Blog to discuss the book "The Apocalypse - Letter by Letter: A Literary Analysis of the Book of Revelation" and current events that point to the events described therein.
Once in a while, there are signs that God wants you to pay attention to secular affairs. I don't pretend to know the Divine Mind. But after reading The Apocalypse - Letter by Letter: A Literary Analysis of the Book of Revelation, I pay attention to numbers and symbols.
The terror attacks of 9/11/01 was one of those times. I saw it as an attack on financial and military superpower, a humbling of a great nation that has lost its way morally. When the towers came down, all that was left was a cross on top of the pile, much like a grave marker. But in the shadows of the rubble stood the little chapel of Saints Peter and Paul with nary a cracked window.I saw this as a sign that god is in control, not the terrorists and certainly not the government.
During the Middle Ages, it was customary that the tallest structure in a town was a church. As a sort of divine zoning plan, no other structure was permitted (or desired) to be taller. On 9/11/01, the tallest building in NYC was a financial building. Money had replaced God in order of importance. But God has a way of using secondary agents to accomplish His will in secular affairs. And 19 terrorists with box cutters brought the financial and military hyper-power to its knees.
But as it says in the Apocalypse, "they did not repent of the works of their hands". And so like ants, we rebuilt not the physical towers but the financial ones. We created towers of fraudulent paper built on the dreams of poor people yearning to own homes. The greedy power brokers saw a way to inflate balance sheets and investment portfolios. Corrupt politicians saw it as a way to appear beneficent while lining their own pockets with campaign contributions from massive financial institutions. Any attempt at reform was rebuffed with cries of 'discrimination".
But the Great Equalizer once again has brought the towers crashing down. His sign this time is a number and the number is 777, the number of points the stock index fell in one day. 7 is the biblical number for perfection and completion. Certainly the stock market drop was neither complete nor perfect. But God's plan for us is perfect and complete though only known to Him. Once again, we will fail to "repent of the works of our hands" and we will again build towers on the backs of the poor.
But do not despair. As always, God is truly in control. And that is the message of the number.
Time Magazine: "Want to wreck the environment? Have a baby." - Prince Philip Concurs
LONDON, May 13, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A feature in the current issue of Time Magazine asks a rhetorical question, "What's an an environmentally conscious parent to do?" Time's Pamela Paul gives the response most frequently pushed by radical environmentalists, saying the answer is 'don't have children'. In a television interview this week, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, concurs, saying the recent increase in global food prices is due to too many children. At the same time, the Italian Prime Minister is seeking ways to turn around his country's disastrously low birth rate that currently stands at well below replacement level.
"Want to wreck the environment?" the Time feature starts, "Have a baby."
"Each bundle of joy gobbles up more of the planet's food, clogs garbage dumps with diapers, churns through plastic toys and winds up a gas-guzzling, resource-consuming grown-up like the rest of us. Still, babies are awfully cute. Given that most people still intend to procreate, what's an environmentally conscious parent to do?"
The Duke of Edinburgh followed the same environmentalist playlist when he said this week that the only way to save the planet is for people to stop having babies. Prince Philip told a television interviewer this week that the solution to the burgeoning global food crisis is simply to have fewer mouths to feed. The prince, who has four children, said, "Food prices are going up. Everyone thinks it's to do with not enough food, but it's really that demand is too great - too many people."
In recent months, food prices have risen dramatically around the world and economists are struggling to identify the reason. Most have said it is the result of rising oil prices which have affected the cost fertilizers, food transport, and industrial agriculture. The prince admitted that implementation of a massive population control movement might be a problem for governments. "Basically, it's a little embarrassing for everybody. No one quite knows how to handle it. Nobody wants their family life to be interfered with by the government."
Indeed, the only governments to try a systematic programme of population control are known to be among the world's most oppressive regimes. The communist government of China has had its One Child policy in place since 1979 when it was put in place ostensibly to alleviate social and environmental problems. The result has been social unrest, arrests of pregnant women and forced abortions and state-sponsored infanticide. It has also caused a massive and likely incurable imbalance in the population's sex ratio in favour of boys and resulted in a dramatic aging of the population. The Chinese government, while maintaining the One Child policy, is now struggling to find answers to the problem of millions of elderly with few children grown to adulthood to care for them.
Ironically, Prince Philip's wish has already come true. Currently the British birth rate stands at approximately 1.66 births per woman, well below the 2.1 level at which a population is sustained naturally.
Meanwhile, the recently elected Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, is casting about for ways to stop the plummeting of the Italian birth rate. He told journalists today that he would try to remove "material reasons" that push women to seek abortions. In his inaugural speech before parliament, Berlusconi promised "new and important expenditures for demographic development". Italy is facing a demographic crisis. The country once noted for its fervent Catholicism and dedication to large families, is aging as the birth rate drops. Italy is now the "greyest" country in the European Union, with the highest "ageing index," according to the Italian National Statistics Institute (Istat). Istat estimates that the birth rate has climbed slightly from 1995 to 2005, from 1.19 births per woman to 1.32, but the government agency said this was almost entirely the result of immigration.
Government interference with family life has long been a major goal of the environmental movement's population control goals through enforced abortion, contraception and sterilization.
It is axiomatic among environmentalists that the human population would outstrip the world's food supply. Last year, Paul Watson, founder and president of the radical Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, denounced the "human virus" said that a "radical and invasive approach" was required. Watson who has called human beings the "AIDS of the Earth" said, "Curing a body of cancer requires radical and invasive therapy, and therefore, curing the biosphere of the human virus will also require a radical and invasive approach."
In 2007, the UK's leading population control lobbyist group, the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), issued a warning of environmental disaster if British couples do not restrict themselves to a two-child maximum.
Note: When the EU Constitution was drafted and circulated, it contained no mention of the Christian heritage of Europe, its contributions to western civilization or any positive effect at all. Pope John Paul II and the Vatican made a request that it be amended to do so and were rejected. The article below however shows the warm relationship between Freemasonry and the EU leadership. So it's no surprise that the Church was repudiated.
Masonic Influence in the EU By The Brussels Journal Created 2008-04-17 11:11
The French Federation of Le Droit Humain represented by its president, Michel Payen, met on April 8, 2008 with the president of the European Commission, Jose-Manuel Barroso, [...] This meeting constitutes a major event regarding the place of Freemasonry in the construction of Europe; this place was underscored not only by the interest and attentiveness that President Barroso showed to the delegation and the time he accorded them, but also by the commitments he made to the values espoused by liberal and adogmatic Freemasonry, its positions and its opinions on subjects of concern. It was the first time that Freemasonry, as such, was able to express itself to such a high level European institution.
The delegation received assurances from President Barroso of his attachment to the spirit of "lacite" and to the principle of separation of religion from the State. The delegation stressed the importance of the Enlightenment in the history of Europe, a dimension to be taken into account at least equally with its religious roots, and certainly more closely tied to the roots of antiquity.
Finally, a principle of communication between the liberal and adogmatic Masonic Orders and the services of the European Commission, to be used whenever needed, was decided upon. Thus the French Federation of Le Droit Humain will propose, in the near future, a recommendation concerning the principle of emancipation that ought to form the basis of all European education systems, in direct relation to a recognition of the contribution of the Enlightenment to the common culture of the peoples that compose Europe, and in accordance with the principles of the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
