Martyrs in Nigera....This is right now, right here..... Come Lord Jesus

Boko Haram: How 3 pastors were beheaded eyewitness
From TIMOTHY OLA, Maiduguri
Thursday, August 6, 2009


One of the victims of last week’s attack by the Yusufiya sect in Borno State has given a shocking account of how the Islamic extremists killed three pastors who were captured along with other victims on the second day of the insurgence. The victim was among those held hostage in Yusuf’s enclave.

Speaking exclusively to Daily Sun in Maiduguri, the eye witness who preferred anonymity disclosed that the three pastors were beheaded on the instruction of the sect leader, Mohammed Yusuf shortly after bringing them out of his inner chamber.

“The pastors alongside one Ibo man were asked to change their faith to Islam like they did to other people taken as hostages. I think there was an argument by one of the pastors which gave the others some level of confidence to also resist accepting Islam.

“The Yusufiya men who were armed on that Tuesday afternoon were not comfortable with the pastors and they took one of them to the sect leader in his inner chamber. They came out later to the courtyard within the compound and cut their heads one after the other and thereafter, shouted allah akbar in wild celebration accompanied with several gun shots,” the eye witness disclosed.

He said the hostages numbering about 50 within the area of the execution of the pastors and another fair complexioned man which he could not identify, were gripped with fear as non could foretell the outcome of their stay at the enclave of the fundamentalists. He was however lucky to escape as he was freed in the night with others with a warning not to mix with kafrici (infidels).

Corroborating the account of the killing, a Senior pastor with Good News Church, Wulari Maiduguri Rev. Baba Gata Ibrahim told Daily Sun in an interview that a pastor in his church, Pastor George Orjih was beheaded on the instruction of the Boko Haram leader because the clergy man refused to accept Islam.

“An eye witness who was also captured by the Islamic militants gave us details of how the pastor was killed. He told us they were persuading him to accept Islam and he said over his dead body. He was even said to have preached Christ to Mohammed Yusuf and that reportedly angered the sect leader who then as he ordered that the pastor and others be killed immediately,” he disclosed.

The late Pastor George Orjih was said to have arrived Maiduguri last week from Jos where he was doing his Masters programme in Theology. Described as a fearless, hardworking, and intellectually sound, his care for the welfare and well being of his family allegedly contributed to his capture and eventual death.

“He was mindful of his family and their welfare. He was really out of the house but thought to go back again. That was how he was captured by the Boko Haram before he was killed. It was the very week, in fact the following day he returned from school where he was doing his Masters in Theology that he was arrested,” the senior pastor added.

He urged the government to provide adequate security for Christian in the state.
Also delivering a sermon during the funeral rites for late Rev. Sabo Yakubu, slain COCIN Church pastor, the speaker, Rev Bulus Azi urged Christians to emulate the pastors who were killed because of their refusal to betray their faith. Quoting from the bible in Revelation 7: 9-15, the regional chairman of the church told Christians to prepare to die anytime as their calling demand.

The Twelve Step Program for those who Voted For Obama and NOW regret it

Just before the election Obama stickers started showing up in our church parking lot. In fact the head usher at Church voted for him.

I was astonished. I was chagrined. I kept asking, how can ANYONE who names the name of Jesus vote for Barack Obama? OK, I'm over the top on that, but I was puzzled.

Well, now many of those folks are beginning to sober up.

Therefore here are the steps to recovery from Obama Intoxication. A new OA (Obama Anonymous) chapter is being formed. There's room for you. Here are the Twelve Steps:

The twelve steps for Obamamania recovery

1. We admitted we were powerless over his appealing aura and that our lives and our nation had become unmanageable.

2. We came to believe that powers such as democracy, liberty, loyalty to nation, and independence were greater than personal charm and empty promises and could restore us to sanity.

3. We made a decision to turn away our will and lives from the false messiah as we understood him.

4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of the shallow reasons for voting for him.

5. We admitted to ourselves and to friends and family members (who had serious concerns about an inexperienced person with shameful associates being qualified for the most important position in the nation) the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. We were entirely ready to read the Constitution and learn more about the Founding Fathers and the principles of this nation in order to remove these defects from our character.

7. We cleared our thinking so that we neither discounted associations with rabid anti-Semites nor found convoluted rationalizations for such associations convincing.

8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed (people who use banks, people who drive cars, people who might get sick and die in a nation with a single medical provider, Israelis who are left to fend for themselves against the murderous intentions of the Iranian regime, the Iranian protestors whose cries we ignored, Muslim women, whose abusers we protected in the name of cultural diversity, bloggers who were reported to the authorities for contradicting the official White house position. Radio talk-show hosts whose criticisms were silenced by the "Fairness Law." The list is too long to complete. ) and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. We spoke up at town hall meetings to protect our rights as Americans. We lobbied our senators and representatives for legislation that would re-strengthen the almost severed ties between Israel and the U.S. We were relentless in our demands that this nation not blame Israel for the lack of peace in the Middle East, but put the full force of our power on Tehran which threatened the existence of the Jewish State of Israel. We insisted that our elected officials and media not appease our enemies by refusing to even name them and undermine the security of our country and the world by expressing more concern for terrorists than for their victims.

10. We continued to take personal inventory, read the Weekly Standard and the American Thinker and watch Fox News to keep ourselves from succumbing to the pandering, paid for propagandists that make up much of the major media. We volunteered to help and financially supported candidates who had a strong record of upholding the best interests of the U.S. and its allies. We applied facts and reasoning to the comedic outbursts of Bill Maher, Al Frankin and Nancy Pelosi and when they were wrong, we promptly admitted it.

11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our spiritual contact with God, as we understood Him/Her, praying only for wisdom to stop dismissing those with strong religious affiliations as "kooks" and start showing respect for the Judeo-Christian underpinnings of our nation's success.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to Obamamaniacs, and to practice these principles in all our affairs so that the United States of America could survive until the next election.

A friend suggested a perfect meeting place for these OA (Obama Anonymous) groups--reform synagogues, liberal churches (eg, Unitarian), community centers in liberal 'hoods, eg Upper West Side, Chicago's North Shore, just about anywhere in Massachusetts and the San Francisco Bay area.

George Santayana strikes again, when HISTORY repeats itself

Read this future present account of what is going on in this country and then read the one who developed the pattern he is following. Do you think I go to far? I don't think so.

Present Future Account of Barack Hussein Obama:

After the elections of 2008 where Barack Obama became President of the USA, the Liberals began a systematic takeover of state governments throughout the USA, ending a centuries old tradition of local political independence. Acorn and Black Panther thugs barged into local politics using a state of emergency decree as a pretext to squelch any legitimate protest and replace them with liberal mouthpieces.

Political enemies were arrested and detained.

They were held without communication in places no one knew about.

For Barack Obama, the goal of a legally established dictatorship is now within reach. In August 2009, a cabinet meeting was held during which Obama and Rham Emmanuel discussed how to obstruct what was left of the democratic process to get an Enabling Act passed by congress. This law would hand over the constitutional functions of the government to Obama, including the power to make laws, control the budget and approve treaties with foreign governments.

The emergency decree signed by Pelosi in September, after the great crisis and attack, made it easy for Obama to interfere with conservative elected representatives of the people by simply arresting them.

As Obama plotted to bring democracy to an end in the USA, MSNBC put together a brilliant public relations display at the official opening of the newly elected congress.

In November, at Christ Church in Chicago with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in attendance, an elaborate ceremony took place designed to ease public concern over Obama and his gangster-like new regime.

I simply edited the history to update it to what is happening NOW. George Santayana is still right: 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'

I was wrong about President Obama ---

When he was elected President of the USA I commented that his election was no more historic than Andrew Jackson's. Same with the inauguration.

I was nonplussed. Unimpressed. And I was wrong.

Now 200+ days into his Presidency I am impressed that his election and inauguration WAS historic in the same way Adolf Hitler's was in Germany in 1933.

Let's hope it doesn't come out the same way.

I afraid it might.

In Praise of Infanticide

This is just sick. Treating abortion like a sacramental act.

Phooey.

You either GET the Holy Spirit or you DON'T. There is no Half Way

The Holy Spirit is a Person. A Person cannot appear in Percentages!


By Reinhard Bonnke
We know much more about the Holy Spirit today than in the past. Jesus promised power to make us witnesses “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). That is God’s kind of power, enough to carry us through to the very end. The power of God is the person of the Holy Spirit and you cannot split a person. No person can appear in percentages, you and I included. God does not deal in dribs and drabs. He is not mean or careful, but generous. He does not dish out the Spirit by measure, checked and weighed as if on heavenly scales. He does not turn the faucet off so that it does no more than dribble. He fully lets it run. God has no water meter in heaven and Pentecost is not a touch of blessing or an anointing just for a sermon. It continues until the Great Commission has been completed, until we no longer need to evangelize – a continuing and extended movement of God’s Spirit till the end of the age.

Joel announced that God would pour out his Spirit. (Acts 2:17) The word “pour” does not mean a watering here and there, occasional spills, but revival times. Nobody need chase the Holy Spirit or corner Him to persuade him to help. The Holy Spirit is chasing us, persuading us, wanting us by his side to make the end times what he means them to be – decades of non-stop revival, revival fires breaking out here, there and everywhere, over and over again. This is God’s thermal age, the age of fire.

Lutherans and Rick Joyner

Right now there is a conference going on in St Paul MN. It's being put on by a group coming out of the ELCA called Lutheran Renewal.

They are having some great men of God at the conference. Rick Joyner, Graham Cooke, John Paul Jackson are among them. I got this information because of a note from Rick Joyner on Facebook. These are prophets on the leading edge of what God is doing in his church.

This is the Larry Christiansen Group. They've been around a long time.

Much good has been done by his group in encouraging freedom in the Holy Ghost in the Lutheran Church ELCA. Meanwhile the ELCA as a denomination has drifted into profound apostasy.

I have charismatic pastor friends who USED to lead Assembly of God churches who now lead Lutheran Churches who have left the ELCA and have affiliated with some other group, most of the time Free Lutheran and Sometimes a small denomination from Fergus Falls called Lutheran Brethern.

Some years ago Peggy and I were part of a small church that was the keystone church in leading such a movement in the LCMS. Del Rossin was the head of that group. Faith Lutheran of Geneva.

They had conferences where Members of Renewal in Missouri would come in and meet. Several hundred pastors were participants. In it's day it did much to encourage pastors and leaders to enter into the fullness of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.

We often would host these out of town pastors at our home. They were precious men of God hungry for more. I loved the humility and passion they had.

It also gave me a vision of what GOD was doing in denominational churches to bring new life, renewal, to them.

Even though hundreds of good charismatic ELCA churches exist, they cannot stay affiliated with a denomination that pokes God in the eye. They must of necessity leave that group when new light comes.

In the LCMS however, even with the Renewal in Missouri organization going quiet as leaders age and retire, the fire has been lit and is growing. I don't know numbers but I'm guessing thousands of pastors and leaders flow in the power of the Holy Ghost in all the fullness of the spirit.

I know many. Hear about others. God is honoring the commitment to the core of the faith that the LCMS and it's unwillingness to compromise with the world by pouring out HIS spirit in power in many churches of the LCMS.

The day of the big organization is over. Cross pollination is happening. It looks like this is renewal in the LCMS one congregation at a time. That people and the pastors are drawn to the things of God without some grand Scheme....Except by the Holy Spirit.

Will it cause a split. Perhaps. But that split already exists. My hope is that the light of the truth of the GOOD NEWS will shine on congregations whose only anchor of faith are documents and confessions from long dead German theologians. Martin Luther was profoundly right, many who followed on later began to erect walls of dogma that try to keep people inside some imaginary construct (see the Matrix).

I just read thru the small Catechism as published by the LCMS's Concordia Publishing House. If you just read the words of Luther, any pew jumping Holy Ghost church or tongue talking pastor will heartily embrace them. It was good to read it again. It gave me insight into how damaging bad theology can take good theology and distort it.

It's the "additions" and editorial comment in explanation that are so harmful. They put God squarely in a box and try to close it.

He won't be closed in. He's God. He laughs at this.

Let God be God and those who choose to be his enemies be scattered.

And THIS is why I believe that GOD is doing what he is doing and I want to follow the Blackaby admonition, Figure out what God is doing and cooperate with HIM. I do. I am. I'm not here to change the LCMS. I have no capacity for that. I am here to cooperate with God as he does what he does.

Where that takes us all God only Knows. That gives me comfort. I don't have to know.

A Precious Man becomes Chief Bishop as a Precious Man Leaves Office

I had noted earlier of the wonderful time I spent with the outgoing Bishop of the IPHC in Columbus.

How much I appreciate him. How much I still do. He is off to be the President of a Bible College. There is much to do yet for him. He doesn't know that. He will

Our new Bishop of the whole Organization is Ronald Carpenter Sr. Ever since I joined the IPHC as a minister nearly a decade ago he has been part of my life. I honor him.

He often would respond to articles I wrote. He would contact me sometimes when there was situations. And most important, when it got very tough, he didn't give up on me.

When I was first credentialed, he was the officer in Charge. That mattered to me then and it still does.

As Bishop Legget left his post the last official act was to lay hands and pray for different ministers. He did so and when he laid hands on me he called out the gift God has given thru my ministry.

I am so thankful that the retiring Bishop and the New Bishop are not just acquaintances, but men I respect, honor, have had dinner with and who's lives are transparent and open. Men that care about me. Men who are led by the Spirit of God in unique ways.

God bless the International Pentecostal Holiness Church and it's leaders as they move into a new era.

God Bless Bishop emeritus Legget and Bishop Carpenter. Like the old ALLSTATE commercial says, we are in GOOD HANDS.

I saw this yesterday, tried to read it to Peggy, can't talk thru tears... She understood

" If I had to choose between loving you and breathing I would use my last breath to say I love you."

UH OH, I wonder if I'm in trouble.....

Two dead rodents lead to firings

Protected species: Townsend’s chipmunks found impaled on nails at work site

JEREMY PAWLOSKI; The Olympian | • Published August 06, 2009

LACEY – Animal Services is investigating two construction workers who might have used nail guns to impale two Townsend’s chipmunks at a job site in the 8000 block of 28th Court near Hawks Prairie, killing the animals.

Townsend’s chipmunks are on a list of protected species under Washington law, Animal Services director Susanne Beauregard said. Killing animals on such a list is a misdemeanor.

Greg Bailey, the owner and contractor for the construction project on 28th Court, said he fired the two subcontractors after he confronted them Wednesday and they admitted to shooting the chipmunks with nail guns. He said the two men were doing framing work at the site.

“I can’t even believe they did it,” Bailey said. “I’m just appalled.”

The wife of one of the suspects, who identified the other suspect as her nephew, said the chipmunks were pests and chewed up the job site.

“This is a pest issue,” said the woman, who would only be identified by her first name, Teresa.

“We love animals,” she said. “I am a total animal lover.”

Teresa said it hurts her family to lose the income from the construction job.

“Shooting them with a nail gun is not the way to go,” she said. “This was a very bad decision. It doesn’t look to me like this was the only option available.”

Most construction workers know not to inhumanely kill animals at job sites, Beauregard said.

She said it is her understanding that the chipmunks became pests after some construction workers began feeding them. It appears that trees in the area were cut down to make room for the construction site.

Bailey learned of the impaled chipmunks the same way The Olympian did: Someone noticed the dead animals abandoned at the job site, then took photos of them and anonymously sent them out to media, to Bailey’s construction firm, BGC, and to Animal Services.

“I am appalled at this conduct and in no way does BGC or anyone in our company, personally or professionally condone this behavior,” Bailey wrote in an e-mail.

Beauregard said an Animal Control officer was interviewing one of the suspects Wednesday. Both suspects have been identified, she said. She said both are young men. Animal-cruelty charges might be referred to the Thurston County prosecutor, she said.

The dead chipmunks have been recovered, and though it appears they were alive when they were shot, a necropsy will be performed on both animals to definitively determine their cause of death, Beauregard said.

Jeremy Pawloski: 360-754-5465

jpawloski@theolympian.com

Could we have less of this foolishness please?

Antigua and Barbuda's Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer, left, unveils a stone sculpture and plaque honoring President Barack Obama as Brent Hardt, charge d'affairs of the U.S. embassy in Barbados, looks on during a ceremony naming Antigua's highest mountain "Mount Obama" in St. John's, Antigua, Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2009. The small Caribbean nation celebrated the American president on his birthday and saluted him as a symbol of black achievement. (AP Photo/Johnny Jno-Baptiste)

Boggy Peak on the Caribbean island of Antigua is now Mount Obama.

Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer made the change official today (Wednesday) during a ceremony honoring American President Barack Obama on his birthday. The peak is the highest point on the island, rising 1,300 feet above sea level.

The move was not universally favored on Antigua, but Spencer did not need legislative approval to make the name change. He said Obama, as the first black American president, was a source of pride for all Caribbean people.

On the Death Penalty in the Bible

From Blessed Economist

The Old Testament imposes a number of requirements that will make the death penalty vey rare. All of the following conditions must be met before the death penalty can be imposed.

• The crime must have observed directly by two or three independent witnesses (Deut 19:15).

• The witnesses must not have committed the crime they are testifying about. Adulterers cannot testify against adulterers. People with a record for violence cannot be witnesses to crimes of violence (John 8:7).

• A young man cannot be given the death penalty, if his parents object. If they think that he is redeemable, he must be given another chance. They would need to take responsibility for helping him change (Deut 21:18-21).

• The victim’s family must agree to the death penalty. They will often refuse consent, because they will benefit more if the murderer pays restitution. The rest of the community could only overall, if the murderer continued to be a threat. The death penalty was only permissible in situation where protection of the community took priority over the compensation of victim’s family (Num 35:31).

• The death penalty can only be implemented, if the murderer criminal stays in his community. Most murderers would flee their tribe or community to avoid punishment. There were no police force, no prisons to retain criminals. There were no extraditions laws to get convicted criminals returned for sentence. Fleeing criminals could escape justice, but they would cease to be a risk to their community, because they would be afraid to return.
  
  The fleeing criminal would lose the protection and privileges that come through being part of a tribe or community. He might find it difficult to find another tribe or community to participate in and might end up living among other outlaws. This would be dangerous as someone might seek revenge by paying someone to kill him.

• When a society has become “hard of heart”, the community should stop imposing the death penalty in most situations, as excessive use the death penalty brutalises a society (Matt 19:8).. It is better for crimes to go unpunished than for society to be become vicious and violent.

Most situations where the death penalty is imposed in America will fail to meet one of these conditions. If these conditions were imposed in America, the death penalty would almost disappear. The Old Testament is much more merciful than American justice. People who assume that the Old Testament is harsh do not understand it.

The Check Pharasieism Light on your Dashboard

I saw this today and thought maybe I ought to take a look.

-----------an analogy of a car dashboard. He said we should pay attention when a warning light comes on and correct the problem under the hood. He asked, “How can I do a spiritual dashboard check and respond properly to the lights that come on in my heart if I pay attention?” He gave a list of several lights to watch for in terms of becoming a Pharisee. The first one was the most important and the one that hit me right between the eyes. Question: “How critical are you of others?” Ouch. I find it very easy to see your faults and miss my own. I find it a veritable pastime to flood light on people’s mistakes while I keep mine hidden in the closet. Another light John mentioned, that also struck me deeply, was this: “Don’t compare your life to others but always compare yourself to Jesus.”

What it sounds like when the boy cries wolf too often

Warning: Oil supplies are running out fast

Catastrophic shortfalls threaten economic recovery, says world's top energy economist

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

The world is heading for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a leading energy economist has warned.

Higher oil prices brought on by a rapid increase in demand and a stagnation, or even decline, in supply could blow any recovery off course, said Dr Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the respected International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, which is charged with the task of assessing future energy supplies by OECD countries.

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In an interview with The Independent, Dr Birol said that the public and many governments appeared to be oblivious to the fact that the oil on which modern civilisation depends is running out far faster than previously predicted and that global production is likely to peak in about 10 years – at least a decade earlier than most governments had estimated.

But the first detailed assessment of more than 800 oil fields in the world, covering three quarters of global reserves, has found that most of the biggest fields have already peaked and that the rate of decline in oil production is now running at nearly twice the pace as calculated just two years ago. On top of this, there is a problem of chronic under-investment by oil-producing countries, a feature that is set to result in an "oil crunch" within the next five years which will jeopardise any hope of a recovery from the present global economic recession, he said.

In a stark warning to Britain and the other Western powers, Dr Birol said that the market power of the very few oil-producing countries that hold substantial reserves of oil – mostly in the Middle East – would increase rapidly as the oil crisis begins to grip after 2010.

"One day we will run out of oil, it is not today or tomorrow, but one day we will run out of oil and we have to leave oil before oil leaves us, and we have to prepare ourselves for that day," Dr Birol said. "The earlier we start, the better, because all of our economic and social system is based on oil, so to change from that will take a lot of time and a lot of money and we should take this issue very seriously," he said.

"The market power of the very few oil-producing countries, mainly in the Middle East, will increase very quickly. They already have about 40 per cent share of the oil market and this will increase much more strongly in the future," he said.

There is now a real risk of a crunch in the oil supply after next year when demand picks up because not enough is being done to build up new supplies of oil to compensate for the rapid decline in existing fields.

The IEA estimates that the decline in oil production in existing fields is now running at 6.7 per cent a year compared to the 3.7 per cent decline it had estimated in 2007, which it now acknowledges to be wrong.

"If we see a tightness of the markets, people in the street will see it in terms of higher prices, much higher than we see now. It will have an impact on the economy, definitely, especially if we see this tightness in the markets in the next few years," Dr Birol said.

"It will be especially important because the global economy will still be very fragile, very vulnerable. Many people think there will be a recovery in a few years' time but it will be a slow recovery and a fragile recovery and we will have the risk that the recovery will be strangled with higher oil prices," he told The Independent.

In its first-ever assessment of the world's major oil fields, the IEA concluded that the global energy system was at a crossroads and that consumption of oil was "patently unsustainable", with expected demand far outstripping supply.

Oil production has already peaked in non-Opec countries and the era of cheap oil has come to an end, it warned.

In most fields, oil production has now peaked, which means that other sources of supply have to be found to meet existing demand.

Even if demand remained steady, the world would have to find the equivalent of four Saudi Arabias to maintain production, and six Saudi Arabias if it is to keep up with the expected increase in demand between now and 2030, Dr Birol said.

"It's a big challenge in terms of the geology, in terms of the investment and in terms of the geopolitics. So this is a big risk and it's mainly because of the rates of the declining oil fields," he said.

"Many governments now are more and more aware that at least the day of cheap and easy oil is over... [however] I'm not very optimistic about governments being aware of the difficulties we may face in the oil supply," he said.

Environmentalists fear that as supplies of conventional oil run out, governments will be forced to exploit even dirtier alternatives, such as the massive reserves of tar sands in Alberta, Canada, which would be immensely damaging to the environment because of the amount of energy needed to recover a barrel of tar-sand oil compared to the energy needed to collect the same amount of crude oil.

"Just because oil is running out faster than we have collectively assumed, does not mean the pressure is off on climate change," said Jeremy Leggett, a former oil-industry consultant and now a green entrepreneur with Solar Century.

"Shell and others want to turn to tar, and extract oil from coal. But these are very carbon-intensive processes, and will deepen the climate problem," Dr Leggett said.

"What we need to do is accelerate the mobilisation of renewables, energy efficiency and alternative transport.

"We have to do this for global warming reasons anyway, but the imminent energy crisis redoubles the imperative," he said.

Oil: An unclear future

*Why is oil so important as an energy source?

Crude oil has been critical for economic development and the smooth functioning of almost every aspect of society. Agriculture and food production is heavily dependent on oil for fuel and fertilisers. In the US, for instance, it takes the direct and indirect use of about six barrels of oil to raise one beef steer. It is the basis of most transport systems. Oil is also crucial to the drugs and chemicals industries and is a strategic asset for the military.

*How are oil reserves estimated?

The amount of oil recoverable is always going to be an assessment subject to the vagaries of economics – which determines the price of the oil and whether it is worth the costs of pumping it out –and technology, which determines how easy it is to discover and recover. Probable reserves have a better than 50 per cent chance of getting oil out. Possible reserves have less than 50 per cent chance.

*Why is there such disagreement over oil reserves?

All numbers tend to be informed estimates. Different experts make different assumptions so it is under- standable that they can come to different conclusions. Some countries see the size of their oilfields as a national security issue and do not want to provide accurate information. Another problem concerns how fast oil production is declining in fields that are past their peak production. The rate of decline can vary from field to field and this affects calculations on the size of the reserves. A further factor is the expected size of future demand for oil.

*What is "peak oil" and when will it be reached?

This is the point when the maximum rate at which oil is extracted reaches a peak because of technical and geological constraints, with global production going into decline from then on. The UK Government, along with many other governments, has believed that peak oil will not occur until well into the 21st Century, at least not until after 2030. The International Energy Agency believes peak oil will come perhaps by 2020. But it also believes that we are heading for an even earlier "oil crunch" because demand after 2010 is likely to exceed dwindling supplies.

*With global warming, why should we be worried about peak oil?

There are large reserves of non-conventional oil, such as the tar sands of Canada. But this oil is dirty and will produce vast amounts of carbon dioxide which will make a nonsense of any climate change agreement. Another problem concerns how fast oil production is declining in fields that are past their peak production. The rate of decline can vary from field to field and this affects calculations on the size of the reserves. If we are not adequately prepared for peak oil, global warming could become far worse than expected.

Steve Connor, Science Editor

Saints of the past and present

I believe that as marvelous John G Lakes ministry was, We have men and women surpassing his today. That is wonderful news.

Smith Wigglesworth and John G Lake were Precursors of Rodney Howard Browne and Reinhard Bonnke. Thank God for them

John G. Lake produced 1,250 preachers, 625 congregations, and 100,000 converts.Lake was known throughout America as a leading healing evangelist. He had established forty churches throughout the United States and Canada in which there had been so many healings that his congregations nicknamed him “Dr.” Lake. By January of 1910, he was headed back to Africa in the midst of a raging plague there. He was among few who ministered to the sick and dying. He proved to local physicians that the germs would not live on his body due to the Holy Spirit alive in Him. He actually verified this under a microscope showing that the germs died upon contact with his body. Those who witnessed the experiment stood in amazement as Lake gave glory to God explaining that: “It is the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. I believe that just as long as I keep my soul in contact with the living God so that His Spirit is flowing into my soul and body, that no germ will ever attach itself to me, for the Spirit of God will kill it.”

Will Homeopathic Medicine be covered under Obamacare?

Hook your load to God's lifting machinery! (This is a “Must-Read”)

From Reinhard Bonnke
If a one-thousand-ton block of iron had to be lifted by crane, how much could you help? Suppose you could get a grip on it and tried to heave and pull, what difference would you make? There would be no difference, and it wouldn't help.

What about lifting the whole world? That is a task for God, through the power of His atoning death and resurrection. "He's got the whole world in his hand". Do you think you can take the load off His shoulders? Does God have omnipotence and then need a little bit extra from you? Jesus said He had ALL power. (Matth 28,18) That's enough! You may just as well leave it to the power of God. "Cast your burden on the Lord." (Ps 55:22)

Does that mean that we should sit idle? By no means. Far from it. You have a privileged and important part to play. What is it? What do hoist-operators do? They don't attempt lifting heavy weights with their own hands, but neither do they hang around with their hands in their pockets. They know what to do and without them the load will never be lifted. They hook the load to the lifting machinery! That's what our job is also. Don't try to lift everybody's burden all by yourself. That is only what God can do. Getting too emotionally involved and trying to solve everybody's problems in endless hours of counseling, just as if you belonged to that family or were married to them, will kill you. Our simple task is to bring people to Jesus, and hook them to the lifting power of the Holy Spirit. The gospel is the power of God to lift the whole world. There is power, plenty of power, wonder-working power. Christ said so.