To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - What is the role of the 144,000?
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 00:26:37 EDT

From: Godis4ever@aol.com

Recently I sent a request concerning the 144,000. I apologize for not being
clear enough. I do not dispute that 144,000 Jews are sealed during the
tribulation. I am very familiar with the Biblical references that support
that fact. It is not their existence that I question but their role.

Are they sealed and protected so they can be witnesses of the gospel during
the tribulation? That's what I've been taught. I don't believe the Bible is
clear on their role, and I see no Biblical evidence to support that theory.
I've heard that they are the remnant sealed for protection until the Lord
returns to set up his earthly Kingdom. That seems to have a little more
support but I would like more information on this or any other theory.
Thanks for all the responses I've got so far. I hope this clears things up a
little.

Love in Christ,
Gail

guess I wasn't clear enough

--- BPR

BPR Web Site - http://philologos.org/bpr

========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Inside China Today items (9/10/99)
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 08:56:27 +0000

From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>

U.S. INTELLIGENCE: CHINA LIKELY TO INCREASE ICBMS POINTED AT U.S.
WASHINGTON -- China's arsenal of missiles targeted on the United
States is likely to grow over the next 15 years to include mobile
missiles with smaller warheads, according to a U.S. intelligence
estimate made public Thursday.
http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=91372&text

CHINA SLAMS U.S. FREEDOM OF RELIGION REPORTS
BEIJING -- China on Friday fought back against a U.S. State
Department report condemning the erosion of religious freedoms in the
country, warning Washington not to interfere in its internal affairs.
http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=91383&text

U.S. SAYS NO DEADLINE FOR WTO DEAL WITH CHINA
AUCKLAND -- U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky on Friday
made it clear the United States would not be rushed into a World Trade
Organization (WTO) deal with China, saying it was more important to
get a good agreement.
http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=91408&text

CLINTON HOPES TO RESUME 'CONSTRUCTIVE' TALKS WITH CHINA
WASHINGTON -- President Bill Clinton said Thursday he hoped to resume
"constructive" negotiations with Beijing on China's admission to the
WTO and to bring them to a "successful conclusion".
http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=91376&text

U.S. SAYS CHINA TIGHTENING GRIP ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
WASHINGTON -- Beijing tightened its grip on religious freedom in the
past year, viewing the spread of faith in the country as a potential
threat to its hold on power, the U.S. State Department said Thursday.
http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=91368&text

========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Arutz-7 News (9/10/99)
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 09:08:06 +0000

From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>

TODAY'S HEADLINES:
  1. ARAFAT AGREES TO ACCEPT LAND
  2. BARAK WILLING TO SETTLE FOR LONG-TERM INTERIM AGREEMENT
  3. PRE-HOLIDAY GOOD NEWS
  4. ECOLOGICAL PROBLEMS CAUSED BY WITHDRAWAL
  5. JEWS FROM DEGASTAN TO ISRAEL
  6. NO PROGRESS IN SEARCH FOR SOLDIER
  7. HEADS UP!
  8. MESSAGE FROM CHIEF RABBI

1. ARAFAT AGREES TO ACCEPT LAND
Yasser Arafat has rescinded his refusal to sign the withdrawal papers,
and has agreed to accept the land that Israel will transfer to him.
He was originally upset at minor changes that, at the behest of the
Yesha Council, had been instituted in the withdrawal maps. The crisis
ended when O.C. Central Command Maj.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon went to Gaza
and was able to convince Arafat to sign the papers. Seven percent of
Yesha, in the Shomron, will be transferred to Palestinian Authority
administrative control on Monday, following the Rosh HaShanah holiday.

An official Likud statement today was bitterly critical of the
impending transfer: "Prime Minister Barak is giving away land without
the Palestinians having fulfilled even one of their commitments, such
as collecting the illegal weapons and stopping the incitement against
Israel... The Sharm a-Sheikh agreement returns Israel to the
situation where Arafat knows that he is working with an Israeli
government that does not insist on anything, gives in to pressures,
and gives away land for free."

2. BARAK WILLING TO SETTLE FOR LONG-TERM INTERIM AGREEMENT
In holiday interviews with various news media today, Prime Minister
Ehud Barak says that if he does not succeed in reaching a
permanent-status arrangement with the Palestinians within a few
months, he will settle for a long-term interim arrangement. Similar
statements were made this morning by Communications Minister Binyamin
Ben-Eliezer.

3. PRE-HOLIDAY GOOD NEWS
Several major terrorist attacks were thwarted by the security services
over the past several days. Jerusalem Police Chief Ya'ir Yitzchaki
said that one of them was to have taken place in a major Israeli city;
he would not name the city. It was reported this week that the
miraculous failure of two separate car-bombs - this past Sunday, in
Haifa and Tiberias - to kill anyone other than the terrorists
themselves has a very simple "earthly" explanation: Israel's return
to winter time two days earlier, which the Palestinian Authority - in
principle - refuses to follow. The PA bomb-setters didn't switch
their clocks back, while the watches of the Israeli-Arab car-bomb
drivers were set to Israeli time - such that when the drivers were
told that the bombs would go off at 6:30 PM, they assumed they still
had another hour_

Prime Minister Barak, while not relating to the above story, did
confirm today that the Israeli-Arab terrorist cells received their
orders from within the autonomous areas, and cooperated with Hamas in
Jordan as well.

4. ECOLOGICAL PROBLEMS CAUSED BY WITHDRAWAL
An environmental group headed by Ariel Mayor Ron Nachman claims that
the withdrawal will cause great ecological damage to the area. In a
letter to Environment Minister Dalia Itzik, Nachman writes, "The
withdrawals were apparently planned by people with no environmental
knowledge or awareness."
 Specifically, the group claims that the Palestinian industrial area
planned for the area adjacent to the Green Line at Mukabila will cause
untold damage to the entire Ta'anach region and its moshavim. Another
major problem is foreseen by the construction of large quarries near
Avnei Chefetz and south of Ofrah.

5. JEWS FROM DEGASTAN TO ISRAEL
More than 500 Jews have immigrated to Israel from Degastan since the
war started there some weeks ago. About 11,000 Jews still live in
Degastan, in the former Soviet Union.

6. NO PROGRESS IN SEARCH FOR SOLDIER
The missing soldier Yonatan Lock continues to be sought by the police.
 He left his base after a dispute with his commanders on Monday
afternoon, and has not been heard from since.

7. HEADS UP!
Yarmulke-sales are on the rise. The Israeli Manufacturers Association
reports that 35% more kippot have been sold over the past few days
than is customary throughout the year, and 5% more than last year at
this time. Sales of talitot (prayer shawls) have also increased
compared to last year.

8. MESSAGE FROM CHIEF RABBI
Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, in pre-Rosh HaShanah talks over the
public media today and yesterday, bemoaned what he called the
"cheapening of life" to which Israel has recently been witness. He
also said that it was time for our society to implement the High
Holiday prayer, "Be quiet, prosecutor, and let the defense counsel
(advocate) take his place," and not be so publicly critical one of
another.

Rabbi Lau mentioned that the Torah and Scriptural readings for the
upcoming holiday speak of the three women whose prayers for "fruit of
the womb" were answered on this day: Sarah, Rachel, and Chanah. He
said that each of their respective first-born sons who "owe their
existence to this day" have important characteristics that we must
adopt: Sarah's son Yitzchak, who was willing to be bound and offered
as a sacrifice, represents self-sacrifice; Rachel's son Joseph, who
supported his family and the starving nations of the world during the
famine in Egypt, stands for positive relations between
man-and-fellow-man; and Chanah's son was Shmuel the Prophet, who went
from town to town providing spiritual upliftment to his entire
generation.

Arutz Sheva News Service
     <http://www.a7.org>
Friday, Sept. 10, 1999 / Elul 29, 5759

========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - German 9-9-99 Computer Problems Fuel Y2K Fears
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 09:30:03 -0500

From: <owner-bpr@philologos.org>

GERMAN 9-9-99 COMPUTER PROBLEMS FUEL Y2K FEARS

September 10, 1999

The London Guardian reported today:

"Technical problems at the German futures and options exchange
yesterday fueled fears in City dealing rooms that the markets could
face crisis as a result of the millennium computer bug. The computer
glitches, which prevented some firms from trading and running the risk
of potential losses, took place yesterday - numerically written 9.9.99.

Market regulators and computer experts had seen yesterday, while not
quite a dry run for the turn of the year, as a test for systems ahead of
the real millennium bug...Any hiccups which emerge after yesterday's
trading will send severe warnings to the markets about the potential
for meltdown in trading early in the new year if computers fail to
recognize the last two digits of the year 2000. Dealers fear that if
computers stop working they will not be able to trade, which might
leave them exposed to enormous losses.

The rumors of problems were not confined to the German exchange.
The internal message board at one leading investment bank in London
warned of problems with price information received from Simex, the
Singapore futures exchange. The message, posted as a warning by the
bank's traders in Singapore, said that the problems were caused by
9/9/99 glitches. The Eurex exchange in Frankfurt insisted that problems
incurred by its clients first thing yesterday morning were not
connected to the 9/9/99 computer problem. However, brokers claimed
that in response to their initial inquiries, the exchange had blamed the
date problem=85One source in London insisted yesterday: =91Eurex
admitted to members early on that it was having 9/9/99 problems.=92..."

via: hblonde1@tampabay.rr.com

========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - 'Bible Code' Debunked by Scholars
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 19:14:19 +0000

From: "Moza" <moza@butterfly.mv.com>

01:21 AM ET 09/10/99

'Bible Code' Debunked by Scholars
By RICHARD N. OSTLING
AP Religion Writer

NEW YORK (AP) _ An international team of statisticians is
debunking the controversial ``Bible code,'' which claims the Old
Testament has hidden references to 20th century events that can
be revealed by a computer.

Proponents of the code claim that names and events were hidden
in the Bible as written thousands of years ago and can be found
through computer searches of the Hebrew text. Television
documentaries, fast-selling books and numerous articles have
popularized the theory, first published in the academic journal
Statistical Science.

Now the same journal, published by the Institute of
Mathematical Statistics based in Hayward, Calif., is offering an
article challenging the technique it reported in 1994. The
article will be published in the quarterly next week.

Believers in the ``Bible code'' theory treat the Hebrew Bible
as a string of letters without spaces, looking for words formed
by equidistant letter sequences. For instance, computers might
select every ninth Hebrew letter and register a ``hit'' when a
``coded word'' intersects with a Bible verse containing related
words.

Five years ago, three Israeli scholars published the results of
their search in the journal. As they explained, they took names
of famous rabbis from a reference dictionary, applied letter
sequences and found the names near the rabbis' dates of birth or
death.

Using the same technique, others have claimed the Bible
contains secret predictions, including everything from the
assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 to a Los Angeles
earthquake in 2010.

Major Bible scholars ignore the code because, they note, no one
has a letter-by-letter version of the Bible as originally
written. The oldest surviving manuscripts include slight
variations, any of which would throw off computer test results.

In the upcoming edition of Statistical Science, the new study's
authors _ Dror Bar-Natan, Maya Bar-Hillel and Gil Kalai,
professors at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, and Brendan McKay
of the Australian National University _ combine expertise in
mathematics and computer science to debunk the theory.

Using other spellings and assumptions, they ran hundreds of
tests that repeated the experiment with different variations and
applied it to more biblical books.

``Despite a considerable amount of effort,'' they write, ``we
have been unable to detect the codes.''

This is significant, Bar-Natan said in a Thursday interview,
because ``truth in science is never based on the results of a
single experiment. A significant requirement is repeatability.''

Their results were no more successful with the Hebrew
translation of Tolstoy's ``War and Peace.'' Such letter
configurations can be found in any long text, they say. The
trick is to find letters in close proximity that form
significant words more often than by chance.

Robert Kass, head of the statistics department at Carnegie
Mellon University in Pittsburgh, edited the journal when it
published the first article and said it was reviewed by other
experts. He is disturbed that people perceived publication as
``a stamp of scientific approval.'' That first article, he said,
merely presented a puzzle _ one that has now been explained.

``The new study shows there were many, many choices,
particularly for things like the names of the rabbis, that
involved a lot of latitude. It was only for special sources that
the results appeared,'' he said Thursday.

He said such studies must avoid statistical ``tuning,'' just as
medical research projects follow strict protocol.

Bar-Natan says that procedures in the 1994 project had ``enough
wiggle room to produce whatever you want.''

Authors of the earlier article could not be reached for comment.

http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2561090672-ea8

========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Peres Interview
From: bpr-list@philologos.org(BPR)
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 21:49:09 -0500

From: dhornsby@geotec.net

Greetings,

You may wish to let your readers know about a recent interview that
Former
Prime Minister Peres gave to Vision magazine. The interview
transcript is
located on the web at www.vision.org. I think that you would find it
most
interesting.

Don Hornsby

*******************

Shimon Peres
Jerusalem: City of Peace?

In an interview with David Hulme, publisher of VISION, Israel's former
prime minister offers insight into the changing Israeli identity, the
need
for a democratic Palestinian state, and the status of Jerusalem as it
relates to current Middle East peace negotiations. Mr. Peres also
makes a
plea for moderation to prevail on all sides.

http://www.vision.org/peres.html