been telling us for years that the Messiah is coming any minute. It looks like he is now here by popular demand.

Regardless of what the media has told us, the Messiah will not take his throne through an election. The Messiah is seated in the Heavens with all dominion, from where he controls all events in heaven and in earth for his own glory. (Not for the glory of the money changers.) Daniel 4:35. Ephesians 1:21, 22. I certainly wonder what will happen to the one who has implied he is the messiah? What will happen to those Christians who have placed and are placing their hope in electing the right man. The answer is not in the ballot box. The hope is having godly men who will preach both the entire word of God from the pulpit.

Example: Confronting a pastor who claims to believe the entire word of God over his dealing with a family situation, this was his way out: "Understand this: I reject the patriarchal view of family derived from the wrong views of the Law and the use of the Old Testament. As a result, their understanding of the family and their interpretations of the daughter's attitudes and actions are skewed by those views."

Rather than giving any Scriptural justification for his advice to that family, he simply rejected the family's view of Scripture. He refused to be challenged by the Word of God concerning his views..

God has given us just what the people have asked for.

Wall Street Journal warning

Load Up the Pantry, By Brett Arends

I don't want to alarm anybody, but maybe it's time for Americans to start stockpiling food.
No, this is not a drill. ...

Reality: Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.

"Load up the pantry," says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street's top investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual fund. "I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent. They think it isn't going to happen here. But I don't know how the food companies can absorb higher costs." (Full disclosure: I am an investor in Quaker Strategic)
Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash. Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you'll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax....The reason? The prices of many underlying raw materials have risen much more quickly still. Wheat prices, for example, have roughly tripled in the past three years.

Sooner or later, the food companies are going to have to pass those costs on. Kraft saw its raw material costs soar by about $1.25 billion last year, squeezing profit margins. The company recently warned that higher prices are here to stay. Last month the chief executive of General Mills, Kendall Powell, made a similar point. ...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120881517227532621.html