“It’s a nuclear world. At least seventeen countries have nuclear weapons or the capability to make them, latest reports say. Seven nations now have nuclear arsenals: Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, Russia and the United States. Also count Israel, which is said to have up to 100 warheads, though they have never confirmed an arsenal of their own. Countries which are working on nuclear weapons at present include Iraq, Libya, and North Korea. This information comes from the Federation of American Scientists and offers a bleak assessment of the global threat.” —Chattanooga Times Free Press

Richard N. Ostling of the Associated Press reports that “the steering committee of [a] budding effort, tentatively called Christian Churches Together in the U.S.A.” has brought together “church leaders from 30 denominations” and calls for a “loosely knit alliance” that “would represent 5 segments of U. S. Christianity.” They are: “Evangelical/Pentecostal, Historic Protestant, Orthodox, Racial/Ethnic and Roman Catholic.” Also mentioned is the possibility that the “National Council of Churches, which is currently the nation’s largest ecumenical group,” might well be supplanted by this new alliance if it does indeed emerge on the American religious scene.

“Human Experimentation—Rep. Dave Weldon, M.D. has introduced…a bill to ban all forms of human cloning. More than 100 other representatives joined him in sponsoring this, the first pro-life bill of the 108th Congress. Weldon asks, ‘Why divert funds away from successful research that is currently being developed and used to treat people?’ …While there is certainly moral and ethical research that can be done on human development (e.g. adult stem cell research), human cloning does not fall in that category. When cloning ‘Dolly’ the sheep, there were 276 attempts before those researchers succeeded. That’s a lot of death and destruction! How many human lives, created in the image of God, will be created and destroyed for ‘research purposes?’”

“The number of people who say they don’t belong to a religion has doubled over the last decade…” Over “29.4 million people said last year that they skip [religious services], up from 14.3 million in 1990, an overall rise from 8 percent to 14 percent of the U.S. population.” If this group “were its own denomination, it would be the third-largest religion in the United States, behind Catholics (50.8 million) and Baptists (33.8 million).” —Philadelphia Enquirer

“The crises facing the Church is not that Christians disagree with what they have studied in the Bible and what is taught in the pulpit—it’s not simply that they don’t believe the clear teachings of Scripture; it’s that many have never heard them to begin with. Christians desperately need to study the Bible and have it communicated clearly to them from the pulpit, but as churches turn to ‘spiritainment’ to draw the masses, what often falls through the cracks is the transfer of doctrinal truths and/or the edification of parishioners’ minds.”

Gary Burge, professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, maintains that there is “a universal and growing problem” of biblical illiteracy among evangelicals—even those who come from supposedly “strong” evangelical churches. Part of the problem appears to be an emphasis on “therapeutic” preaching. “‘There’s not an educational dimension any longer. We’re all about the experience, not the facts,’ he said. And as a result the younger generation is not learning the important stories, people and background of the Bible.”

“What’s to be done to remedy this situation? Study the Bible . Responsibility and the desire to change begins at home.” —Daniel Foster, National Liberty Journal, Feb. 2003

Armageddon—The Cosmic Battle of the Ages is the title of the 11th book in the Left Behind series by Tim La Haye and Jerry Jenkins. The Street Date is April 8, 2003. To request your copy see the enclosed insert.